good morning and welcome to the dinery garden on this morning of thursday the 3rd of february it's an ordinary working day as we said we've left epiphany behind we've celebrated candle mass and now our eyes are set to look forward to the journey forward and we've come here to a special place in the garden under the yew trees and some of you will remember this from the good friday meditation from last year how we said that at the end of the day in particularly in hot countries people have a place to go and relax under the trees we use this area for our gethsemane as you will probably remember but we're here under the yew trees for a very special reason because today the theme will take us to the rootedness of communities and the trees tend to represent that rootedness that the yew tree very much is something which represents that in england the you the united kingdom itself has the largest collection of ancient trees in the world and is looking to protect the ancient trees rather as ancient monuments are protected for in wales alone there are reckoned to be 15 trees which are over three thousand perhaps five thousand to six thousand years old and the the cultures are marked by the ancient trees in saying this is our place this is our home and although people aren't realizing that in their mind they're realizing it subconsciously and sometimes um it's a yew tree sometimes it's an oak tree there's a wonderful ancient angel oak near charleston in south carolina and that is a point of enormous value to the civilizations there now looking back to others in the past and feeling the same sense of rootedness in spain this kind of tree the carotonia the black bean tree is such a tree and it's invested with the sense of healing and homeless and if the tree is cut down of of damage to that culture in in spain itself but when the romans came to spain as they came here they brought with them the palm tree the big palm trees you see there now and you take it as natural that that's part of spain not at all the romans had brought it there as a sign of home and very often trees are planted as a sign of home and rootedness this is really one of our big themes for today and so we're giving thanks for the ancient trees but we're also giving thanks that this sense of rootedness gives us a a place in the creation and we ourselves live out our lives with all that uh around us and and and so let's let's let the reflection go through today and you'll see how this really fits together uh we're going to be back in 1 samuel 15 but we are on ordinary time as we begin to say our prayers and so let's begin our morning worship on the first ordinary day o lord open our lips and our mouth shall proclaim your praise blessed are you sovereign god creator of all to you be glory and praise forever you founded the earth in the beginning and the heavens are the work of your hands in the fullness of time you made us in your image and in these last days you have spoken to us in your son jesus christ the word made flesh as we rejoice in the gift of your presence among us let the light of your love always shine in our hearts your spirit ever renew our lives and your praises ever be on our lips blessed be god father son and holy spirit blessed be god forever [Applause] the night has passed and the day lies open before us let us pray with one heart and mind does 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 our psalm this morning this third morning of the month is psalm 15 lord who may dwell in your tabernacle who may rest upon your holy hill whoever leads an uncorrupt life and who does the thing that is right who speaks the truth from the heart and bears no deceit on the tongue who does no evil to a friend and pours no scorn on a neighbor in whose sight the wicked are not esteemed but who honors those who fear the lord whoever has sworn to a neighbor and never goes back on that word who does not lend money in hope of gain nor takes a bribe against the innocent whoever does these things shall never fall instruction for life in community that sense of rootedness in community will be one that opens up to us now saul and samuel together have been trying to establish and create a new kingdom but it's not easy and power tensions as we've seen have grown up between king saul the one who sees himself as the one in power in the kingdom i am the king prince jonathan who's impatient of his father's ways but at the same time samuel who is the voice through whom god speaks and soul recognizes that deep in his being but at the same time he is as impatient with that as prince jonathan the young man is with his father's decisions we're in chapter 15 today leo is making a noise because the robin is teasing him from the tree here uh and he's uh not liking it much at the moment but uh leo maybe if we give you some breakfast that might be a good thing shall we hey here you are there we are have some breakfast and then that's right and then maybe the robin won't upset you so much we're in chapter 15 of one samuel and it's a long chapter i'm going to read parts of it but samuel has said to saul that he has been anointed king to do god's will for to this nation the lord is king as the psalms tell them over and over again and samuel gives saul an instruction about his the way in which he must deal with the amalekites it's a fairly brutal chapter but it's not that brutality that i want to talk about it's the way in which the instruction is received saul tempers the instruction of god with his own designs because he thinks altering those plans is sensible and now we take up the story from verse 10 of the um of chapter 15. the word of the lord came to samuel i regret that i have made saul king for he has turned back from following me and has not performed my commandments and samuel was angry and he cried to the lord all night and samuel rose early to meet saul in the morning and it was told to samuel saul came to carmel and behold he set up a monument for himself and turned and passed on and went down to gilgal and samuel came to saul and saul said to him blessed be you to the lord i have performed the commandment of the lord and samuel said to saul stop i will tell you what the lord said to me this night and saul said to samuel speak and samuel said though you are little in your own eyes are you not the head of the tribes of israel the lord anointed you king over israel and the lord sent you on a mission and said go devote to destruction the sinners the amalekites and fight against them until they are consumed why then did you not obey the voice of the lord why did you pounce on the spoil and do what was evil in the sight of the lord and saul said to samuel i have obeyed the voice of the lord i have gone on the mission on which the lord sent me i have brought agag the king of amalek and i have devoted the amalekites to destruction but the people took of the spoil sheep and oxen the best of the things devoted to destruction to sacrifice to the lord your god in gilgal and samuel said has the lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as in obeying the voice of the lord behold to obey is better than sacrifice and to listen than the fat of rams for rebellion is as the sin of divination and presumption is as iniquity and idolatry because you have rejected the word of the lord so he has also rejected you from being king [Applause] saul said to samuel i have sinned for i have transgressed the commandment of the lord and your words because i feared the people and obeyed their voice now therefore please pardon my sin and return with me that i may worship the lord but samuel said to saul i will not return with you for you have rejected the word of the lord and the lord has rejected you from being king over israel as samuel turned to go away saul seized the skirt of samuel's robe and it tore and samuel said to him the lord has torn the kingdom of israel from you this day and has given it to a neighbor of yours who is better than you and samuel went to rama and so went up to his house in gibeah of saul and samuel did not see saul again until the day of his death but samuel grieved over saul and the lord regretted that he had made saul king over israel there seems to be a sort of unfairness in human terms about all of that and yet the command is absolute and the instruction obedience is better than sacrifice let me just say if the sacrifice is one that we're choosing to give this is surely a better sacrifice that i'm giving here than it seems that i'm being called to give by the lord this will this will do better samuel is saying the voice of the lord is paramount and we don't choose what we're called in to to give in self-sacrifice and sacrifice of thanksgivings god chooses the path and we discern it in obedience that seems to be the way in which samuel is giving this instruction though this is a very very long time ago though some of our trees even predate that but in in that way we're getting a theme from this part of the scriptures as saul and samuel and then jonathan attempt to build a nation and sadly the farewell of samuel is final there is a belief in saul's mind that he is doing god's will mixed with his own decisions about what god's will should be and samuel comes back with the fearsome prophetic statement to obey is better than all the sacrifices and burnt offerings a prophetic message and see what happens at the end the kingdom is torn from saul but throughout the prophets if you read isaiah and jeremiah and ezekiel the big prophets and and then to amos and hozier that line of prophecy often the prophets will do something which is symbolic even with their own lives or with an object or a piece of cloth or burying a loincloth so that it goes rotten if you remember the way in which jeremiah deals with things and looking at the the the natural things around but using those human things to say you won't forget this because this is physical see how you have torn a piece from my prophetic mantle and holding it in your hand remember that for the lord has torn the kingdom away from you a fearsome prophetic message but the prophets will never be shy of going and standing in front of kings and declaring the will of the lord think of nathan the prophet with king david in david at the height of his power and nathan the prophet enters and that fearsome uh uh prophetic statement when he's told his story about the little ulam that has been seized by the rich man from the poor man's table and and uh david says uh surely the one who's done this shall die who is this and nathan says it's you thou art the man in the old scriptures you are the man the prophets are not afraid sometimes at the cost of their own life and their popularity but here is a real prophetic statement which is hard for the king to understand and at the same time the piece of cloth in his hand is more dramatic a reminder that the kingdom has been torn from him samuel goes back to rama saul is still the king and will act like the king samuel's role is not finished but as we appear he will never see saul again until the day of saul's death and that will be a very different kind of sighting so let's look at the dates that come up today and as i've said rootedness will be a large concept in that on the 3rd of february 1909 in paris the philosopher simone vale was born she died on the 24th of february in 1943 aged only 34 and as we'll see when we tell her story in a moment she was buried in the cemetery here in ashford not far away from canterbury for life had taken her on to be just there in a sanatorium there in ashford simone vale will be known to many of you a french philosopher a mystic a political activist and from the very first stirrings of her activity and her consummate intellectual activity she wanted to stand beside those whom she felt lacked the freedom to make choices for themselves to have if you like compassion for those most needy and she therefore began she'd been influenced by multitudes of philosophers and thinkers from socrates to aquinas from russo to marx from freud to darwin sacred texts of many faiths later but for the moment she herself was going to devote herself to political action in areas of the world where she felt that people were downtrodden and needed that and so she just ignored the demands of of her own body and placed it in dangerous places in order to show that solidarity with the poor and deprive wherever she went and at first she embraced the concepts of communism and marxism and then by experiencing that and watching that develop within uh russia itself in the soviet union she began to see that this system also bred a new oppression a different kind of elite from the capital instruction but nevertheless an elite of bureaucrats which would ensure that the those who were downtrodden and not cared for were still not free and this was a burden to her she stayed with that in one sense despite those questions because nazism had grown up in germany and in 1933 she's from when hitler took power in 33 she spent her time attempting to help german communist flee hitler's empire of and regime of nazism in 1936 she was found in spain fighting on the side of the republican forces the socialist forces there and as she did that she began to learn many things but what we remember is that she had spiritual experiences which came from her standing beside ordinary people and those experiences became really key to how she then began to think so that the first of those experiences took place in portugal when she was taking a well-earned holiday and that um experience was in 1935 when she saw villagers in an ordinary portuguese village in a religious procession joyfully singing hymns and loving the fact that this was their village this was their culture here were their roots and here were the songs they sang not only for themselves but to their god who had created all this and given them that rootedness and that struck her like a thunderbolt and became the first of three experiences which really shaped her philosophy in a different way in 1937 she found herself in the spring in assisi we've spoken about assisi many times as a holy place the place of saint francis of assisi who himself discovered his vocation there in assisi and she speaks in her journals of the lovely church of san damiano that i've spoken about before where it's thought that near near that church francis looking out composed his canticle of the sun but that wasn't her spiritual experience she went down into the plane i know those of you who know assisi will know that the the church the vast 19th century church of santa maria de liangeli is down there on the plane and compared with the cc itself it's not wrong to say that it's a really ugly building it's huge and you go in there and you're thinking why did i come down from assisi to come here until right in the middle you find totally preserved the tiny church of the porcion killer where francis himself knelt and received his own vocation and as simone there entered that space and found herself in that particular chat the porsche the little portion there then suddenly a different mystic experience of vocation came across her and for the first time she felt compelled to kneel and pray the vast church was as nothing the little church where francis knelt to pray and receive his vocation became the place that she first knelt to pray and the third of her mystic experiences took place the year after she was reading perhaps for the first time george herbert's poem love it's normally called love poem three and i'm going to read it to you there you'll know it well think of her reading this for the first time and think of her desire to stand beside people who needed to be empowered so that they could really value their own communities their own roots and feel a freedom in that and also think of that sense of unworthiness which which dogs us all whenever something is offered which seems too great for us to receive and we try to temper the lord's will with our own wouldn't this be here's the poem you know it very well but i'll read it because this was her third mystical experience love made me welcome yet my soul drew back guilty of dust and sin but quick-eyed love observing me grow slack from my first entrance in drew nearer to me sweetly questioning if i lacked anything a guest i answered worthy to be here love said you shall be he i the unkind ungrateful oh my dear i cannot look on thee love took by hand and smiling did reply who made the eyes but i truth lord but i have marred them let my shame go where it deserve and know you not says love who bore the blame my dear then i will serve you must sit down says love and taste my meat so i did sit and eat and she says of that reading of the poem christ himself came down and took possession of me a powerful statement after those three mystical experiences which took away none of her desire in compassion to stand beside those who needed to be empowered helped given confidence and resources and she drove herself in that remember then that the world war ii began and she found herself in very different places at first in marseille receiving spiritual direction there from a dominican friar but later she found herself in london and there she felt she could help the friends of hers who were suffering so much in occupied france she was in number four carlton gardens of all unlikely places in london which was in those days the headquarters of the free french resistance and early in 1943 when her own physical state was growing weaker and she would be later diagnosed with tuberculosis consumption as it was called in those days she began to write the book probably that she is known best for and that book is called no hassimo in french in english it's been translated as the need for roots and it spoke about the fact that everyone everyone needed those roots and things spoke into her to her spiritual life she wrote that it was fed now by ancient civilizations and the way they were culturally rooted in their own place greece egypt ancient india the beauty of the world the pure and authentic beauty in art and science these things have done as much as the visibly christian ones to deliver me into christ's hands as his captive i think i might even say more well that book was published long hassimo after her death in by then they had moved her to a sanatorium in ashford where she in her sense of standing beside people and she was thinking of those in occupied france whose diet had become very grim indeed in those war days she was thinking of them and refused to eat anything more than she felt they would be eating and yet she needed nourishment and in the end it resulted very sadly in her death now i've told her story sketchily her grave here as i say is in the cemetery in ashford but it is a an amazing pilgrimage and at that point it turns to a sense of everyone needing that rootedness that sense of where they belong and her book which talks about that necessity for humanity to feel rooted in cultural and a spiritual sense to its own environment and expectations of the future that that unrootedness she saw as the bane of 20th century life for so many and her book discusses political cultural and spiritual currents that ought to be nurtured so that people have access to sources of energy which will help them to lead fulfilling joyful and morally good lives and she stresses the spiritual nature of daily work in a community which values it but all those things are fitting into our sense not only of saul and samuel trying to build up a rooted community there and all the tensions that that involves she was no stranger to any of that nor stranger to danger to her own personality but she seemed to care little about that in her desire to hand on the christ she had received so many ways and she still had the sense of being slightly an outsider and a pilgrim wandering in so many places but she's influenced so many sins and we give thanks for that as we remember her on this day of her birth all those years ago i said uh a few um not too long ago a week or two ago when we were looking at mendelssohn's can uh our oratorio st paul that we'd come back to him and we do today not in that length that i've dealt with simone vale because we dealt with him not too long ago but this was a day on which he was born in 1809 and he too died young having driven himself and driven himself to discover his own musical roots by digging up the scores of bach which had been neglected and that his leipzig can a conservator performing them and letting the people for the first time in berlin hear this matthew passion performed and at the same time music poured out of him he traveled widely and got experiences which he would set down always in music as simone vale set down for us in her words which have been published since but with mendelssohn the music was immediate from the age of 16 he was composing wonderful things his string octet which is so beautiful dates from the age of 16 his midsummer night's dream overture for the age of 17 can you believe it but at the same time he was digging into the roots of music of bach and handel and rediscovering schubert as we saw a dare to ago and at the same time giving us in an oratorio the life of sin paul the palace and what i wanted to say was that there are two works right at the end which have remained in massive popularity so often his works are telling the story of what he's doing like his italian symphony or his scottish symphony or the fingal's cave over to all of those things but this is different he composed first of all the most marvelous and very popular still haunting violin concerto in e minor and that was first performed in 1845 when he was 36 and it was written for a friend so often he was responding to the needs of a friend and their qualities and there was the most marvelous violinist who was called ferdinand david and he uh asked for a violin concerto mendelson supplied it and that violin concerto has become one of the repertoire of all famous families and also a very popular work indeed with its haunting melodies and the the beauty of its sounds and then on the 26th of august 1846 he died in 1847 his oratorio elijah was performed which has retained its popularity on and off but it's one of the works that will fill the cathedral if the choral society sing it telling the story of the prophet elijah but once again with the soprano solo and lovely song hear ye israel written for the swedish operatic soprano so famous at his time jenny lind and uh that soldier was was written for her the soprano part but what he was doing was telling the story of prophecy dramatically for mendelssohn had to set down everything in music but physically he'd driven himself too far to give us the roots of music again and show the development and demonstrate it by not only writing things himself which simply poured out of him but at the same time conducting the works of others and writing for the skills and creativity of others to give them a sense of value within their own communities well massive subjects today and we're giving thanks for that sense of obedience is better than sacrifice waiting on god for his invitation to use the gifts he's created within us and not shaping us to think well that must be what he wants it's not sounding like that but i'll shape it obedience is better than sacrifice and with simon unveil and compassion is better than all process and dogma because standing beside someone is the true vocation of the christ and i can't help still coming to that lovely sentence let's find it again properly reading george herbert's poem christ himself came down and took possession of me we see her standing beside the little portuguese procession of villagers rejoicing in their community and singing to their god in procession we see her kneeling in that tiny church of saint francis with the great church outside not important at all but there actually in the same place kneeling to pray for the first time and we see her reading that poem love made me welcome that my soul drew back and after reading it christ himself came down and took possession of me it's a wonderful thought so let's say our prayers on this particular day an ordinary day so the collect is for ordinary time in fact it's labeled uh if you're in daily prayer on page 421 is labeled the fifth sunday before lent ordinary time bring your own prayers as we pray together on this day the third of february we're praying for the diocese of kanyakumari in the united church of south india within our anglican communion praying for justin our archbishop for rose bishop of dover for emma bishop at lambeth and in this diocese of canterbury for the church of all saints westbrook in margate and for dawn watson and her ministry there bring your own prayers and concerns from across the world badly needing our prayers at this time with military tensions and climatic dangers for so many areas of the world almighty god by whose grace alone we are accepted and called to your service strengthen us by your holy spirit and make us worthy of our calling through jesus christ our lord amen so we say the prayer our savior taught us in many languages across the world 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 moment of reflection now on this day when we consider these things of rootedness in our community and in the will of god [Music] my [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] um [Music] so [Music] [Applause] sitting under the yew trees reminds me of the story of uh earlier on in my ministry when i had a church yard in tisbury in wiltshire with a tree a yew tree that david bellamy had estimated to be 2000 maybe 3000 years old and standing beside it one day it was very old and rather hollow i i was approached by a little group of people and the one of the men came up and said uh hello we're from the united states and i said i'm the record tisbury and he said uh say am i uh but in martha's vineyard in massachusetts and so i said i'm just looking at the the yew tree here he said well we have in our church yard a tree that is cut from this one sprigs were brought across and planted there to give a sense of home to those who came from here to martha's vineyard and it's sadly only 300 years old but it's doing well and this tree is the parent so that sense of uh taking trees and things across the world to form another community and then sometimes of course in terms of that happening it's forgotten the the the bean tree here is of uh immense value because it's uh it's a carrot tree and it's carrot in the sense of not the vegetable but uh the way in which gold is weighed because the beans were used as the weight of a piece of gold and and put together so it's a character and then we think also of the palms because the romans planted them as a sign of home but now in in grand houses in mediterranean countries right across people plant palms as a sign of yes they're home now but they're subconsciously relating to the romans who brought them there thinking this reminds us of home it's always good to have things which are there with one's roots but sometimes they are roots which have gone back well before anything we have consciousness of and so we remember that this morning in the great creativity of our god the peace of god which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in the knowledge and love of god and of his son jesus christ our lord and the blessing of god almighty the father the son and the holy spirit be upon you upon those whom you love and those whom you would pray for today and always amen