good morning and welcome to the deanery garden in canterbury cathedral on this wednesday the 15th of september as we gather for our morning prayers wherever you are in the world welcome to the garden and we're in a cool september morning with a cloud covering much more gray than usual we've come amongst the trees for a reason which will become apparent in our reflection but you're looking and it's a tree that we shall use in our reflection as well at a horse chestnut tree and it's suffering as so many of our trees are with particular diseases brought on by all kinds of reasons for not only modern climate change but the spreading of diseases around the world so fast these days with the transportation of trees from place to place it's suffering from leaf blotch which isn't massively serious or damaging to horse chestnuts but appears at this time of year as the leaves begin to turn and fall next year when it's lost its leaves and comes again everything will be fresh and green and the flowers will bloom in their lovely white candles again but towards the end of the year if it becomes stress with the climate in some way or another then the leaf blotch appears again and it's a modern phenomenon and we hope in some way there will be a way of treating it i'm surrounded by trees lovely trees this morning as i sit here in the shade this is a place we come to on really hot days but you're seeing as you look across at me a lovely catalpa tree there and the rowan tree the sorbus olympic flame it's called we planted it at the year of the olympics i'm sitting under a maple tree and behind me is a liquid amber tree so lots of trees around and trees are are so necessary to the health of the planet and were asked to plant more and more and more trees to help the life of our planet well all those things later for our reflection let's begin our prayers on this day and as i always say whatever images in need of prayer or people in need of prayer that you know have them in your hearts and minds and as we pray right across the world that huge undergirding of prayer for those situations will become apparent through us oh lord open our lips and our mouth shall proclaim your praise may christ the day star dawn in our hearts and triumph over the shades of night blessed are you creator of all to you be praise and glory forever as your dawn renews the face of the earth bringing light and life to all creation may we rejoice in this day you have made and as we wake refreshed from the depths of sleep open our eyes to behold your presence and strengthen our hands to do your will that the world may rejoice and give you praise 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 as we rejoice in the gift of this new day so may the light of your presence so god set our hearts on fire with love for you now and forever amen our psalm on this 15th morning of the month is psalm 77 in the first part after the first two verses the psalmist asks a series of questions and his inference is that the answer to them all is no a resounding no and then he goes on to remind himself of that so those questions will come really uh quite soon in the psalm have no in your minds and hearts i cry aloud to god i cry aloud to god and he will hear me in the day of my trouble i have sought the lord by night my hand is stretched out and does not tire my soul refuses comfort i think upon god and i groan i ponder and my spirit faints you will not let my eyelids close i am so troubled that i cannot speak i consider the days of old i remember the years long past i commune with my heart in the night my spirit searches for understanding will the lord cast us off forever will he no more show us his favor has his loving mercy clean gone forever has his promise come to an end forevermore has god forgotten to be gracious has he shut up his compassion in displeasure and i said my grief is this that the right hand of the most high has lost its strength i will remember the works of the lord and call to mind your wonders of old time i will meditate on all your works and ponder your mighty deeds your way o god is holy who is so great a god is our god you are the god who worked wonders and declared your power among the peoples with a mighty arm you redeemed your people the children of jacob and joseph the waters saw you oh god the waters saw you and were afraid the depths also were troubled the clouds poured out water the skies thunder your arrows flashed on every side the voice of your thunder was in the whirlwind your lightnings lit up the ground the earth trembled and shook your way was in the sea and your paths in the great waters but your footsteps were not known you led your people like sheep by the hand of moses and aaron so after pausing for holy cross day yesterday we're returning to the story of joseph and today i'm going to read rather a long passage but it makes a a good story following through all the way we've returned to joseph in egypt for the moment the story of jacob and the brothers are set aside we are with joseph and you remember that the chief cup bearer having been restored to office as joseph in the interpretation of his dream said he would be has forgotten his promise to remember joseph in prison and mention that to pharaoh in his newly found position again so we're starting chapter 41 and i'm going to read right through to verse 45. [Applause] after two whole years pharaoh dreamed that he was standing by the nile and behold there came up out of the nile seven cows attractive and plump they fed on the reed grass and behold seven other cows ugly and thin came up out of the nile after them and stood by the other cows on the bank of the nile and the ugly finn cows at up the seven attractive plump cows and pharaoh woke and he fell asleep and dreamed a second time and behold seven ears of corn plump and good were growing on one stalk and behold after them sprouted seven ears thin and blighted by the east wind and the thin ears swallowed up the seven plump full ears and pharaoh awoke and behold it was a dream so in the morning his spirit was troubled and he sent and called for all the magicians of egypt and all his wise men pharaoh told them his dreams but there was none who could interpret them to pharaoh then the chief cupbearer said to pharaoh i remember my offences today when pharaoh was angry with his servants and put me and the chief baker in custody in the house of the captain of the god we dreamed on the same night he and i each having a dream with its own interpretation a young hebrew was there with us a servant of the captain of the guard when we told him he interpreted our dreams to us giving an interpretation to each man according to his dream and as he interpreted to us so it came about i was restored to my office and the baker was hanged then pharaoh sent and called joseph and they quickly brought him out of the pit and when he had shaved himself and changed his clothes he came in before pharaoh and pharaoh said to joseph i have had a dream and there is no one who can interpret it i have heard it said of you that when you hear a dream you can interpret it joseph answered pharaoh it is not in me god will give pharaoh a favorable answer then pharaoh said to joseph behold in my dream i was standing on the banks of the nile seven clouds plump and attractive came up out of the nile and fed in the reed grass seven other cows came up after them poor and very ugly and thin such as i had never seen in all the land of egypt and the thin ugly cows ate up the first cows the seven plump cows but when they had eaten them no one would have known that they had eaten them for they were still as ugly as at the beginning then i awoke i also saw in my dream seven ears growing on one stalk full and good seven ears withered and thin and blighted by the east wind sprouted after them and the thin ears swallowed up the seven good ears and i told it to the magicians but there was no one who could explain it to me then joseph said to pharaoh the dreams of pharaoh are one god has revealed to pharaoh what he is about to do the seven good cows are seven years and the seven good years are seven years the dreams are won the seven lean and ugly cows that came up after them are seven years and the seven empty ears blighted by the east wind are also seven years of famine it is as i told pharaoh god has shown to pharaoh what he is about to do there will come seven years of great plenty throughout the whole land of egypt but after them there will arise seven years of famine and all the plenty will be forgotten in the land of egypt the famine will consume the land and the plenty will be unknown in the land by reason of the famine that will follow for it will be very severe and the doubling of pharaoh's dream means that the thing is fixed by god and god will shortly bring it about now therefore let pharaoh select a discerning and wise man and set him over the land of egypt let pharaoh proceed to appoint overseers over the land and take one-fifth of the produce of the land of egypt during the seven plentiful years and let them gather all the food of these good years that are coming and store up grain under the authority of pharaoh for food in the cities and let them keep it that food shall be a reserve for the land against the seven years of famine that are to occur in the land of egypt so that the land may not perish through the famine this proposal pleased pharaoh and all his servants and pharaoh said to his servants can we find a man like this in whom is the spirit of god then pharaoh said to joseph since god has shown you all this there is none so discerning and wise as you are you shall be over my house and all my people shall order themselves as you command only as regards the throne will i be greater than you and pharaoh said to joseph c i have set you over all the land of egypt then pharaoh took his signet ring from his hand and put it on joseph's hand and clothed him in garments of fine linen and put a gold chain about his neck and he made him ride in his second chariot and they called out before joseph bow the knee thus he set him over all the land of egypt moreover pharaoh said to joseph i am pharaoh and without your consent no one shall lift up hand or foot in all the land of egypt and pharaoh called joseph's name zaphanas panea and he gave him in marriage asanas the daughter of potiphara priest of on so joseph went out over the land of egypt so above me is a huge crab apple tree and you may have noticed that the crab apples are falling around me in the september wind as it blows through the trees it's that time of year they will be collected very carefully and made into jelly in little pots by fletcher and we shall enjoy them in winter months but also we'll put them out on the stall at the dinery gate which people can take away and give contributions to porchlight the homeless charity and also to the pilgrims hospice all of that is a lesson from joseph's barnes the collecting of all those things in the years of plenty to store so that not everything is consumed in the years of plenty but afterwards there's much to go around to use from it and beyond that there will be grain also for planting when finally the years of famine are over but what a turnaround for joseph here in the prison after all his experiences and the thought that the chief cup bearer has forgotten all about him suddenly it's pharaoh who dreams a dream and we begin to see why joseph has come down through all those terrible experiences to the land of egypt as a preparation for the ongoing plan of god himself not only for his chosen people but for the nations of the whole world it's very interesting in this story how pharaoh says about the the spirit of god in someone and that that spirit of god is the same words in the in the uh testament in the in the the greek old testament the septuagint particularly as as what was used with the spirit of god brooding on the face of the water the spirit of god and joseph has said when when he's asked how can he interpret dreams it's not me i don't do the interpretation god gives the interpretation and has sent a warning to pharaoh and pharaoh takes heed of that warning and listens and then he also notices intuitively that in this young man we're told in a versatile time if we went on reading that joseph is 30 years old at the time in this young man there is wise counsel older than his years but here is someone pharaoh thinks intuitively he can trust for the planning of egypt's well-being and as it happens the well-being of nations round about which will once again introduce as this story beautifully told in written uh introduce the other dimension of the story jacob and the brothers back into the story those long passages read well because they are full of interest even the fact of joseph being made to clean himself up shave and give him new clothes to go and stand before the pharaoh but he does so with confidence because he has the spirit of god within him and he answers straight away to the pharaoh when he says you have the spirit of interpreting the dreams and joseph said no not i it's god who interprets dreams and in a way i will be his mouthpiece for this but joseph is not just that he's also he interprets the dream but then his own wisdom sounds sense and everything he has learned in being a steward in the good days for potiphar and also in the household of the the captain of the guard being trusted in that way now that wisdom puts itself it's a sort of if i were you i would select someone of great wisdom to do this and he sets out the plan which he's he's thinking as he interprets the dreams that too is part of his spiritual but also his mental insight and one feels the strength of the young man joseph standing there as does the pharaoh and entrusts him with everything except the absolute power which is retained for pharaoh so joseph is still in a position of trust but it's one that the pharaoh has confidence in in all this we see the plan going forward and uh the the lovely psalm we read with all those dark questions which joseph must have been asking in his years of imprisonment has god forgotten to be gracious the answer very clearly from the story today is no this is all preparation on the way through and i i want to look just at uh uh two dates today um we've got a a long meeting today for our school in in planning the future as the lockdown begins to come to an end governors and senior staff together so we shall be planning and making plans today but i i wanted to say that on this day um in uh the in yeah 1700 the 15th of september 1700 at the age of 87 the gardener andre lenotre died he had been born in 1613 and became the gardener and landscape designer for louis xiv and so many of the massive french gardens the formal gardens of france uh if one thinks of palaces and gardens of vola v compt shanti fontainebleau sanclude saint-germain saint-germain lay the tweeleries and the grand alley of the champs-elysees all of that we give thanks to for andre lenot who came from a gardening family uh he'd been born in a cottage in the tweedery gardens there and his his father was was part of the gardening team there but he himself surpassed all he was sent to study mathematics and perspective and that became massively important in the classical gardens that he designed he said of himself i seldom write anything down i express myself purely through my gardens and he became a trusted advisor so trusted by louis xiv that he was in noble in in 1675 but let's come on to the garden that we we best know perhaps there's a little side track for the moment i i might say there are gardens of his all over france and garden sea influences and one that we know and and love is in the the little town of anthracasto in provence not too far from the cistercian monastery of liturgy and there the public square has been designed by le notre and you can practically see it in the elegance of the plantings and the way that everything is formed there but but his masterpiece of course for which he's best known is versailles and the way that palace which had been simply a hunting launch was extended and surrounded by formal gardens of intense beauty and geometrical pattern but also wild areas stretching beyond and the use of water throughout the garden itself those of you who have walked the gardens of versailles and many many of you will have done so will know how the grand canal massive grand canal and the fountains the fountains of apollo um stretching out all of that east and west so that the sun becomes an important aspect of things in the in in the water itself and the reflections and then the use of of of uh cross strokes so that you've got the patterns a geometrical pattern going on from fountain to fountain and raising up with terraces that look down onto the water so that your eye and your body as you walk are taking things in in different ways and around you are trees growing up and shaped formally done but also lots of what they would call little bosques and this might be called one a collection of trees planted this isn't a very formal one uh there's generally in in the french gardens a grav gravel path underneath and sometimes little clipped hedges and also the trees growing up through later on chestnuts were used to a great degree in in that way but at the same time the king with people walking along um could go down and another palace the grand triangle was built well at the end so that when they got there there was a place for refreshment and then coming back through the gardens and the wooded areas and using the trees in that way as they extended it gave a sense of the center of all the king's majesty and glory louis xiv called himself the sun king and there's apollo with all his horses set out in the fountain but the classical stories and ancient greece and rome became very important in lenotre's designs in all of this the canvas of his mind was absolutely massive and so imaginative and the the the really amusing uh fountain of latrona where the the uh the the peasants in the story of her when she when she is is involved in the classical story and she turns them into frogs and remember how in the fountain it did versailles that they're turning from human beings into frogs and the waters coming up out of the frog's mouth in that wonderful fountain there lots of amusement for those going past there were far more occasions like that louis xvi got rid of quite a few of those because they were expensive to run with the water wheels going round and planted more trees and built other aspects of that but versailles became and le notre himself became a guide for all those emperors and monarchs throughout europe and right down into spain where the royal palace city ranch they're the main seat of of royal power in spain the gardens of that influenced heavily by the notre and it's schonbrunn for the the pedi roman emperor uh and even uh at uh in in uh england itself with the gardens trip even to windsor castle there's a set of of of drawings for the gardens at windsor which lenotre was asked to to help with so that people across europe were using him to say how can i have something that looks like versailles and the notre went on planning well here's someone whose wisdom was trusted but whose imagination and using his own imagination within the context of creation is what we try and do here within canterbury because this precinct is still absolutely walled so there are formal areas and there are there are orchard areas and little woody areas and there's water around it all of that means that people can get the experience which lenotre was trying so much to to give people planning where were there with joseph for if you plan a garden and you're planting trees your mind is thinking ahead oh years ahead because the trees will grow up in a particular way and so patience and knowledge and the kind of wisdom that's needed and it's right for the notre dame um i i didn't write much down but you can see all i believe and think in my gardens well the other thing i wanted to say about today is that on this day on 15th of september in 1890 dame agatha christie was born and of course she is immensely well known for her detective stories all the way through and those those detective stories and even dramas like the mousetrap which which had to to stop at the end having been the longest running play for years and years it stopped because of the pandemic but wouldn't have stopped had the pandemic not happen but agatha christie found she had a a way of being able to write that her first detective uh the mystery at styles house is the book he appears in hercules the bear the belgian detective that became her her first time of setting a detective in the middle of a planned story but it doesn't feel like that it's like monotris gardens some of it feels very planned others you just feel how wonderful this is all is that all this is unfolding and so it is with the planning of that and on the way through she then goes on to tommy and tuppence and writes novels about them as detectives they're the central characters but the plot cleverly unfolds in a planned way and then of course eventually in happier times in her life because as we well know she herself had a really difficult time when she disappeared in 1926 nobody quite knows why and for 10 days was missing it was at the time of her divorce from her husband who had begun a relationship with someone else and all of that was painful to her she went away after that to egypt and and the area of archaeology going on there and met a young archaeologist his name was max malone and they then had many years of happily married life what i might say though is that agatha christie what she continued to call herself um she was really lady malone in the end but but she called herself agatha christie to the end she was a faithful member of the church of england but she was also someone who always thought she must abide by the rules and by her bed she kept the copy of her mother's imitation of christ thomas akempis and she went faithfully to church but following her divorce she never received the sacrament of holy communion again those were the rules of the church she said at that time and it was a self-denying ordinance which i think we must respect in her i mean because that must have been a a thread of pain within the very happy marriage and it was after she was married to max the young archaeologist that she began to create miss marple books and the st mary mead uh and her first of course was murder at the vicarage well both those things we could speak about much much more but let's say our prayers on this particular day or i shall go on too long we're thinking this morning in the anglican communion the diocese of evo in nigeria and we're thinking also of those who act as chaplain to organizations in the the villages of the world in kent those villages we've been praying for in as we think of the area deanery of the wheeled so we give thanks for the ministry of chaplains to schools and organizations to hospitals and all kinds of of institutions which are beginning once again to find their life as the pandemic relaxes the rules of of those organizations let's say then the collect for this day the 15th sunday after trinity bring your own prayers and intentions god who in generous mercy sent the holy spirit upon your church in the burning fire of your love grant that your people may be fervent in the fellowship of the gospel that always abounding in you they may be found steadfast in faith and active in service through jesus christ our lord amen 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 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 blessing of god almighty the father the son and the holy spirit be upon you upon those whom you love and those whom you will pray for today and always amen you