good morning and welcome on this michaelmas day september the 29th welcome to the deanery garden as fine rain falls around us making the garden smell fresh and green but wherever you are in the world wherever you bring your prayers from be welcome this morning as we say our morning prayers together here in canterbury this is a special day here not only because it's the feast of saint michael and all angels when we remember the presence of god constantly around us but at the same time there are certain historic connections which will unfold all through this uh this series of morning prayers and reflections as we do this together this morning perhaps i ought first of all to talk about uh next door which was uh the house here i'm just looking at it of a cannon nelson and this was the day that his brother was born in 1758 horatio vikant nelson who was the great hero of trafalgar and of course he was killed at trafalgar so when he died the nation desperately wanting to reward in a great way but nelson had no sons to pass any title onto so the person who was created the first l nelson was canon nelson next door a shy retiring cannon he was given a country a state in the countryside and a a peerage and all the sorts of things the nation could honor with him could honor him with and he chose to stay on here as canon nelson of canterbury cathedral and there are amusing letters in the archive of the dean wondering at the time whether lady hamilton and her daughter by lord nelson horatio were fit visitors to welcome here in this holy place seems a very long time ago well all of that is important this morning but let's look across the atlantic also because washington national cathedral which in photographs looks so very like canterbury cathedral was on this day founded in the sense that the cornerstone was laid in 1907 and the construction completed on this day in 1990 so today we send greetings and prayers to dean randolph hollerith and his wife melissa and all the team there jan cope and all the people we know in washington cathedral washington national cathedral has a huge pulpit called the canterbury pulpit because it was carved by our stonemasons and made out of stones of canterbury cathedral itself normally a simple stone cross is sent to cathedrals of the anglican world but washington was being created from afresh and the whole pulpit is there the canterbury pulpit so while i stand in it i actually um think of myself of being at home in washington national cathedral so let's begin to think but also on this day and it becomes very important to our uh our reflection the writer cervantes creator of don quixote was born in 1547 and we'll think about him later on let's uh begin our prayers for this michaelmas morning oh lord open our lips and our mouth shall proclaim your praise your faithful servants bless you they make known the glory of your kingdom blessed are you sovereign god ruler and judge of all to you be praise and glory forever in the darkness of this age that is passing away may the light of your presence which the saints enjoy surround our steps as we journey on may we reflect your glory this day and so be made ready to see your face in the heavenly city where night shall be no more blessed be god father son and holy spirit blessed be god forever the night has passed and the day lies open before us let us pray with one heart and mind and as we rejoice in the gift of this new day so may the light of your presence oh god set our hearts on fire with love for you now and forever amen our psalm on this 29th morning of the month is psalm 139 and i'll read part of it now oh lord you have searched me out and known me you know my down sitting and my rising up you discern my thoughts from afar you mark out my journeys and my resting place and are acquainted with all my ways for there is not a word on my tongue but you o lord know it all together you encompass me behind and before and lay your hand upon me such knowledge is too wonderful for me so high that i cannot attain unto it where can i go then from your spirit or where can you can i flee from your presence if i climb up to heaven you are there if i make the grave my bed you are there also if i take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea even there your hand shall lead me your right hand hold me fast if i say surely the darkness will cover me and the light around me turn to night even darkness is no darkness with you the night is as clear as the day darkness and light to you are both alike for you yourself created my inmost parts you knit me together in my mother's womb i thank you for i am fearfully and wonderfully made marvellous are your works my soul knows well my frame was not hidden from you when i was made in secret and woven in the depths of the earth your eyes beheld my form as yet unfinished already in your book were all my members written as day by day they were fashioned when as yet there was none of them how deep are your counsels to me o god how great is the sum of them if i count them they are more in number than the sand and at the end i am still in your presence so we turn to the acts of the apostles it's unlike me to forsake the regular reading of the lectionary but on this michaelmas day the regular reading given to us about the holy angels is from acts 12 and it's the story we considered not very long ago about peter in chains in prison being visited by angelic help and being released by angelic help so my intention is not to read that lesson today the angels are certainly all around us and we shall we shall say the prayer for saint michael angel's day but i'm going to continue with our regular reading of the acts of the apostles because that would have been missed if we'd if we'd not read it today and it's too important and too dramatic to miss so in fact i'm starting in chapter 19 of the acts of the apostles at verse 21. now after these events paul resolved in the spirit to pass through macedonia and archaea and go to jerusalem saying after i have been there i must also see rome and having sent into macedonia two of his helpers timothy and erastus he himself stayed in asia for a while and about that time there arose no little disturbance concerning the way for a man named demetrius a silversmith who made silver shrines of the goddess artemis brought no little business to the craftsmen these he gathered together with the workmen in similar trades and said you know that from this business we have all our wealth and you see and here that not only in ephesus but in almost all of asia this paul has persuaded and turned away a great many people saying that gods made with hands are not gods at all and there is danger not only that this trade of ours may come into disrepute but also that the temple of the great goddess artemis may be counted as nothing and that she may even be deposed from her magnificence she whom all asia and the world worship when they heard this they were enraged and were crying out great is artemis of the ephesians so the city was filled with confusion and they rushed together into the theater dragging with them gaius and aristarchus macedonians who were paul's companions in travel but when paul wished to go in among the crowd the disciples would not let him and even some of the aseans who were friends of his sent to him and were urging him not to venture into the theater now some cried out one thing some another for the assembly was in confusion and most of them did not know why they had come together some of the crowd prompted alexander whom the jews had put forward and alexander motioning with his hand wanted to make a defense to the crowd but when they recognized that he was a jew for about two hours they all cried out with one voice great is artemis of the ephesians and when the town clerk had quietened the crowd he said people of ephesus who is there who does not know that the city of the ephesians is temple keeper of the great artemis and of the sacred stone that fell from the sky seeing then that these things cannot be denied you ought to be quiet and do nothing rash for you have brought these men here who are neither sacrilegious nor blasphemers of our goddess if therefore demetrius and the craftsmen with him have a complaint against anyone the courts are open and there are pro-consuls let them bring charges against one another but if you seek anything further it shall be settled in the regular assembly for you really are in danger of being charged with rioting today since there is no cause that we can give to justify this commotion and when he had said these things he dismissed the assembly for the past few days two years and several months have been covered by luke in a very short time today we have an event which was clearly powerful in paul's mind and it's described in full the city of ephesus so important in the ancient world and now no longer for that city had to keep being moved away from the incoming sea which was taking away its its uh ability to be a port there and be a great trading center so if you go there now and i've not been there my partner here has been there and has seen all the the uh uh wonderful classical antiquities which art archaeology has produced but the one thing that is not seen in all its glory even in its archaeology just one pillar left made up of bits and pieces of old pillars not even a a column that that was there at the time is the temple of the great goddess artemis it was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world together with the great pyramid of giza the hanging gardens of babylon the colossus of rhodes the lighthouse of alexandria this temple the statue of zeus at olympia and the mausoleum at halicarnassus of all those only the the pyramid remains in any way intact and we remember the glory of that classical world at that time so we think of paul and there's a little bit of almost prophecy at the beginning he's intending to go to rome he's thinking he will do so by his own exertions in fact a very different set of circumstances will carry him to rome and those will gradually unfold as we go through the concluding chapters of the acts of the apostles but for the moment he's really not allowed to speak today because so much commotion and confusion is going on and oddly in the end it ends peacefully partly because of the position of the town clerk the secretary of the people themselves and partly because of what we've looked at again and again the pax romana the law of rome see how the secretary to the people say the courts are open you could take this matter to the pro-consuls and it would be judged but they feel probably they don't have much of a chance there they've made their point two hours of shouting for their goddess and then disperses interesting the name alexander because remember in one of his letters on to timothy paul says alexander the coppersmith did me great harm we've no idea whether it's the same one but here is a pointer of one of the names we shall come across more and more names of paul's companions as we go on through the acts but let's think of this day to start with and the way in which history weaves in to the building up of any movement and here in any holy place and this was the day first of all on which uh alphage who was the archbishop of canterbury was captured by the danes in 1011 they besieged the city and the taking of the city of canterbury and the capturing of the archbishop who was later murdered by them but that's some months ahead but all of that is is shown in some of our beautiful 12th century stained glass windows seen above the bible windows here in canterbury cathedral that picture and that ministry of alphage the martyr became really important to thomas beckett because he was devoted to the memory of the mata alphage and it shows that this was a place of pilgrimage for alphage was buried on the northern side of the high altar and the stone still marks that now well also today we think of another historic event which is still very much remembered here in 1399 richard ii abdicated being forced to do so by henry bollingbrook richard had become king at the age of ten his grandfather had preceded him and his father was the black prince whose intact and beautiful tomb stands on one side the south side of the site of beckett's martyrdom where the candle burns or the not the martyrdom the sight of becket shrine where the candle burns and also the shall we call him the usurper henry iv lies on the other side king henry iv with his wife joan of navarre and as those two lie themselves wanting to be near the person of beckett the great saint then part of our history comes forward richard ii was devoted to this space because his father the black prince had been and so he gave much resource to this place allowing the building of the nave and creating so many aspects of beauty he was definitely a man of prayer and of artistic sensitivity but his reign was not a happy one and at the end it ended with him being taken prisoner and the way he died is is uncertain but when henry iv was buried here he couldn't have known that just two or three years ago when the royal shakespeare company performed the two parts of king henry the fourth in the the marley theater here before they came they came and surrounded the tomb of henry iv in a sense asking the the blessing of the one they were they were going to represent in shakespeare well if we think of shakespeare let's think of cervantes because he was born today in 1547 and he's best known for don quixote now if you look at a map of don quixote's travels and we've followed them round in la mancha and gone to the places mentioned um it's actually like what we used to do with french knitting on our hands with string a complete confusion crossing and crossing and crossing the journeys and across it at the town of temble k runs the pilgrim path up to santiago the pilgrim path is straight the journey of don quixote is chris crossing to the places he's led to next the journey of paul is more like don quixote than the pilgrim path the goal of his own vocation is only slowly given to him to follow don quixote's path in la mancha you'll need time to do it you have to go through many byways and and eventually find the place you're going to and then find the next one and the next it was simply the story of this fictional person's life to be a night errant and to fulfill what he thought was his own vocation and the acts of the apostles in its second half is the story of how paul across the mediterranean world when he says this morning i shall go to rome you might think of a straight line in his head from ephesus to rome not at all draw a map over the next few weeks and you will find that it's more like don quijote and so often life is like that with our own vocations we don't know where the next girl will be until we've achieved that one i love some of the quotes of cervantes such ordinary ones like the proof of the pudding is in the eating or hunger is the best source in the world but another i like a lot is to be prepared is half the victory and then one i need to learn by heart by the street of by and by one arrives at the house of never meaning procrastination is the thief of time and sometimes if we procrastinate prevaricate too long the goal that we were intending can never be achieved by the street of by and by one arrives at the house of never well it's safe our prayers on this day with so many things to think about in this holy and historic place where the journey has taken us through so many centuries in different ways but also thinking of our much much younger sister cathedral in uh washington dc on this day and here in the diocese and in the communion today the diocese of polotus in brazil and renato de cruz rats the the thousand bishop there and his people and we're praying also for the diocese of chelmsford in england and uh the whole of that diocese at this time and we prayed two for in the diocese of the archbishop justin and bishop rose of dover bishop tim at lambeth and we are continuing to pray for the reculver deanery the villages and communities around reculva which uh include all these sort of witstable areas and the hern area of of kent and we pray today for clergy with permission to officiate there who help out in the ministry bring your own prayers now as we say the collect the special prayer for this michaelmas day everlasting god you have ordained and constituted the ministries of angels and mortals in a wonderful order granted as your holy angels always serve you in heaven so at your command they may help and defend us on earth through jesus christ our lord amen i meant to say that although i have a huge and rather old copy of don quixote with lovely engravings by gustaf dorei i had never read it it seemed somehow as though the book was too big but after we'd done the don quixote pilgrimage and gone to all his places in spain i found a way i could do it and it was by buying a very cheap paperback version and tearing out 20 pages at a time and slipping it into a loose-leaf book that i could pick up and read on train journeys and beyond in sections and reflect on and so i read memorably don quixote but in fact it's what we're doing each morning with the acts of the apostles taking shall we say bite-sized pieces to help us in our pilgrimage and reflecting on them and mixing them with the affairs of the world today so we say each in our own language the prayer our savior taught us our father who art in heaven hallowed be thy name thy kingdom come thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil for thine is the kingdom the power and the glory forever and ever amen moment of silence now for your own prayers on this particular morning [Music] the peace of god which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in the knowledge and love of god and of his son jesus christ our lord and the blessing of god almighty the father the son and the holy spirit be upon you upon those whom you love and those whom you would pray for today and always are men ah