good morning and welcome to the orchard of the dinery garden on this tuesday the 25th of may it's a moist morning no rain falling at the moment though we've had extraordinary weather recently with maybe an hour of beautiful warm sunshine and then very dark clouds and torrential rain for the next hour and a half and so on in intervals throughout the day but it's really done wonders for growth in the garden it's much cooler at this time of year than normal here in england but be welcome amongst the wild flowers you're looking at beautiful blue cornflowers but it really is the season for wild flowers the buttercups and the bugloss are showing themselves here and around me as you'll see from where i'm sitting i'm surrounded by a sea of cow parsley umbiliferous flowers which are wonderful for big pollinators like the larger bees and butterflies but also they are most attractive flowers and in our part of the country the west country they were always known as queen anne's lace and a sign of this time of the year i can see also from here aquilegia flowering which we used to call granny bonnets and all these flowers showing that the spring is well advanced now and moving towards summer we've come together to say our prayers on this day which is very special in all sorts of ways but let's name two of them first of all it's the feast day of saint oldhelm of sherban the apostle of wessex the west of england and old town was educated here in canterbury and then went back to the abbot of malmsbury the benedictine abbey we'll talk about him in our reflection because we have things to say about milesbury which are connected with the garden too but also this is the day when the church's calendar remembers the writings and and person of the venerable bead the great historian of the anglo-saxon church the english church at that time and that's well before all the beckett stories so again we'll reflect on him and we'll have other people to give thanks for but let's begin to say our prayers as you and i bring special prayers today of our concerns wherever we are in the world o lord open our lips and our mouth shall proclaim your praise may christ the true the only light banish all darkness from our hearts and minds 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 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 amen our psalm on this 25th morning of the month is a section of psalm 119 the longest of all sounds but divided into sections of eight verses each and we this morning are reading from verse 33 to 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 so we turn to our regular reading of the gospel of saint matthew and yesterday we finished chapter 11 with the lovely sentences from jesus take my yoke upon you and learn from me for i am gentle and lowly in heart and you will find rest for your souls for my yoke is easy and my burden is light and today we begin chapter 12 and we are given instantly a scene out in the open air with jesus and his disciples at that time jesus went through the cornfields on the sabbath his disciples were hungry and they began to pluck ears of corn and to eat but when the pharisees saw it they said to him look your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do on the sabbath jesus said to them have you not read what david did when he was hungry and those who were with him how he entered the house of god and at the bread of the presence which it was not lawful for him to eat nor for those who were with him but only for the priests or have you not read in the law how on the sabbath the priests in the temple profane the sabbath and are guiltless i tell you something greater than the temple is here and if you had known what this means i desire mercy not sacrifice you would not have condemned the guiltless for the son of man is lord of the sabbath this is the first time in matthew's gospel so the atmosphere gets itself up much earlier in st mark's gospel and becomes hostile almost at once in st mark's gospel and jesus is shown on the sabbath healing and in many ways he is attacked for breaking the law this is the first time this has happened with regard to the sabbath in matthew's gospel and we're in chapter 12 but as we've said matthew is ordering things so different atmospheres come together in each section of activity and narrative as opposed to the discourses and here we are having finished the fifth of the discourses and we're into the narrative not the fifth the second of the discourses and and we're into the narrative but matthew is collecting certain things together tomorrow we'll have another story a bit like this but let's look at this one first it is actually a lovely story instantly there's a picture in our minds of jesus and his disciples walking in the cornfields no one would think the plucking of the ears of corn and the eating once the husks had been got rid of by rubbing with your hands the eating of those chewing on them as a snack no one would think that was breaking the law there's a long long permission for gleaning for hungry travelers especially in the book of deuteronomy but jesus doesn't turn to that when they accuse him of breaking the sabbath law he does two things both of which establish his position and both of which matthew is trying to give to us as part of his message about jesus the first of them is the memory of king david david wasn't a priest so he had no exemptions through being a priest but he is seen as the anointed one from whose royal line the new anointed one will come the christ and jesus is connecting himself right back with david and his followers on campaign being hungry and going in to see the priest and asking for food and the priest saying there's no food here except the bread of the presents which had been changed that morning we read from the story i think it's in 1 samuel 21 and as that story is told warm bread would have been put as the bread of the presents and what was given to david and his men was the bread that had been taken off the altar for them to feed on the priest feeds the hungry travelers so we remember that first of all because it's establishing david jesus in david's royal line and matthew finds that massively important and gives us that gift of prophecy being fulfilled in the person of jesus himself so first of all there is that harking back to the fulfillment of law as jesus says don't think i came to abolish the law and the prophets i came to fulfill them and here is the scion of the house of david fulfilling the law and taking bread from the priest we'll say something in a moment about the priest himself but let's look at the other texts that jesus uses this is from the prophet hosea chapter six verse six mercy rather than sacrifice is required by god and that will be the hallmark of all the healing narratives that takes place on the sabbath day god expects us over all else to be merciful and the son of man or the son of david the inference also is lord of the sabbath in that he has come to fulfill the law and establish the ethos and principle behind the law and the prophecies and here's just one aspect of that let's go back to the priest go back to the story in samuel but let's also go to the story in mark and i mentioned the other day um alec graham bishop alec graham who died who first was my tutor in new testament studies and had his greek testament always in his pocket covered in notes and and things and i remember him taking his book his greek text out of his pocket in order to show how mark was the first of the gospels and the others derived from it and one of the clues that he pointed to is just here if you read this story in saint mark's gospel mark tells the story with jesus saying how he entered into the priest's presence when a was the priest well he wasn't if you read 1 samuel 21 you will find that ahimalak was the priest and the bias later in the story is a himalayan son jesus get it wrong or did mark get it wrong that's not what we're there to say though i can absolutely well believe that the human mind of jesus when confronted by so much going on could easily have slipped a name i'm always doing it with you and having to say no i didn't mean that i on the other hand we don't need to know that what we do need to know was that matthew and luke both spotted the mistake and corrected it's highly unlikely that mark having the story there corrected matthew and luke it's the other way around the name is is is rubbed out so that the mistake is not spotted in 1 samuel 21 and that to me is all part of our detective jigsaw puzzle but most of all this morning we give thanks for the enormous picture that we have of jesus and his disciples out in the open air in the cornfields using the bread of the wheat fields which is given by the creator's hands in all the same creative holiness that the bread of the presence was there to show how the lord feeds his people but remember also and this isn't mentioned how when david goes to ahimalak he also asks for something to defend himself because he's on campaign and the himalayas says we we have it here only the sword of goliath and uh that you yourself left here and it's behind the altar and he gives david the sword of goliath as though the weapons of the enemy in holy hands become those weapons like the sword of the spirit and the breastplate and the helmet of salvation all those things that's not mentioned here but for those who knew their scriptures the inference is there the priest gives king david and his royal line both the bread of god's creation and even the weapons of the enemy to use on behalf of the one who has come as the new anointed one of the house of david well all of those things but let's go back to the dates that i said we are celebrating today let's begin with cindy oldhelm of sherban um the apostle of wessex for two reasons i put him first simply because i was the vicar of sherban for part of my ministry and also i come from the west of england and all tell was the apostle of wessex i could use another one also because old town was abbott of mullensbury but he was also a great scholar he learned his scholarship here at sint augustine's abbey from hadrian the companion of theodore of tarsus the archbishop then and then having learned all kinds of lessons in latin and in greek in mathematics in astronomy in in rhetoric all kinds of of lessons in poetry and in song he went back to malmsbury abbey let's just speak about marsberry abbey for a moment because if you know the town of marlonsbury and its abbey only a part of the abbey now remains and that part is very much the parish church of the beautiful town of malmsbury in wiltshire and the only other part that we know being used well is the old bell hotel next door because that was the old monastic guest house and it's still very much a place of hospitality and at this time of year it will be covered in beautiful wisteria it's a beautiful place to stay but we remember the um life of malmsbury abbey and it were helped to remember it because next door abby house which is based on the monastic buildings abbey house is the site of the most beautiful gardens which you can wander in and recapture something of the monastic creativity it is one of those gardens that inspired in so many ways fletcher's imagination for the daenery garden it was the creation of a gardener called ian pollard and he sadly died in 2019 and while he was alive very often fletcher would write to him saying we're doing this uh how do i proceed or something of that kind and get a good response sadly as i say he died but the inspiration of ian is all around us in the gardens here together with maybe four or five other gardens that that we could name but that one very much a prime garden and always a lovely place to visit and thankfully it's been taken over those gardens and abbey house have been taken over by ian's son rufus and so we know that we can still go there and enjoy those gardens where the outline of the great abbey where it was demolished because these gardens are right next door to the abbey which is now the parish church part of the abbey remaining the abbey that was there is is delineated by plants so you feel now i am sitting in the presbytery now i'm sitting at the high altar now i'm going into a transept and it's all plants and beautiful things around you and uh as you go that cruciform shape of the the abbey is is set out there well i could obviously speak a lot about that but let's go on with cinderhelm who then went from uh the uh the abbey uh to be the bishop of cherbin it was a splitting of the diocese of winchester which caused the diocese of sherman to be created and we're talking really about the year 704 a.d and all town the very first bishop of sherman uh he wanted to give up his abasi at malmsbury but the monks loved him so much that in the end he relented and was bishop of charbonne and abbott of mullensbury and it was on a journey back from sherburne to marlinsbury at the village of dalton where there is now sainthold helms well that old town died but what i wanted to say about him was he was a creator of popular songs and in sherman he was remembered for having preached out in the fields but always begun with something funny and amusing or a comic song which he'd written and would gather the people laughing from their ordinary work as he sat on a bridge by the river or some and and and and spoke to them and added at the end something of the gospel some of his works have survived but he's become one of the patron saint of musicians and the patron saint of songwriters so for all those reasons i'm happy to remember old town of sherban the vicarage at sherbet is right over the palace that old home lived in all those years ago in saxon times venerable bead we could say a great deal about but of course we know him from his wonderful writings the ecclesiastical history of the english people and he's known as the father of english history with his shrine at durham cathedral old helm at malmsbury abbey and and uh embiid at durham and we give thanks for the scholarship of both of them and the ministry of both of them on this particular day now the next thing i wanted to speak about was the fact that this is the consecration date of coventry cathedral in 1962 and i wanted to say a word of of congratulations and fervent prayer for john whitcomb the dean of coventry and also his chapter and the people of coventry because that cathedral as you well know was totally destroyed and only the shell remains in the enormous raid which took place almost at the beginning of the second world war and instantly it became a place whose vision was for reconciliation and the cross of nails twisted out of the nails which had fallen from the roof in the blaze which ensued at the blitz has become a sign of reconciliation we find it right across the world archbishop justin wears it as his pectoral cross as he'd been a cannon of coventry cathedral but our friends at berkeley divinity school in yale also the students there are members of that community of reconciliation so prayers this morning for the life of coventry cathedral i remember in 1962 being ushered as a whole school into the school library to watch on television the consecration of the cathedral with archbishop michael ramsey preaching on that day and then lastly this is the day in 1934 when gustav host the composer died and gustaf host for much of his career was the director of music at st paul's girls school in hammersmith but he is best known for having written the suite called the planets seven movements each one named after a planet i remember playing in the school orchestra his brook green suite full of lovely english music redolent of what we're seeing at the moment the green grass and the flowers of this particular part of the world but the planets quite surprisingly for him took all my storm he applied in the first world war for military service and been rejected as being unfit for military service and so he spent his time first of all composing but seeing so many of his friends like george butterworth the composer killed in the trenches and he wrote during those years the planet sweet and then in 1918 he was not really a known composer in any great way then a huge friend of reform williams and all sorts of other composers but not a popular figure in that way but in 1918 he was asked by the ymca to go out to salonika to be the person who would for their music department and with musicians entertain troops waiting for demobilization which was beginning to happen at that time and it said that in mid-september he got this message and then the composer balfour gardner we still think one of his anthems uh the company in him tame lucha santi terminum but for gardner said to him before you go gustaf why don't you have the queen's hall on sunday morning the 29th of september and uh i'll give you the queen's hall orchestra and invite whoever you like and compose and and conduct whatever you like and host and this is described by the conductor adrian boat raced to adrian bolt's house and rushed into adrian boat study and said you've got to conduct for me on and so this happened 250 friends were invited for the premiere of the planet suite and that sweet has never looked back from that day in queens hall on michaelmas day 1918 in 1928 helst came here and we have a photograph of him outside the deanery here with john maysfield because they together created mayfield wrote the words holds the music for the play the coming of christ which was performed at the canterbury festival reawakening the the medieval tradition of plays telling the story of the gospels and and the the scriptures and of course the most famous of those tells the story of the murder of becket that happened a few years later t.s eliot's murder in the cathedral but this is the coming of christ and mayfield and host sitting there at that time but i want to say that of course the planet sweet to us although many of the movements are very well known to us is best known of all because the central part of the jupiter section was taken as a tune that would go to a successful spring rice's him i vow to be my country and we we know that tune very well and that hymn i think contains one of the most beautiful verses in all him lady verse two of that hymn and there's another country i've heard of long ago most dear to them that love her most great to them that know we may not count our armies we may not see her king her fortress is a faithful heart her pride is suffering and soul by soul and silently her shining bounds increase and her ways are ways of gentleness and all her paths are peace how well host's music fits to that beautiful verse soul by soul and silently her shining bounds increase a wonderful image of the kingdom of god and post named the tune facts did after the place he was living in at that time village in essex so let's say our prayers on this particular day and we are praying for the diocese of calgary again in the anglican church of canada rupert's land province of the anglican church of canada we pray for that place now with the diocese we've gone back into general prayers and the title of these is listening and discerning on the way so no villages this morning to pray for but a prayer for the whole diocese for archbishop justin for bishop rose and for bishop tim at lambeth as we say the prayer for this week bring your own intentions god who as at this time taught the hearts of your faithful people by sending to them the light of your holy spirit grant us by the same spirit to have a right judgment in all things and ever more to rejoice in his holy comfort through jesus christ our lord amen so we say each in our own language the prayer that jesus taught us our father who art in heaven hallowed be thy name thy kingdom come thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil for thine is the kingdom the power and the glory forever and ever are men moment of silence now as we say our own prayers on this day [Music] the spirit of truth lead you into all truth give you grace to confess that jesus christ is lord and strengthen you to proclaim the word and works of god 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 foreign [Music] [Music] is [Music] is [Music] is [Music] so [Music] is my gosh [Music] is [Music] so [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] you