good morning and welcome to the dinery garden in canterbury cathedral as we meet to say our morning prayers on this morning of tuesday the 25th of january it's the feast of the conversion of saint paul and we shall keep that feast with a special lesson this morning we continue of course to pray for the developed situation in burkina faso for the stability and safety of the people there following the military takeover there and also we have in our hearts and minds a situation on the border of ukraine and russia and uh pray for all those with any kind of influence for good and for the welfare of the peoples there at this time leaders with difficult decisions to make but meanwhile we are concentrating on the journey of saint paul to damascus and thinking of what happened on that damascus road so we've come here as a sign of a road leading on with dangers on both sides if i step that way i've got a long fall down into the garden if i step that way over the wall i've an even longer fall down into the city but the road leads on behind me to the gate and then beyond that to the gates of the precincts itself and it's not something that's traveled much and the road at the end the gate at the end here is being restored as you can see but it gives us a flavor of that journey which is being made by simple with companions and the noise of the city and the school and the the cathedral workforce about their work on this tuesday morning is not something that would have been foreign to the road to damascus it would have been a busy road with many many people on it and all kinds of different people traveling it when sin paul who was then known as saul the persecutor of the church made that journey on that day which was to be so significant for the life of the early christian church so let's begin our prayers on this particular day and let's uh bring our concerns from across the world and the folk that we are thinking of and praying for today 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 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 amen our psalm this day this 25th morning of the month is a section of the very long psalm 119 which is cut up into eight verse sections as we say it over an evening and then two days but this morning's psalm begins with verse 33 and goes to verse 40. teach me o lord the way of your statutes and i shall keep it to the end give me understanding and i shall keep your law i shall keep it with my whole heart lead me in the path of your commandments for therein is my delight incline my heart to your testimonies and not to unjust gain turn away my eyes lest they gaze on vanities oh give me life in your ways confirm to your servant your promise which stands for all who fear you turn away the reproach which i dread because your judgments are good behold i long for your commandments in your righteousness give me life it's clear today which lesson we must read though there is a choice of the way the story is told and i'm choosing to read the story as it is found in acts chapter 26 and i'll read that now from verse 1 in chapter 26 up to verse 23. this is the story of paul making his own defense as a prisoner years after the uh damascus road experience and he's making it here not to the hebrew people but to king agrippa and to the roman procurator festus paul is led in before them and he knows that herod agrippa knows full well the roots of judaism and also know something about the followers of the way as christians were then called so paul makes his defense before king agrippa and he's talking all the time about the way now you can have in your mind either the way the real way of the road to damascus and what happened on that uh road on that particular day or you can have in your mind paul's own journey physical mental spiritual all its anxieties and all he has been through as the apostle to the gentiles going on and on and on to the gate which leads eventually to eternal life or on this occasion will eventually end up in rome itself entering the gates of rome itself but for the moment we're not there we are actually in caesarea and being held waiting to be sent to uh to rome so think of this as the damascus road if you like or think of it as paul's journey which has taken him in this lesson which i'm about to read as a prisoner to caesarea for his own safety remember it was not safe to take him to jerusalem he had to be moved from jerusalem and here is festus and king agrippa festus has found him a prisoner there already when he became the procurator and the provincial governor there and uh he is saying to his guests king agrippa and bernice um perhaps you'd like to hear this it's an interesting case and then we can discuss what we do with it so i'm talking from chapter 26 verse 1. so king agrippa said to paul you have permission to speak for yourself then paul stretched out his hand and made his defense i consider myself fortunate that it is before you king agrippa i am going to make my defense today against all the accusations of the jews especially because you are familiar with all the customs and controversies of the jews therefore i beg you to listen to me patiently my manner of life from my youth spent from the beginning among my own nation and in jerusalem is known by all the jews they have known for a long time if they are willing to testify that according to the strictest party of our religion i have lived as a pharisee and now i stand here on trial because of my hope in the promise made by god to our fathers leo go away i'm sorry he's uh he's spying the robin here and he's like lightning so i've asked him to have his own little damascus throat away from temptation and now i stand here on trial because of my hope in the promise made by god to our fathers to which our twelve tribes hope to attain as they earnestly worship night and day and for this hope i am accused by the jews o king why is it thought incredible by any of you that god raises the dead i myself was convinced that i ought to do many things in opposing the name of jesus of nazareth and i did so in jerusalem i not only locked up many of the saints in prison after receiving authority from the chief priests but when they were put to death i cast my vote against them and i punished them often in all the synagogues and tried to make them blaspheme and in raging fury against them i persecuted them even to foreign cities in this connection i journeyed to damascus with the authority and commission of the chief priests at midday o king i saw on the way a light from heaven brighter than the sun that shone around me and those who journeyed with me and when we had all fallen to the ground i heard a voice saying to me in the hebrew language saul saul why are you persecuting me it is hard for you to kick against the gods and i said who are you lord and the lord said i am jesus whom you are persecuting but rise and stand upon your feet for i have appeared to you for this purpose to appoint you as a servant and witness to the things in which you have seen me and to those in which i will appear to you delivering you from your people and from the gentiles to whom i am sending you to open their eyes so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of satan to god that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me therefore o king agrippa i was not disobedient to the heavenly vision but declared first to those in damascus then in jerusalem and throughout all the region of judea and also to the gentiles that they should repent and turn to god performing deeds in keeping with their repentance for this reason the jews seized me in the temple and tried to kill me to this day i have had the help that comes from god and so i stand here testifying both to small and great sayings nothing but what the prophets and moses said would come to pass that the christ must suffer and that by being the first to rise from the dead would proclaim light both to our people and to the gentiles and as he was saying these things in his defense festus said with a loud voice paul you're out of your mind your great learning is driving you out of your mind but paul said i am not out of my mind most excellent festus but i am speaking true and rational words for king agrippa knows about these things and to him i speak boldly for i am persuaded that none of these things has escaped his notice for this has not been done in a corner king agrippa do you believe the prophets i know you do believe and agrippa said to paul in a short time would you persuade me to be a christian and paul said whether short or long i would to god that not only you but also all who hear me this day might become such as i am except for these chains then the king rose and the governor and bernice and those who were sitting with them and when they had withdrawn they said to one another this man is doing nothing to deserve death or imprisonment and king agrippa said to festus this man could have been set free if he had not appealed to caesar the path is already set and paul has set it himself by appealing to the emperor in rome there he has desired to go on so many occasions if you read his letter to the romans it is filled with longing to go there and visit them and he didn't know at the time that he would be taken there in chains and yet his mind and his voice and his spiritual imagination and his vocation are not chained his way will lead him to martyrdom in the city of rome but it will also lead him to the gate to eternal life beyond the gates of rome so from the gate of damascus to making this defense and telling his story and then to the gate of rome itself paul's way will lead with dangers on both sides and in his epistles he tells of all those dangers of the dangers he faced physical dangers shipwrecks all kinds of dangers to his life and limb during those years of his apostleship taking the message of his vision and his faith in the resurrection of jesus christ and also of the good news that was not only for his own people but also for all nations paul the apostle to the gentiles the importance of this story of paul's conversion is underlined by it being told three times in the acts of the apostles we could have read any of those accounts i chose to read the last one and i chose it really because of that phrase which he says to king agrippa i was not disobedient to the heavenly vision now that's that's quite a claim to make therefore king agrippa i was not disobedient to the heavenly vision until then his life had run on well ordered paths as a pharisee and he thought he was doing the lord's work by even witnessing and consenting to the stoning of sin stephen the first christian martyr they laid their coats at the feet of a young man named saul who would become the great apostle to the gentiles saint paul and those stories that he tells are undergirded by this story of that damascus road experience he anchors all on there when in heart mind and his own physicality which was all caught up in that he saw jesus and had the commission given and then the instruction is what to do go into damascus he had to be led in because he was blinded by the light and in total confusion and then the godly man ananias who himself had been and was still a strict jew in the keeping of the law but at the same time had become one of the followers of the way and he goes in and by his comfort paul's sight returns and then when paul says what do i do and ananias said get up be baptized and believe in the name of the lord jesus and paul's journey takes another step now that journey is one of the best attested i don't mean the damascus road of course that's well attested by the three times it's told but it's also mentioned from time to time in saint paul's epistles and those epistles are the earliest books of the new testament so that when one is dealing with things like the epistle to the galatians and in chapter 1 paul writing to the galatians tells his story again refers to all of this that book is probably written in the late 40s a.d so at that time what would one think if one dates the crucifixion round about the year 33 there and here we are in the late 40s 1848 or even the mid 50s easily within the memory there and being written down and so those books have that validity of testimony this is above all else a testimony and the letters of paul the early letters of paul particularly tell that story of testimony white hot we've been saying that story is a wonderful way of con asking someone to understand where you are and illustration and story were the stuff of the teaching of jesus himself but paul grounds himself not only of the story of jesus but the story of his own conversion his own development his own relationships and this becomes very interesting with peter kephas he often calls him and with saint john and also james the just the brother of jesus who became the leader of the church in jerusalem and chaired that council in jerusalem where permission was given to paul and barnabas to go on with their ministry to those who were gentiles all of that opens up and the story has been told in many of our reflections as we've looked at epistles and looked at the acts of the apostles very early on when we became a garden congregation in infancy all of those things we've looked at and held up to the light and developed but it's about nation also of feeding our own journey we think of the companions who went with paul on the road we think of barnabas and the the conflict they had over whether john mark the nephew of barnabas should be taken with them on another journey when he'd failed them on the first and in the end that tension which is so in any white-hot creative work between folks who diverge in the way it should be carried out that that attention became so strong that barnabas the son of encouragement as he was called and paul separated and paul took silas or sylvanus instead and barnabas went with mark and sailed we think to cyprus which was home ground and from then on barnabas disappears from the actual story and paul continues because of the letters that we have of saint paul we think of all those things being set out and those relationships which give us a testimony of the life of the early church at his earliest times and the drama of the journey that paul will make to rome and all that he is able even then to be teaching on the way that the the sadness of his farewell uh at uh at ephesus uh rings in our ears as we think of paul making a journey now to own unknown territory being wrecked on the island of malta and then finally reaching rome by going right up through the way until the gates of rome too many images to think of this morning but i want to concentrate on one actual piece of music at least a work and i was reminded of it last night when at the end of the first even song of sin paul in the cathedral the singing of even song our assistant organist uh jamie rogers began to play but the lord is mindful of his own from mendelssohn's oratorio which in german is called paulus and in english saint paul mendelsohn was inspired first of all by the music of j.s bach and then by the matthew passion which told the story in chorale and recitative and arya and reflection of our lord's own passion the matthew passion and and mendelssohn was a child prodigy i don't want to deal with the the life of mendelssohn this morning because his uh birthday is on february the 3rd so we'll come back to him then when we can think of all kinds of other things like his oratorio elijah but this morning i just want to focus on this paulus which he wrote this saint paul which many consider has music of his finest and goes on with the various uh the various ways that bach can handle themselves for having reintroduced the worker bach in the most wonderful way to the people of berlin and bach st matthew passion had hardly been performed never been performed outside leipzig since bath death and hardly been performed at all and then mendelssohn getting it all together because his aunt and he came from a jewish background had been baptized with his sister fanny uh in their childhood as reformed christians but nevertheless was proud and fond of the jewish roots that he had and his his grandmother gave him a score of barks said matthew passion and it caught fire with him and first of all he wanted to share it to the world the mendelsons were rich and they were there in berlin and so a great uh concert was performed where felix would conduct the st matthew passion with coral resources and orchestral resources and the performance took the world by storm it reintroduced that ultimate great work of passions that's in matthew passion so that people began to take notice and later on mendelssohn uh writing out the organ music of bach and and concentrating on all bach's music but then finding handle and seeing too that there was room for oratorio if i look at paulus st paul and compare it to elijah elijah is really a full oratorio whereas saint paul is more like the matthew passion using him corrals and also using much recitative to tell the story of the life of saint paul and also using reflective arias beautiful arias and reozos as he calls them and cavatinas the music which he allows us to reflect in and that uh that tune that the organist was i think improvising on last night but the lord is mindful of his own comes from that section of the palace of the saint paul where the scene is the stoning of stephen and there's a reflection given afterwards that stephen's death is not in vain but the lord is mindful of his own and that beautiful music we can give you this morning from the organ played by uh jamie rogers in the time of our reflection thinking of that promise and that text but let's just look at the way that mendelssohn shaped his oratorio he had by then travelled uh there was no expense spared really the mendelson family had those resources but at the same time he worked himself to a complete frazzle and as he worked so he was giving of himself in his vocation to give people not only music but the music of others and he lent himself to giving the music of bark giving the music of handel and in performance of his own works which were inspired by all kinds of scenes that he went to but let's concentrate on that performance of saint paul this morning on this feast of the conversion of sinpal see how it shapes itself and how immediately after the first performance which mendelssohn conducted at the lower regis festival in dusseldorf in 1836 he then was performed in england in 1836 in the united states in 1837 it became popular everywhere as i say many think that some of his finest music is in that oratorio should we call it sin paul it starts with an overture and a prelude which gives us time to think of the story we're about to have unfolded then scene one is the stoning of stephen and the story is told and corrals are sung of words that are well known but scriptural texts and passages of narrative from the scripture are there in plenty and it's in that section at number 13 that the piece i was talking about which will be played is is there but the lord is mindful of his own scene two tells the drama of the conversion on the damascus road and the baptism of saul by ananias scene 3 tells the story of the mission of paul and barnabas and in that there's a lovely chorus how lovely are the messengers that bring the gospel of peace in english and that too has become a favorite with choirs and then scene four is the persecution of paul by former fellow believers and there there is a cavatina which again has become a famous solo be thou faithful unto death and i will give you a crown of life this was mendelssohn's vocation to give us his own story as well the oratorio was inspired by his father whom he loved dearly and the roots of all that old testament which belong to his own culture and the psalmidian stories but also the tensions in the life of sin paul which he must have felt as well and so what we are hearing in this is mendelssohn's testimony part of his own way which was fraught with difficulties and fraught with tensions and fought with ill health and dangers scene five gives us the touching farewell of paul from ephesus which we can read and it almost moves on to tears as he says goodbye to those he's loved in ephesus knowing in the holy spirit that you will never see them again and then scenes six taken from church tradition more than from the scriptures for that story is not told in the acts of the apostles the martyrdom of saint paul in rome all of those things remind us how long and torturous was paul's journey how it took many twists and turns and many leaving things which he himself had given his life to and many tears and much suffering and much imprisonment and longing to be with people but much companionship too from those who were faithful who followed him and made sure that he was given everything he could be given in those imprisonments and most of all the ability to write letters to those he loved in the churches that he had formed our earliest account of the christian eucharist is given to us in saint paul's letter to the corinthians and those instructions of how he had received them are there and set down so we have so much to be thankful for in that journey which took off from the damascus road but which had been being prepared in so many incidents many of which paul looked back on with shame with regard to the persecution and death of folk like stephen to which he was consenting we could go on and on and we shall come back to mendelssohn on february the 3rd but we shall be dealing with the effects of this damascus road experience whenever we read the books of the new testament which saul later to become paul wrote himself and left as a gift to the church not just the infant church but the church throughout the ages well let's then see what we're going to pray for today and on this 25th of january we pray for the diocese of kagera in the anglican church of tanzania and pray for the people there pray for justin our archbishop fort rose bishop of dover for emma the bishop at lambeth and on this day within the diocese we pray for the parishes of the thanet deanery that large area of spanish and once again we shall go through those parishes as the week proceeds and the week to follow proceeds but today we pray for the ministry of the area dean in the sanet dinner philip musindi and uh richard brady in in that role as well so let's pray for them on this day and say the particular prayer for the conversion of sin paul which we find in our office book here bring your own prayers your own concerns your own intentions and your own twists and turns of the way and prayer for your own vision and onward uh journey almighty god who calls the light of the gospel to shine throughout the world through the preaching of your servants in paul grant that we who celebrate his wonderful conversion may follow him in bearing witness to your truth through jesus christ our lord amen so we say each in our own language mindful of that worldwide ministry which paul became the gate to an apostle to the gentiles but in the words our savior taught us using our different languages 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 are men so a moment of reflection now as we reflect on paul's way and our own [Music] [Music] christ the son of god perfect in you the image of his glory and gladden your hearts with the good news of his kingdom 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 i'm sorry to have had this to dispense with the services of our stage manager but uh the robin behind this little wallflower bush was he was in great danger of a different kind of martyrdom and so uh i think leo would have been a bit sulky but nevertheless uh that was a necessary act for the the safety of our little friend who was coming down here and i'm sure some breakfast will restore leo's composure he was sitting on this basket which is an easy way of carrying all our stage effects and today it's helped us remember the journeys of saint paul and the small amount of equipment that he needed to take around and be himself preaching the gospel throughout the ancient world