good morning and welcome to the Deery Garden in Canterbury Cathedral and welcome on this the 2nd of November it's a Monday morning but it's also All Souls day or the commemoration of the faithful departed or in Spanish culture covering so much of the world where the language of Spanish is spoken dear de muos The Day of the Dead it's a great Festival Day when people remember those whom they have loved and lost and those who have been influential in their lives in helping them along their human Journey now this also for us this morning is an important day because over the weekend we have received the news in England of another uh total lockdown and so we we we find ourselves from Wednesday evening with churches and the cathedral closed for public worship and the same restrictions that we knew from March onwards and so our patterns of worship will change but we will certainly hold everyone through this and continue very much continue online and see also what we can broadcast from within the cathedral itself for the government regulation needs clarification to today and we'll put out all that online and I can say more about that tomorrow morning and Wednesday morning but uh Coral services and public worship will continue until the end of Wednesday and then Thursday begins a new regime for four weeks and uh that we must be patient with for the sake of the Health and Welfare of all so many of the dates November the 2nd dates from the past I'll I'll come to in uh reflection but it might be good to say that uh in 1936 on this day the BBC initiated TV broadcasting television broadcasting for the first time for very few televisions that existed in those days but how important that has become to our lives and also how important the BBC has become throughout the world as a sign of good broadcasting and we give thanks for that long history from 1936 in television earlier still of course in radio 1924 interesting to think the very first time a crossword puzzle was published in a British newspaper the other things we'll tend to come to as we come to our reflection later let's begin our prayers on this All Souls day oh Lord open our lips and our mouths 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 second morning of the month is Psalm 10 the Psalms for this morning if we read them all 9 10 and 11 speak again and again of how those who de devise Wicked or deceitful schemes get caught in their own trap the mesh of what they're doing in the end why stand so far off oh Lord why hide yourself in time of trouble the wicked in their pride persecute the poor let let them be caught in the schemes they have devised the wicked boast of their heart's desire the Covetous curse and revile the Lord the wicked in their arrogance say God will not avenge it in all their scheming God counts for nothing they are stubborn in all their ways for your judgments are far above out of their sight they scoff at all their adversaries they say in their heart I shall not be shaken no harm shall ever happen to me their mouth is full of cursing deceit and fraud under their tongue lie mischief and wrong they lurk in the outskirts and in dark alleys they murder the innocent their eyes are ever watching for the helpless they lie in wait like a lion in his den they lie in wait to seize the poor they seize the poor when they get them into their net the innocent are broken and humbled before them the helpless fall before their power they say in their heart God is forgotten he hides his face away he will never see it arise oh Lord God and lift up your hand forget not the poor why should the wicked be scornful of God why should they say in their hearts you will not avenge it surely you behold trouble and misery you see it and take it into your own hand the helpless commit themselves to you for you are the helper of the orphan break the power of the wicked and malicious search out their wickedness until you find none the Lord shall reign forever and ever the nation Shall Perish from his land lord you will hear the desire of the poor you will incline your ear to the fullness of their heart to give Justice to the orphan and oppressed so that people are no longer driven in Terror from the land this morning we begin a new book it's a traditional one for this time of year as November takes us through this particular day the commemoration of the faithful departed and on through times of remembrance towards Advent it's the book of the Revelation to John sometimes known as the apocalypse to use the Greek word for Revelation which is the first word of the prologue of the Revelation this morning we're going to read chapter 1 and then we will think about this book which will be our companion through these days of November the revelation of Jesus Christ which God gave him to show to his servants the things that must soon take place he made it known by sending his Angel to his servant John Who Bore witness to the word of God and to the testimony of Jesus Christ even to all that he saw blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy and blessed are those who hear it and who keep what is written in it for the time is near John to the seven churches that are in Asia grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come and from the seven spirits who are before his throne and from Jesus Christ the faithful witness the firstborn of the dead and the ruler of the kings of the earth to his who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood and made us a kingdom priests to his God and Father to him be glory and Dominion forever and ever amen behold he is coming with the clouds and every eye shall see him even those who pierced him and all the tribes of the earth will wail on account of him even so amen I am am the Alpha and the Omega says the Lord God who is and who was and who is to come the Almighty I John your brother and partner in the tribulation and the kingdom and the patient endurance that are in Jesus was on the island called Patmos on account of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus I was in the spirit on the Lord's day and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet saying write what you see in a book and send it to the seven churches to Ephesus and to smrna and to pergamum and to thyra and to Sardis and to Philadelphia and leod deia then I turned to see the voice it was speaking to me and on turning I saw seven golden lampstands and in the midst of the lamp stands one like the son of man clothed with a long robe and with a golden sash around his chest the hairs of his head were white like white wool like snow his eyes were like a flame of fire his feet were like burnished bronze refined in a furnace and his voice was like the sound of many Waters in his right hand he held Seven Stars from his mouth came a sharp two-edged sword and his face was like the sun shining in full strength when I saw him I fell at his feet as though dead but he laid his hand on me saying fear not I am the first and the last and the living one I died and behold I am alive forever more and I have the keys of death and Hades write therefore the things that you have seen those that are and those that are to take place after this as for the mystery of the Seven Stars that you saw in my right hand and the Seven golden lampstands the Seven Stars are the Angels of the seven churches and the Seven lampstands are the seven churches this is a book of pictures and it's in a a long biblical tradition the tradition of the Book of Daniel for example given to encourage people written to encourage people at a time of persecution and terrible crisis and suffering but using the same kinds of pictures we call them apocalyptic pictures pictures of a revelation of Prophecy given to one and then written down you can find the same in Zechariah the prophet and many of the images in that first chapter came from just there there are quotations there are pictures like the seven lampstands and there's also the concept of the seven churches seven in ancient time the perfect number of holess and so those representative churches for we well know that this book When It Was Written probably at the end of the first century or the beginning of the second this book was written at a time not only of persecution but at a time when there were many many more churches than the ones that are listed but this group of churches are listed as though a whole number of seven representing the whole church and here is a message given by someone called John I think it's no good going into long debates about who was the author was it St John the Divine the Apostle of Jesus was it another John you can find all that in many many many books for us we receive the testimony and revelation of the one who names himself John it's quite rare naming yourself names given in the gospels of the writers and certainly in the Epistles no names I John and here he also says where he is on the island of Patmos and also what day of the week it was it was the first day of the week Sunday the Christian day of worship and he was in the spirit and received a dreamlike prophetic Revelation nothing rare in all of that in the writings of the Old Testament and this person writing in Greek is full of images of the Old Testament which he clearly knew as our Lord himself did should we say inside out he is in some way an exile and here too we have to think in which persecution could that have happened but a provincial Governor had the power to Exile someone to an island separate themselves from society but be in that position as Paul was given a measure also of Freedom we used to translate it in from the Latin at school one of pl's letters to the emperor Tran when plini was a provincial governor and he's saying what do I do in cases when Christians are brought in front of me it's an honest question from a provincial Governor because he has a range of options and that letter written in the year 112 shows the power that a provincial Governor has we don't know which provincial Governor sent John our writer to the island of Patmos but we do know there that he received this astonishing vision of encouragement to hold fast because and his images of the power of God and of Jesus Christ and of the son of man are pictures that stay in the mind as a strong Dream Will for us and it's made up of so many components but those pictures are saying most of all there will be fearful persecutions there will be as our lord said wars and rumors of wars and famines and earthquakes this is the course of history but God is over all in all through all who was and who is and who is to come this is the strong message of this book and this is simply the prologue but he says blessed is the one reading it and blessed are those who are hearing it the word on which the arch Deacon of Maidstone preached a sermon yesterday macaros in the Greek because yesterday's lesson was the lesson of the Beatitudes and each beatitude begins with that word marcario blessed those Beatitudes are strange in what they're calling blessed but they are saying that blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness for they shall be filled and blessed are you when you are persecuted all of that is contained in this book with startling and horrific images nowadays we see so many of those in films and science fiction films and good and evil battle in those films so we're not strangers to images of horror and neither were the people reading this they would recognize what kind of literature this was as I said this is a a day when we remember the faithful departed those in our own lives and we also deal with what death means to us and that's very much a a a a a thread in this book that we shall read up to Advent at this time for us of lockdown some people get by death by saying amusing things about it and shrugging their shoulders um if you look at some of the wonderful epitaphs which people have put on their their tombstones to almost cheer people up when they look at them the best one I think is Spike Milligan who has simply on his his headstone I told you I was sick and then there's another which says on a a plain Granite Stone very small I was hoping for a pyramid there's one where the children who knew their mother always gave them fudge when which she had made herself to cheer them up when they were then when they were low simply put K's fudge and the recipe for it on The Headstone and finally one that I find really good Catherine and Sterling Iverson finally found a place to park in Georgetown and all are saying death is nothing at all well we we know that not to be true death is a time of intense grief and intense questioning and also the the various reims and the for requim Will Be Sung here at the requim tonight in the cathedral which will be online for you for V with all its terrifying dier and the drums blasting out the sound Mozart the most correct in its Latin wording and in some ways the most moving in sections which still go straight to the heart and Brahms his German requim how lovely are thy dwellings Brahms using different words but nevertheless all of those composers trying to deal with death I remember a uh a book by uh the Jesuit priest uh Gerard Hughes called the god of surprises many of you may have read it and in that he begins by saying can you begin by writing your own obituary as you would like it to read well it's another way of using death as a focus which is another way of doing it one of the best books on Revelation the revelation of John is by The Scholar Austin Farah and he calls his book a rebirth of images and that's what it is it's using the images of the revelation of the Gospel to reinterpret pictures which are there in the ancient scriptures which would have been part and parcel of our Lord's upbringing and are there for us to read as well well this was a day in 1470 when Edward V who was King just for a moment one of the Two Princes in the tower with his brother Richard the Duke of York who was murdered we know not how the day he was born and in this uh Cathedral there is still in the great window of the north transcept a picture of Edward IV kneeling at his prayers and behind him the one who was to be Edward v as a boy and Richard and the the family going back and the White Queen as she called Edward the fourth's wife and her daughters behind her and the king and queen oddly are reproduced in our Deery hallway here in stained glass from that particular window I'm saying all this because uh in 1951 the detective writer Josephine Tay whose writings I love wrote the the book the daughter of time and her detective inspector Grant unusually spends the whole book lying in a hospital bed but the whole book is a way in which by exploring things in his hospital bed where he's comp confined completely and and made to be confined because of what they're they're doing in the hospital his mind is able to search through a problem and find creativity that book the daughter of time was uh voted in 1990 by the English crime writers association the the best detective novel ever written so if you haven't read it do read it what I'm saying is that our thinking and reflecting quite often never comes to an answer but the pictures we come to make images to be reborn in our head and this is a good day for doing that and throughout the lockdown too our reading and thinking and patient endurance will be something that we need all the spiritual gifts and all the encouragement of each other to go through those days so wherever you are in the world today bring your own concerns and we pray on this eve of the election of a new president for the citizens of the United States of America we continue to pray for those uh suffering from the effects of the earthquake uh in in uh turkey and the the Greek Islands there and those attempting to help them and console those who are grieving and also console those who are frightened so let's say our prayers remembering all of that and as we turn to the places that we would pray for on this day we pray for our neighbor dasis of Rochester here in England for James langa the bishop there and his people and also the dasis of Rochester across the Atlantic in the Episcopal church and Prince Singh the bishop there and his people and the dasis of kushtia in banglades and Samuel sunal manin the primate there and all of his people pray for Justin our Archbishop and for Rose Bishop of DOA for Tim Bishop at lambus and today the Parish of West Scot Westgate on sea St James and for Steven Ray the parish priests there and his people so here is the prayer for this day Eternal God our maker and rer grant us with all the faithful Departed the sure benefits of your son's saving passion and glorious resurrection that in the last day when you gather up all things in Christ we may with them enjoy the fullness of your promises through Jesus Christ Our Lord amen so together we pray in our own language the prayer Our Savior taught us Our Father Who Art in Heaven h 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 our 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 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 amen