good morning and welcome to the deanery garden in canterbury cathedral on the morning of saturday the 28th of august welcome wherever you are in the world we've come to this part of the garden just for the beginning of our morning prayers today because water and the well begins to play an enormous part in our story as you'll see but there are aspects of water throughout everything that we should talk about this morning and so we've come early in the morning to to take water from the well to give a drink to the pigs in the dean's walk so we'll go to them afterwards but i wanted first to sit by the well and to show how many aspects of what we're thinking about comes from this ability to draw the gift of water bring your um bring your thoughts and prayers and images from across the world there are terrible and terrifying images of people in danger in so many different ways and our hearts and minds are still with the people in kabul and at the airport in kabul people who are afraid people who are risking their own lives to try to help in a situation of war but then at the same time right across the world in situations of hurricane and fire and flood and pandemic all those situations are going on earthquake in haiti it's so easy to forget situations and we came to my burma again yesterday so we keep those in our mind but i'm confident that in the thousands who are in our garden congregation from across the world those prayers are real and those images are real and they're different as different as all of us are as we say our prayers and offer these situations to god and offer ourselves to any activity which can encourage and help another whatever it costs to us during the hours of this new day so by the well and with the sound of the water trickling before we take water from the well and take it to the pigs we will begin our morning prayers oh lord open our lips and our mouth shall proclaim your praise send your holy spirit upon us and clothe us with power from on high blessed are you creator god to you be praise and glory forever as your spirit moved over the face of the waters bringing light and life to your creation pour out your spirit on us today that we may walk as children of light and by your grace reveal your presence 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 o god set our hearts on fire with love for you now and forever are men after the bouquet as i called it of little sounds pilgrim sounds which followed the long psalm 119 the first song for this 28th morning of the month is a psalm which speaks of david and the shall we call it a genealogical line which goes right through in the house of david and which matthew and luke both trace in their genealogies of our lord but at the same time there is the image of the shepherd king and of the anointed one pointing forward in all of this in prophecy within the psalms psalm 132 lord remember for david all the hardships he endured how he swore an oath to the lord and vowed a vow to the mighty one of jacob i will not come within the shelter of my house nor climb up into my bed i will not allow my eyes to sleep nor let my eyelids slumber until i find a place for the lord a dwelling for the mighty one of jacob now we heard of the ark in ephrathah and found it in the fields of jr let us enter his dwelling place and fall low before his footstool arise o lord into your resting place you and the ark of your strengths let your priests be clothed with righteousness and your faithful ones sing with joy for your servant david's sake turn not away the face of your anointed the lord has sworn an oath to david a promise from which he will not shrink of the fruit of your body shall i set upon your throne if your children keep my covenant and my testimonies that i shall teach them their children also shall sit upon your throne forevermore for the lord has chosen zion for himself he has desired her for his habitation this shall be my resting place forever here will i dwell for i have longed for her i will abundantly bless her provision her poor will i satisfy with bread i will close her priests with salvation and her faithful ones shall rejoice and sing there will i make a horn to spring up for david i will keep a lantern burning for my anointed and as for his enemies i will clothe them with shame but on him shall his crown be bright well this is feeding time for all but it's jane who's led the pitch to just have a crafty snack from the pig's breakfast as we're drawing water here but they've got plentiful breakfast of their own with the turkeys and russell and darcy as well but this is an early morning sight and we shall see a sight like this in our reflections later on on the scripture that we're going to read but let's move up and take water to the pigs and i take one of these to draw the water from the well [Applause] there we are plentiful water for the well now we're going to go on and rejoin you with the pigs so hi jane nice apple for you one so so [Music] come on climbing come on come on come on here we are here we are kimmy there get me come on so we've come to the dean's walk as it's called between the city walls and the old monastic wall which we've described many times and we're here with clemmy and winnie as we call her having their breakfast they're beginning to clear the vegetation around here ready for re sowing of wild flowers and things of that kind there's plentiful seeds in the ground themselves and i'm looking at the last bit of flowering of a verbascum a great mullein sometimes called our ladies candles when they're flowering all the way down the stem there but at present two i have the scent of a butler which is almost past its flowering period and various other wild plants which clemmy and winnie are actually making short work of bit by bit so we're going to read our story this morning and you'll see the importance of the well and that well will become important really throughout the whole of scriptures but it's the story now of isaac but he doesn't appear a great deal and you'll see why and we can reflect on this afterwards this chapter 24 of genesis is a vastly long chapter but it's important to to cover the whole story so i'm going to read up to verse 28 and then give a precis of what happens until one gets to verse 61 and then we shall complete the story and isaac makes his appearance so in chapter 24 it's abraham that we begin with verse 1 of chapter 24 of genesis now abraham was old well advanced in years and the lord had blessed abraham in all things and abraham said to his servant the oldest of his household who had charge of all that he had put your hand under my thigh that i may make you swear by the lord the god of heaven and the god of earth that you will not take a wife for my son from the daughters of the canaanites among whom i dwell but will go to my country and to my kindred and take a wife for my son isaac the servant said to him perhaps the woman may not be willing to follow me to this land must i then take your son back to the land from which you came abraham said to him see to it that you do not take my son back there the lord the god of heaven who took me from my father's house and from the land of my kindred and who spoke to me and swore to me to your offspring i will give this land he will send his angel before you and you shall take a wife for my son from there but if the woman is not willing to follow you then you will be free from this oath of mine only you must not take my son back there so the servant put his hand under the thigh of abraham his master and swore to him concerning this matter then the servant took ten of his masters camels and departed taking all sorts of choice gifts from his master and he arose and went to mesopotamia to the city of nehor and he made the camels kneel down outside the city by the well of water at the time of evening the time when women go out to draw water and he said o lord god of my master abraham please grant me success today and show steadfast love to my master abraham behold i am standing by the spring of water and the daughters of the men of the city are coming out to draw water let the young woman to whom i shall say please let down your jar that i may drink and who shall say drink and i will water your camels let her be the one whom you have appointed for your servant isaac by this i shall know that you have shown steadfast love to my master before he had finished speaking behold rebecca who was born to bethel the son of milka the wife of nehor abraham's brother came out with her water jar on her shoulder the young woman was very attractive in appearance a maiden whom no man had known she went down to the spring and filled her jar and came up then the servant ran to meet her and said please give me a little water to drink from your jar rebecca said drink my lord and she quickly let down her jar upon her hand and gave him a drink when she had finished giving him a drink she said i will draw water for your camels also until they have finished drinking so she quickly emptied her jar into the trough and ran again to the well to draw water and she drew for all his camels the man gazed at her in silence to learn whether the lord had prospered his journey or not and when the camels had finished drinking the man took a gold ring weighing half a shekel and two bracelets for her arms weighing 10 gold shekels and said please tell me whose daughter you are is there room in your father's house for us to spend the night she said to him i am the daughter of bethuel the son of milka whom she bought a nehor she added we have plenty of both straw and fodder and room to spend the night the man bowed his head and worshiped the lord and said blessed be the lord the god of my master abraham who has not forsaken his steadfast love and his faithfulness towards my master as for me the lord has led me in the way to the house of my master's kinsmen then rebecca ran and told her mother's household about these things now rebecca had a brother whose name was laban and laban ran out towards the man to the spring you can read the whole of the chapter i'm going in a moment to continue at verse 61. but meanwhile it's lesban who is their spokesman for the household and ready to call the shots really with regard to the servant's journey and it turns out well for when rebecca takes the servant and everyone else home and laban has come out to meet them at the spring and taking them in then the servant tells of his mission and they say to him this is well if rebecca agrees and rebecca says i will go and so they gather her sister and her nurse and she goes with abraham's servant and those who have come with him with the camels so i'm going from verse 61 but you can fill the details of those many many verses which come between then rebecca and her young women rose and rode on the camels and followed the man thus the servant took rebecca and went his way now isaac had returned from beer lahiroi and was dwelling in the niger and isaac went out to meditate in the field towards evening and he lifted up his eyes and saw and behold there were camels coming and rebecca lifted up her eyes and when she saw isaac she dismounted from the camel and said to abraham's servant who is that man walking in the field to meet us the servant said it is my master say rebecca took a veil and covered herself and the servant told isaac all the things that he had done then isaac brought her into the tent of sarah his mother and took rebecca and she became his wife and he loved her so isaac was comforted after his mother sarah's death it is a beautiful story but it speaks of an age-old culture and we can look at one or two things in it and the first thing that i would want to notice is that the servant is never named that person so significant in this story of obedience to his master's will is never named he is simply the servant of his master's will and all these things have both earthly and divine meanings and that sense of obedience to the will not only of abraham but the servant believes very fervently because we hear his prayers of asking blessing on his master and his master's intention but also prayers to god that his own journey may be fruitful their prayers of intercession their prayers of petition from ages and ages ago and yet they're told with a very personal touch by the one who is writing this down for us to read this story detail by detail and we get something of the personality of rebecca who will become so important in all of this and something also of the personality the no name of the servant perhaps it's a a good thing for each of us who are servants of god to realize that this sense of service is given such highlighting in this story but at the same time there is the well and when he is drinking from the water we brought from our well this morning here and enjoying the water having eaten some of her breakfast it's a very natural thing but rebecca is very conscious of all of this because she is a daughter of the countryside and a daughter of all that is going on in the family's life and she is seeing a traveler and here's another clue to this the sacredness of hospitality to a traveler and the respect which each pays to the other and then she says not only and we remember someone else who says give me a drink at the well in st john's gospel and the woman is is there filling her own jar and rebecca lightly lets down the jar so that that the servant can drink after his long journey but she is someone who is practical and says you drink and rest a while and i will give water to all your camels so she draws water from the well at that evening time which was a time for the the animals to gather around the well and she also gives drink to this person's camels who is a stranger and he asks for more hospitality the servant and she grants that too and not only says that there's room in my father my my um own household it's laban her brother who's going to give the real permission when when he comes but there's also lots of straw and provender for your camels and here we have a a a a form of hospitality of that culture in which abraham and isaac are brought up meanwhile isaac is well out of the story though he is the crucial part of it and laban is the one who gives permission for all these things to happen and eventually as the servant has said to abraham that what if she will not come back and abraham said well then you're freed from your oath and when laban says we must ask rebecca and in the passage uh in verse where are we 58 which is one of the verses that i didn't read they called rebecca and said to her will you go with this man and rebecca said i will go. so they sent away rebecca their sister and her nurse and abraham's servant and his men and they go off with the camels back to isaac now here's another lovely touch isaac went out to meditate in the field toward evening he's not expecting anything he's gone out at a reflective time of day evening and the morning before the hot sun when one can walk out in the field and enjoy the atmosphere and meditate and it's in that meditation that he sees the camels coming at first probably just a distant movement and then walking towards him such wonderful scenes at this time and the servant having accomplished his master's will isaac then takes rebecca into the tent of his mother who has died and she becomes his wife and he loves her and she comforts him for the death of his beloved mother all of those things in this story but at the same time we're going into the the sense of that line of abraham isaac and jacob whom jesus speaks about even in his teaching in the temple in the in the last days before he is betrayed arrested and crucified when they're quizzing him uh sadducees are quizzing him about the resurrection and jesus says remember that when god spoke to moses from the burning bush he said i am the god of abraham of isaac and of jacob he's a god of the present and in the present all are living and uh they're lifted out of time that's why he says jesus you are quite wrong it's a wonderful statement that in his teaching in the temple in those last days of his asthmy life well now there is a a great date to remember today because on the 28th of august in the year 430 sint augustine the bishop of hippo regius in new media which is was then roman north africa but is now the area of algeria sint augustine of hippo died and he died at a time when world history looked very fragile in so far as the civilization that the peoples around him had known and had been looking fragile for some years before his death and yet in remembering augustine on this day because he is the person in our calendar who is remembered on this 28th of of august she was born on the 13th of november and we know a great deal about him because of course as i said yesterday when we were remembering his christian mother monica who was praying and praying for his conversion to christianity his mother when she died caused him to begin to reflect and write his confessions which probably formed the most important uh most popular part of his writings so augustine was a famous teacher he was of the west he never mastered greek but his latin was was absolutely impeccable and the way in which he spoke and used images and pictures to illustrate the gospels metaphors and similes all of that we know this because 500 of his sermons are still with us they've survived all the way through and that is actually quite remarkable with what was happening at the time in the civilization to which he belonged but i want to go back to his early life for in his early life he was a a young man of enormous intelligence and left to go to rome and then on to milan where the imperial court was and where he met ambrose bishop of milan but meanwhile he was living a life in in his spirituality which which held to the the manikin and then neo-platonist school of thinking and in his physical life he he um was within a relationship with a a young woman from carthage whom his father patricia's massively had disapproved of he wanted an heiress of the right sort but augustine was struggling with physical temptations and even a son was born to him from this not a marriage at all but but this relationship and all of that we know from augustine's confessions about what went on but augustine never ceased to have problems with his own physicality shall we say and that's a strong line in that augustine's teaching and and the way in which he sets out his conversion his conversion came probably as you know where he listens to a child playing a game where the um the the refrain is take it and read it take it and read it and he lifted up the book and read from the epistle to the romans chapter 13 verses 13 and 14 and at that point he decides that enough is enough and a change must take place and it's ambrose as well as monica but mostly ambrose who helps him towards the life he will lead now there are all sorts of question marks about what happened to the people that he was shall we almost say using in the life before to and he himself would say satisfy the needs of his own physicality but at the same time ambrose baptizes not only augustine but also his son adeodatas which means a gift from god at the same time the son was not destined to live very long but by then he was a lad in his early teenage years and as clever as augustine but um born completely out of wedlock and and and augustine had to embrace all of that in himself it would take the whole day to go into augustine's teaching because so much of what he he wrote survives but confessions in terms of his intimate personal life like the story that we've just read are so attractive and that's how we tend to know him and i've i've got here my little traveling office book when i'm going on a journey where i hardly want to take anything at all and it's been a great companion to me because it doesn't need a bible it's got the little bits put out for every day of the week and everything else but in it there are certain things that i've written down to remind me but they're in my head already that shall we say grab bag knapsack kit bag whatever you call it uh when i've said learn a phrase learn a verse and keep that there for when you've got no books and i've i've written in certain things of the confessions but first and foremost i wanted to say that augustine in a very powerful passage in his confessions says that he took up the gospel of saint john and he began to read in the beginning was the word and the word was with god and the word was got it all of those things he said in a shadowy way he'd seen in other teaching but when he came to the words and the word was made flesh and dwelt among us that was what clinched it and really to embrace that physicality was something that jesus came to do to live our human life and make us know that our bodies are as holy as our minds and our spirit and are as ready to receive forgiveness and grace because the totality of our humanity is lived out in flesh and blood one remembers augustine's famous saying and i've written it down here in latin but what it means is just a phrase lord give me continence and chastity but not yet that was said in his young days and then afterwards he writes of how that development takes place but the sentence that i i love most of all from the confessions is for it is one thing to see the land of peace from a wooded ridge and another to tread the road that leads to it and the road that leads to it is the journey of our pilgrimage but occasionally like isaac in the field seeing his destiny coming towards him as he'd gone out in the evening to meditate like isaac sometimes we get glimpses of that land of peace to which we're traveling but the road then goes on into a harder place and the other words that i absolutely love which are written around the the the labyrinth at uh i think in in um in los angeles it uh no sorry san francisco in the in grace cathedral in san francisco which is a copy of the labyrinth sharp and they are salvita ambulando you solve it by walking it it's no good just dreaming about it you solve it by walking it it's one thing to see the land of peace from a wooded ridge and another to tread the road that leads to it so many things of augustine this morning there are some other dates actually which are fun dates but this is enough and uh in i'll just do one or two of them because they're rather good 1981 the for the third time in 10 days the world record for the one mile run was broken it had been broken steve ovitz record had been broken on the 19th of august in 1981 by sebastian coe on the 26th of august steve ovitt won it back and on the 28th of august sebastian co won it again each one competing against the other on what must have been a very hard athletic road but it reminds us that this is when the paralympics are going on and that kind of world activity in tokyo is something we give thanks for 1988 if one wants to talk about striving kylie minogue set a new united kingdom record when her debut album kylie became the biggest selling album by a woman in the united kingdom and she's a very popular character indeed and then in 2004 kelly holmes who has great connections here won the olympic gold in athens winning the 1500 meters and all of those things we remember as parts of physical human endeavor and creativity let's say our prayers on this particular morning we are praying today in the anglican diocese i'm sorry in the anglican communion for the diocese of ekiti in the church of nigeria in the ondo province and here in the diocese of canterbury for justin our archbishop rose bishop of dover tim bishop at lambeth and today for the parish of saint martins in maidstone and the life of that parish so we give thanks for those areas of ministry bring your own prayers as we say the collect for this day when we remember sint augustin merciful lord who turned augustine from his sins to be a faithful bishop and teacher grant that we may follow him in penitence and discipline till our restless hearts find their rest in you through jesus christ our lord amen the moment of silence will follow the saying of our prayer which our savior taught us in whatever language you like to use 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 let's reflect for a moment with our own prayers oh the peace of god which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in the knowledge and love of god and if his son jesus christ our lord 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 now and always amen it does it's good to remember that augustine was living at a time when the city of rome had been sacked by uh the the visigoths and uh then his own city hippo as he was dying was besieged by vandals and would be burned a few days later his library was preserved but at the same time there's a little um as we sit within these walls of defense but there's a little story of augustine which i was reminded of when yesterday a member of our garden congregation who was traveling through canterbury uh from northumbria brought me a bag of shells from the beach where she walks to reflect to put in our own area of the garden which we've used as a beach from time to time and i i thought this morning now why is augustine linked with a shell because it's one of the symbols and there is a story which was handed on and printed by william caxton the printer of augustine walking on the beach one day and he was musing on his very very uh scholarly treaties on the holy trinity and was wrestling with this concept and how to put it into words and he came across a child with a very large shell who had dug a hole in the beach and was trotting backwards and forwards to the sea and coming back with the shell and pouring the water into the hole and then trotting back to the sea and augustine said what are you doing and he looked in wonder as if why should you even question it i'm putting the sea into my hole and augustine said but that's impossible and the boy looked at him and then trotted back to the sea and got more water in the shell and poured it into the and augustine was suddenly struck by the way in which he was trying to do the same with the greatest mystery in the best sense of the word that we are safe to share the mystery of the holy trinity of god father son and holy spirit creator and redeemer and giver of all life and trying to put that in human words or a human mind was as ridiculous as the child um pouring water into the hole and yet one could not stop doing it so that's why the shell so clemmy and and winnie sorry i've been talking here and you've been munching away with a different kind of nourishment and it's really good to see you here this morning behind the walls of defense of this city which have stood for so many thousand years bye