good morning and welcome from the dinery garden we've come into the same area of the gardeners yesterday and you're looking at the great rambling rector which after a night of rain is still looking very very beautiful it was the sign for us yesterday of the mountain of transfiguration and to today we shall be coming down the mountain with jesus and his disciples but first let's just remind ourselves of the glory of that scene which is filling the disciples hearts and minds the three that he took with him up onto the mountain they wanted so much to stay there lord it's good to be here said peter and let's make shelters for you and moses and elijah to be with this glory the whole time but the way forward lay on the plane and so a glimpse of the rambling rector will then take us back down onto the plane and the plane this morning for us is very wet but mercifully after a a classic thunderstorm last night when we went to bed with lightning flashing and thunder crashing and torrential rain the rain settled down to steady rain through the night and into the morning and it's now uh stopping for a bit the sky is very cloudy but we can smell the scent of the earth drinking this in and the fragrance of the philadelphus and the roses around us are part of the pleasure of a morning of rain some of the flowers look a little more bedraggled than yesterday but thank god there was not much wind and so they will recover and more importantly their roots will be given rain and how many times the psalmist mentions the way in which the lord gives different different weather conditions in order that fruitfulness will occur at the right time even our little um meadow orchid which we concentrated on a few days ago is is looking bright and shining this morning after a night of refreshing rain not damaged at all as we came past so let's begin our prayers on this day and be welcome wherever you are bring your own concerns as we start our morning prayers oh 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 creator of all to you be praise and glory forever as your dawn renews the face of the earth bringing light and life to all creatures may we rejoice in this day you have made and as we wake refreshed from the depths of sleep open our eyes to behold your presence and strengthen our hands to do your will that the world may rejoice and give you praise 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 oh god set our hearts on fire with love for you now and forever amen i felt with that introduction today open our eyes to behold your presence wasn't quite enough it's open all our senses to sense your presence in creation because the smell and the sounds of the birds and the physicality of the rain all of those things and almost the the taste of creation today is showing the divine hand and we shall come to a poem a hymn as well at the at the end of our reflection today which speaks just of that but for the moment let's go on to our psalm because this is very much psalmist weather too and we're on psalm 86 on this 17th morning of the month incline your ear o lord and answer me for i am poor and in misery preserve my soul for i am faithful save your servant for i put my trust in you be merciful to me o lord for you are my god i call upon you all the day long gladden the soul of your servant for to you o lord i lift up my soul for you lord are good and forgiving abounding in steadfast love to all who call upon you give ear o lord to my prayer and listen to the voice of my supplication in the day of my distress i will call upon you for you will answer me among the gods there is none like you o lord nor any works like yours all nations you have made shall come and worship you o lord and shall glorify your name for you are great and do wonderful things you alone are god teach me your way o lord and i will walk in your truth knit my heart to you that i may fear your name i will thank you o lord my god with all my heart and glorify your name forevermore for great is your steadfast love towards me for you have delivered my soul from the depths of the grave oh god the proud rise up against me and a ruthless horde seek after my life they have not set you before their eyes but you lord are gracious and full of compassion slow to anger and full of kindness and truth turn to me and have mercy upon me give your strength to your servant and save the child of your handmaid show me a token of your favor that those who hate me may see it and be ashamed because you o lord have helped and comforted me some lovely shall we call them knapsack lines in that psalm teach me your way o lord and i will walk in your truth knit my heart to you that i may fear your name these little things leap out of the psalms but at the same time there are sentences of prophecy today like the rain coming down from above and returning not again but watering the earth giving life to all growing things if we go with the prophecy of isaiah well let's go back to saint matthew for the moment because we've come with jesus down from the mountain and he's not allowing his disciples to stay up there in the glory for his human work is with those who need him most and he with peter and the two sons of zebedee james and john walk down the mountain we're in chapter 17 and i'm starting to read at verse 14 and when they came to the crowd a man came up to jesus and kneeling before him said lord have mercy on my son for he has seizures and suffers terribly for often he falls into the fire and often into the water and i brought him to your disciples and they could not heal him and jesus answered oh faceless and twisted generation how long am i to be with you how long am i to bear with you bring him here to me and jesus rebuked the demon and it came out of him and the boy was healed instantly then the disciples came to jesus privately and said why could we not cast it out he said to them because of your little face for truly i say to you if you have faith like a grain of mustard seed you will say to this mountain move from here to there and it will move and nothing will be impossible for you the sentences are should we say like a parable this mountain here is the one that they've just come down from the tallest mountain that they will ever climb in the most northerly part of their own country up beyond caesarea philippi and they've come back down full of the wonder the three disciples of what they have perceived of the glory of jesus himself having before that at caesarea philippi before they climbed the mountain had peter declared that he is the christ the anointed one and at the same time when jesus explains what that will mean in terms of suffering and eventually the giving up of his life peter remonstrating and saying in a very human way no no no lord that that that won't be so we we tend to do that with suffering situations now i promise that won't be so we've no power to affect the promise but on this occasion it was the temptation as well but jesus then takes those three the advanced mountaineers who climb as far as they're going to go and there on the mountain they perceive wonderful things beyond their human senses and now they're coming down and they're out of the bright cloud but everything is jumbled in their senses in terms of perception and memory and really still wanting to be on the mountaintop but jesus knows they must come down and there's no more touching scene than the one that we've just read if you can read it in uh sin mark's gospel we have it in a different way it's where matthew has got the story from and first of all let's think of the flat land okay we're sitting here in the flat part of the garden and beyond us is the high climbing rambling rector in all its glory with the pure white flowers and their golden centers going right up into the ash tree and the sun was shining through that yesterday now we're on the flat plain and the rain is gently falling around me i'm being sheltered a bit by the air ancestry but we feel ourselves down here amongst the the green grass of the ordinary plane and the lovely thing is that we're given that perception in a wonderful way about human need come on leo come up here here you are um we're given that in a wonderful way because we're seeing the boy and we might say the epileptic boy who has seizures and his father can't trust him to uh really even for now be safe from falling into the fire or into water and he's at his wit's end but that has been increased by the other disciples the nine who've been left below failing to be able to help and jesus first there's a whisper of exasperation again i think it's probably directed at the disciples for things and then after that jesus says bring the boy to me and the father brings the boy to jesus and jesus inquires and the father explains the situation and has said lord help me in this do you remember in sin mark's gospel um he says to the father all things are possible for those who believe and the father looks up at jesus and says i believe help my unbelief that's not paradoxical those things are held in attention within our human frames but the disciples have just reached out to heaven and they're unable to use the gift jesus has now said this gift is for now but with the gift has to be accepted the renouncing of the temptation to think oh this is going to be easy these gifts call from jesus for the limit of his human endurance and beyond the giving up of his life with his arms stretched out on the cross for the needs of the world our human world exemplified so pitifully and graphically this morning by the epileptic child on the ground and the distress of the father who doesn't want to hear about the mountaintop he wants to have some help with the desperate love he feels for his child and jesus answers that all things are possible for those who believe even though the dimension may be beyond in eternity but in these last few verses of saint matthew we've seen both transfiguration and the way forward think of that scene in the pilgrims progress where uh the two pilgrims arrive at the delectable mountains and christian and hopeful are given hospitality by the shepherds in the beauty of the mountain and they share food with the shepherds and at the end they're even given a glimpse of the eternal city which you can get from the delectable mountains that point along the way our human journey where we might perceive with one or all of our senses but not understand the eternal dimensions of which we are capable and then the shepherds say to the pilgrims but your way lies down there and below is the valley of shadow that they have to to cross keeping in their hearts and minds the picture and image that they've been given on the delectable mountains of the eternal city to which their journey tends over the other side of the river all of those things on this day and wonderful things as the refreshing rain falls but i wanted to look just at three people this morning for which this stage was important two of them are composers and one of them a parrot and a hymn writer the first composer is charles francois gunno guno known at in his time uh and he was born on this day in 1818 and died in 1893 but was known as an opera composer and the operas of his which have survived really are faust which was queen victoria's favorite opera and uh romeo and juliet other operas are performed in sung but those two are still in the repertoire but it's not the great operas or his religious works in magnitude that i want to talk about this morning is just one piece how he took the simplest piece of bach which harpsichordius and and uh clavichord players and piano players love to play the first prelude in the well-tempered clavichord volume prelude in c c c major and that num prelude number one which is like a series of arpeggios of notes coming together um guno put a melody over the top and it was the melody of ave maria the prayer and the the uh acclamation of the servant of the lord the handmaid of the lord by the archangel gabriel hail mary full of grace the lord is with you and elizabeth's uh uh greeting of mary blessed are you among women blessed is the fruit of your womb well um the simplest thing i don't know how long it took to compose that melody that went across the top i don't think very long and yet how many times do we hear it sung that beautiful prelude with the bark ground base using the imagination of one in all its simplicity it's the simplest really of the preludes and at the same time over the prelude a simple melody easy to sing and people ask for that version of the ave maria very often to be sung by a solo voice as it's played for them so we give thanks for that simplicity of the very devout catholic uh charles francois at the same time on this day on the 17th of june 1882 igor stravinsky the russian composer was born and he lived on until 1971 but most of his life he was in exile and he left russia found himself through one reason or another living in france for the earlier part of his life and until he was in middle age uh and was in instrumental in in the forming with diagoleth of the ballet house and of course those those great ballet suites uh especially of course the right of spring which is a great hymn of the earth's fertility and human part in it it was really dramatic and almost shocking music at the time quite unlike the the uh comfortable music of of guno but at the same time stravinsky's firebird and petrushka all of those have survived and then later on the opera in english that he wrote which was uh the rake's progress and when that was performed and many of you would have seen it perhaps with uh osborne lancaster the the cartoonist of the daily express later on but but uh osbourne lancaster drew the sets for that and they became very famous indeed but in 1953 when that was being performed it was again a dramatic a dramatic uh kind of of music telling a story and it's telling the story of this wonderful hogarth paintings which are in the sewn museum in london in lincoln's inn fields there and you can see them at any time but you have to get the guide to swing the pictures it tells the story of a young man's disintegration like the prodigal son from a time of affluence to a time through his profligacy of want and need and distress stravinsky uses that stravinsky says that he he lost his firm faith he was russian orthodox of course uh lost his firm faith in his later teenage years but then suddenly at the age of 42 living in nice uh an orthodox priest helped him back in a moment of revelation to firm faith and from then onwards and she ended his life as an american citizen but he was himself a very devout orthodox christian and would pray before every composition and i mean moment of of composing and creativity and pray after a prayer of intention and of thanksgiving for the ability to create and a prayer of having created igor stravinsky shalgunno the uh catholic igor stravinsky a fervent orthodox believer and one of his quotes music praises god it is the church's greatest ornament he felt even after his his health became so bad he couldn't attend services but he felt really near to the divine creator in his composition and down from the glory of the mountain onto the plain the last one is joseph addison and joseph addison died on the 17th of june in 1719 only age 47 but he'd lived a a very full life both as a writer and also as in some measure a statesman he served in parliament he even served as a minister of state at times and was in ireland for a while he was the son of the dean of lich of litchfield and was brought up very much in the cathedral life and and the worship of the church of england and stayed very much with that but addison was a poet of no mean skill and uh he and his friend who was a school boyfriend richard steele and they stayed together for a long time they founded a magazine called the spectator back in their early days now there's no great continuity with the present magazine the spectator but that title was chosen by the present present magazine's uh first editor in the uh 19th century because he respected the work of addison and steele in the early 18th century i'm going to read one of of addison's hymns as a poem because it speaks so well of what we're saying today and i could have read his hymn when all thy mercies oh my god my rising soul surveys transported by the view i'm lost in wonder love and praise because that expresses it well but this one is better because it goes through things in a wonderful way it is a hymn we sing on sundays for creation here it is the spacious firmament on high with all the blue ethereal sky and spangled heavens a shining frame their great original proclaim the unwearied son from day to day does his creator's power display and publishes to every land the works of an almighty hand soon as the evening shades prevail the moon takes up the wondrous tale and nightly to the listening earth repeats the story of her birth whilst all the stars that round her burn and all the planets in their turn confirm the tidings as they roll and spread the truths from pole to pole what though in solemn silence all move round the dark terrestrial ball what though no real voice nor sound amid their radiant orbs be found in reasons here ear they all rejoice and utter force a glorious voice forever singing as they shine the hand that made us is divine the hand that made us is divine the rain's coming on rather hard so i'm going to put the umbrella up at this point and uh then we can continue our prayers here put these books down and get our prayers for the morning and together as the rain falls and i hope you can hear the patterning it on the umbrella because that was the sound that lulled us asleep on the roof of the house and woke us with open bedroom windows with the garden uh this morning smelling and being so wonderful so here uh oops there we are here's the morning prayer list and we're praying in the anglican communion this morning for the diocese of chattisgarh in the united church of north india and in the diocese were asked to pray in every parish for the vulnerable and disabled and those who minister to them we think also of course in our prayers of archbishop dustin pray for bishop rose of dover and pray for bishop tim at lambeth on this day and let's say then the prayer for this particular day in the second week of the second sunday after trinity lord you have taught us that all our doings without love are nothing worse send your holy spirit and pour into our hearts that most excellent gift of love the true bond of peace and of all virtues without which whoever lives is counted dead before you grant this for your only son jesus christ's sake amen so for a moment now let's say our prayers together in silence [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] 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