good morning and welcome to the teenage garden at canterbury cathedral on this morning of wednesday the 22nd of september as we gather for our morning prayers please feel welcome wherever you are in the world it is the most lovely september morning here there's been a really heavy dew and every um grass blade is covered in in drops of the dew shining in the morning sunshine but even more the flowers behind me here in the herbaceous border are now being visited by butterflies who are spreading their wings after a quite chilly start to a september day get warmth from the wonderful morning sunshine shining onto them and you see them being still at first on all the flowers behind me there's a whole array of michaelmas daisies there's an array of dahlias of of all stromeria and of the great uh leaves of the of the bananas all of these enjoying the sunshine but the butterflies also once they begin to warm up become active and flutter off to seek the flowers of the ginger are attracted by their color their their fragrance and also by the pollen they hold and they are an attraction for many other pollinators the flowers holding themselves there in this autumn sunshine so that all things can progress fruitfully and beautifully at the same time we want to remember right across the world today the people of melbourne in australia and that area of australia following the news of an earthquake there many more details will come in but we hold them in our hearts as we hold so many scenes in our hearts which you will be thinking of across the world so we unite them in our prayers as we begin on this lovely morning oh lord open our lips and our mouth shall proclaim your praise your light springs up for the righteous and all the peoples have seen your glory blessed are you sovereign god king of the nations to you be praise and glory forever from the rising of the sun to its setting your name is proclaimed in all the world as the sun of righteousness dawns in our hearts anoint our lips with the seal of your spirit that we may witness to your gospel and sing your praise in all the earth 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 song this morning on the 22nd morning of the month is the long and very beautiful psalm 107 and it has that recurring chorus let them give thanks to the lord for his goodness and the wonders he does for his children for he has broken the doors of bronze and breaks the bars of iron in pieces or for he satisfies the longing soul and fills the hungry cell with good well i'm going to begin at verse 23 and read through to the end those who go down to the sea and ships and ply their trade in great waters these have seen the works of the lord and his wonders in the deep for at his word the stormy wind arose and lifted up the waves of the sea they were carried up to the heavens and down again to the deep their soul melted away in their peril they reeled and staggered like a drunkard and were at their wits end then they cried to the lord in their trouble and he brought them out of their distress he made the storm be still and the waves of the sea were calmed then were they glad because they were at rest and he brought them to the haven they desired let them give thanks to the lord for his goodness and the wonders he does for his children let them exalt him in the congregation of the people and praise him in the counsel of the elders the lord turns rivers into wilderness and water springs into thirsty ground a fruitful land he makes a salty waste because of the wickedness of those who dwell there he makes the wilderness a pool of water and water springs out of a thirsty land there he settles the hungry and they build a city to dwell in they sow their fields and plant vineyards and bring in a fruitful harvest he blesses them so that they multiply greatly he does not let their herds of cattle decrease he pours contempt on princes and makes them wander in trackless waste they are diminished and brought low through stress of misfortune and sorrow but he raises the poor from their misery and multiplies their families like flocks of sheep the upright will see this and rejoice but all wickedness will shut its mouth whoever is wise will ponder these things and consider the loving kindness of the lord a beautiful song but at the same time there are verses of warning about our care of the planet and i've mentioned before the way in which a fruitful land can be changed by the way in which greed or complete misunderstanding of the way of looking after it takes over in the hearts and minds of humankind and suddenly that which was fruitful is no more there so there is if you like a knapsack verse here a kit bag verse a grab bag verse and i would say it's verse 34 of this psalm 107. a fruitful land he makes a salty waste because of the wickedness of those who dwell there that's too evident in too many areas of the world where beautiful lakes were and now just a desert land through overuse and the wrong kind of attitude towards it but then verse 35 the reverse can happen which is beautiful because our earth has wonderful powers of regeneration he makes the wilderness a pool of water and water springs out of a thirsty land those two verses but all the way through one ends with a couplet which i'm surprised doesn't reappear at the end but we can say it now let them give thanks to the lord for his goodness and the wonders he does for his children let them exalt him in the congregation of the people and praise him in the counsel of the elders so we turn back to our story of joseph in the book of genesis and today i'm going to read the whole of chapter 44. it's 34 verses but it tells so well it's really like reading a a modern novel and uh let's remind ourselves where the brothers are they are with joseph we had an interruption with matthew's day so this is a reminder they are with joseph and they are as the verse says making merry for he's entertaining them well in his own home in egypt but he's also and joseph a man of great wisdom insight and spiritual understanding so that his dreams have rightly prophesied this moment years before when he told them his dreams of the sun and the moon and 11 stars or of the sheaves in the field bowing down before him and here they are bowing down before him and now he's entertaining them because they are his family already he's sent grain home and refused to take payment but as they sit there he still has one last test of the fiber not only of their own characters and of their repentance but also of each one's character then joseph commanded the steward of his house fill the men's sacks with food as much as they can carry put each man's money back in the mouth of his sack and put my cup this silver cup in the mouth of the sack of the youngest with his money for the grain and the steward did as joseph told him as soon as the morning was light the men were sent away with their donkeys they had only gone a short distance from the city and now joseph said to his stewards up now follow after the men and when you overtake them say to them why have you repaid evil for good is it not from this that my lord drinks and by this that he practices divination you have done evil in doing this when the steward overtook them he spoke to them these words they said to him why does my lord speak such words as these far be it from your servants to do such a thing behold the money that we found in the mouth of our sacks we brought back to you from the land of canaan how then could we steal silver or gold from your lord's house whichever of your servants is found with it shall die and we also will be my lord's servants joseph said sorry the steward said let it be as you say he who is found with it shall be my servant and the rest of you shall be innocent each man quickly lowered his sack to the ground and each man opened his sack and he searched beginning with the eldest and ending with the youngest and the silver cup was found in benjamin's sack then the brothers tore their clothes and every man loaded his donkey and all returned to the city when judah and his brothers came to joseph's house he was still there they fell before him on the ground joseph said to them what deed is this that you have done do not know that a man like me can indeed practice divination and judah said what shall we say to my lord what shall we speak or how can we clear ourselves god has found out the guilt of your servants behold we are my lord's servants both we and he also in whose hand the cup has been found but he said far be it from me that i should do so only the man in whose hand the cup was found shall be my servant but as for you go up in peace back to your father then judah went up to joseph and said o my lord please let your servant speak a word in my lord's ears and let not your anger burn against your servant for you are like pharaoh himself my lord asked his servants saying have you a father or a brother and we said to my lord we have a father an old man and a young brother the child of his old age his brother is dead and he alone is left of his mother's children and his father loves him then you said to your servants bring him down to me that i may set my eyes on him we said to my lord the boy cannot leave his father for if he should leave his father his father would die then you said to your servants unless your youngest brother comes down with you you shall not see my face again when we went back to your servants my father we told him the words of my lord and when our father said go again buy us a little food we said we cannot go down if our youngest brother goes with us then we will go down for we cannot see the man's face unless our youngest brother is with us then your servant my father said to us you know that my wife bore me two sons one left me and i said surely he has been torn to pieces and i have never seen him since if you take this one also from me and harm happens to him you will bring down my gray hairs in evil to shayo now therefore as soon as i come to your servant my father and the boy is not with us then as his life is bound up in the boy's life as soon as he sees that the boy is not with us he will die and your servants will bring down the gray hairs of your servant our father with sorrow to sheol for your servants became a pledge of safety for the boy to my father saying if i do not bring him back to you then i shall bear the blame before my father all my life now therefore please let your servant remain instead of the boy as a servant to my lord and let the boy go back with his brothers for how can i go back to my father if the boy is not with me i fear to see the evil that would find my father we leave it there at the end of the chapter for today and we'll take it up again tomorrow what we're seeing is a true test of penitence but a sifting of their own relationships and of their concern for their father of their care of the youngest brother whom they know to be so precious to his father and at the same time the unity with one another this is all very different from what had happened what must be if you count up the years of famine in the years of service that joseph has has given to egypt and the birth of his own two sons manasseh and ephraim and then before that his times when he was serving in potiphar's house serving long enough to be trusted with everything and then betrayed by potiphar's wife's lies and then sent to the prison and serving there and the two years that the butler and the baker of of pharaoh when they were released the butler who was restored to his office the cup bearer restored to his office then at that point he he forgot joseph for two years that must give us about 20 years at least and joseph is remembering back remembering the group of men who were his brothers who treated him like that and were about to kill him but instead at rubin's suggestion threw him into the pit and then in reuben's absence pulled him out of the pit and sold him to the slave traders going down to egypt and took the coat back and ripped it and and uh covered it in animal's blood say that jacob would believe that joseph the one they hated was dead all of that he remembers and hindsight is now causing him to test not his relationship with them because they have no idea at all who this is sitting in front of them instead he's testing their relationships one with another and the truth of what they're saying not about the money and the sack and the silver cup he knows all that is part of his own test what he's testing is the truth of their words about their love for the father the care of the brother and the relationship with one another and this proves a true test and it's interesting to see who steps forward of the brothers it's judah now if you look at the gospel of saint matthew or the gospel of saint luke and look at the genealogies of jesus as that genealogy of as we call it the royal line of david from much much later on history but matthew takes it back and he takes it back to abraham and luke takes it all the way back to adam but both of them knowing from the scriptures that jacob had 12 sons both of them named judah as the one through whom the royal line of david goes through to the anointed one the divine nature made flesh in the person of jesus the anointed one the messiah and here is judah offering himself as a willing sacrifice in place of the youngest of the brothers and also in face of them all and joseph notes that but we note it too that here is judah's first real entry into the story and it's an entry of self-offering and from that self offering eventually the royal line will proceed with judah's own son being the next in the genealogy out of all the children of all those brothers including the children of joseph himself judah's self-offering is part of this one last test and at the moment we're going to leave the story hanging in the balance but you see how the story writer is very modern in the way that that story is told because he keeps picking up the stitches of the knitting to remind us of the story as it goes on unless we've forgotten the details but at the same time savouring the details and we get a real picture of the hospitality of joseph's house of the merrymaking and then suddenly the change of atmosphere and of the brothers having set out with great joy back to their father being stopped by the steward on the way and coming back again all those scenes makes it an intensely enjoyable tale to tell but also it's full of signs and meanings which will reach forward not only through the sacred scriptures of the old covenant but right into the genealogies of the new covenant and the royal line of david and the coming of the anointed one perhaps the other sign to notice is the fact that when they presented the the robe the melee colored coat back to the father they had torn it and covered it in blood and now at the same time when they come to this pitch and they know that it's benjamin who has a silver cup we see their distress in the tearing of their own clothes it was one of those signs and you you'll find that in in moments of of deep distress in language that the tearing of the clothes but it points us in our own new covenant scriptures to think instantly of the seamless robe which the soldiers dice for but they don't tear it at that point so we're going to think of the various dates that attach to september the 22nd and they have a continuity here first and foremost we've got um the death on september the 22nd 2000 2007 of marcel marceau he as most of you will know was a really talented and famous mime artist and so no words are ever used in what he's doing and yet powerfully he tells a story and and involves by his balletic movements other characters which he suddenly becomes probably his most famous character is bip but he becomes if he's telling a story the character's there and at the same time his hands and his face and and his body movements are more interpreted of his his feelings than any words could be it's a different way of telling stories we as human beings often think that words are the only way we can express ourselves but in fact usually if you know someone well the words are very very um irrelevant really to how we know they're feeling and we have so many friends in that way that we think yeah you're you're telling that story in that way but i can see by how you are that uh this is the story you're really trying to tell me and scenes can do the same thing this wall behind me is an absolute um picture of the story of the way the house is built up from roman foundations and there's no tidiness to it it's it's actually showing by different experiences and different uses and patterns in the wall which had been this or that it's showing exactly how the story has built up no words it's just the way in which it's built up and different architects have used bits and pieces but in fact our communities and our lives are built up in that way and we look at those experiences and and carry them forward and we remember sometimes that someone that we know really well is is hurt by a particular kind of thing because of what happened in the past but they didn't want to say it and all those things are too deep for words but we as human beings have gifts of interpretation much deeper than words which often we forget to use or have lost the facility to use because we're so busy and noisy well marcel marceau was very much a person who kept you in silence and in the silence the story was told at a very deep level one of the lessons all our guides and welcomers and stewards have to learn and the the the team of visitor welcomers led by wonderful chris pascal and the work she does is is really second to none but the the training part has to include something which says don't assume that the person entering can speak your language in words and so your body language and your face your actions and gestures must speak of welcome and and then there's time for that the beginning of a tentative conversation of welcome can start and you can see which kind of language is being spoken to you to make people feel an ownership are not only a welcome but a belonging to coming to this holy place we too have been to many sites of interest in the past and i think what stays in our mind was the friendliness of the welcome received that we've been to places of enormous beauty where the language of those standing at the door was anything but welcoming in body language and we've been to other places maybe of less significance where the welcome was so strong that we came up away feeling that we had belonged to that place and loved it for a while the way that we relate to one another has much more to do with body language and expression first of all than with words spoken and marcel marceau gives us all of that but so do so many other things because even people who can speak might not be understood and you have to watch the face of everyone to see that what you're saying is being understood on this day in 1914 september the 22nd a young man called alain fournier was killed in the opening stages of the first world war in france he is well known for having written an iconic book le grammon which many of you will have read it's you will have read it in translation it's a difficult title to to convey the meaning but it has become as iconic to the french nation as so many books are to us it's a story of one person looking back and seeking for an experience they had which is now lost to them and if you haven't read the book then please do because the descriptions are even in translation most beautiful and he died like so many uh young men mostly in the trenches and and in the the first area of the first world war but many citizens in france uh who were killed as the the war progressed he died too young and we remember so many poets and musicians whose promise was never fulfilled well alan funier is one of those but his book causes us to think of the way that we tend to look back and in looking back we we feel a sadness with some sense of loss now the the one that i would really want to to reach for now um is and this is my sister pauline who as you know has passed away um uh her little copy of a shropshire lad by a.e houseman and in it there is a poem that i used to find the most beautiful of all there are many little verses in here i say used to find and i'll explain why i don't anymore at this time she is written in the back in in her own neat handwriting houseman's poem how everyone that thirsteth because that doesn't appear in a shropshire land that's one of the later works but here's the poem i'm thinking of into my heart an air that kills from yon far country blows what are those blue remembered hills what spires what farms are those that is the land of lost content i see it shining plain the happy highways where i went and cannot come again it's utterly beautiful in rhythm and concept but at the same time that first line into my heart an air that kills from yawn far country blows and the reason it's killing in in houseman's poem is because if you go back there now it won't be like that anymore and that step can never be retraced the reason i find it intensely beautiful but view it differently is because i now believe that all those memories that he is conjuring are still kept like a treasure within him in his own life and the going back isn't an expectation to find everything the same of course there will be disappointment but what you remember in those blue remembered hills is what they meant to you how those scenes unfolded and all the people of one's childhood or one period of one's life come back to you and there is a sense of how they have become part of your own story and as one goes forward there's that sense of as we speak morning by morning of the opening brightness of traveling on autumn gives us those feelings of lovely golden sunsets and golden mornings and we think back even the scents of autumn do that for us but the sense of every time of year does that and it's not then a sad thing to look back of course it's a sad thing when we repent of things that we would rather have done differently but even that feeds from the past into our story now and in tension beyond you know that one of my favorite hymns is keebles him new every morning is the love our weakening and uprising proof through sleep and darkness safely brought restored to life and power and thought says one of the verses of that human poem which is not generally used in him itself but it says old friends old scenes will lovelier be if more of heaven in each we see some softening gleam of love and prayer will dawn on every cross and care that verse encapsulates why houseman's verses are no longer sad to me they are beautiful verses but they speak of scenes which are now part of my life and of all the joys that await in the life to which everything we read everything we pray about everything that we do and think together is tending and that makes this very much a journey towards that fed by experiences from the past but with a gift given new every morning and uh there are two other people who were on this day uh um both died on this day september the 22nd one is alfred waterhouse and he was a great architect he died in 1905 and one is ralph adams cram also a great architecture an american arc architect who died on this same day september the 22nd 1942 both of them reached back for inspiration into gothic architecture and were seen as neo-gothic architects in all the magnificent buildings very often college buildings churches buildings of status like museums waterhouse built the national history route the natural history museum in in in london and you can see the influences that have played into that he also built that fantastic town hall in manchester but he he was responsible for many collegiate buildings uh especially in oxford and cambridge but in other places too i'm not going to read a list but he reached back to the gothic and thought that that was an inspiration for going forward and in the same way ralph adams cram did the same thing for many public buildings and religious buildings and collegiate buildings in the united states if i think of of some of them the cathedral church comes at john the divine in new york and even more so the church of st thomas fifth avenue which we know very well and find very beautiful when we go into it here with bertram goodhue uh delivered that from his neo-gothic sense of this is how a place of worship should be the same thing about the chapel and monastery of the society of syndrome the evangelist which again we know very well and i remember being present at its restoration there both of us enjoying the community of that that monastery there in that's in in cambridge in near boston um the military academy the united states military academy at west point it's another case in uh i was going to say in point but i'm making a bad pan there and that you can see in all its beauty across the hudson river as you go up on the train uh from new york to the north uh and maybe i ought to mention princeton because there there is much ralph adams crown architecture and the chapel particularly all saints is suwani now the lists of all these people are amazing and i think that what i'm saying is people reach back to the past for inspiration within their own lives or within their careers and creativity other architects had reached back to the classical past and and it's a very different kind of architecture others have forged a completely new way but normally inspired by footsteps from those other experiences it's the way our humanity works in its creativity but tending each day to wake to new gifts and a sense of using the past and the relationships that we formed and the mistakes we've made to use god's gift to go forward and that going forward in our faith and hope and love is a going forward without end to a greater light where a different kind of companionship which unites past present and future a love that binds all things together awaits us the very word waits means that we are living in time at present i want you to say that there is a a memory from the past attached to this day in canterbury and even more in deal and walmart because on this day in the early morning 8 22 in the morning in 1989 now a huge time bomb which had been planted by the ira exploded at the royal marine school of music which was cited in deal and on the way there to walmart on the coast here not very far away a massive bomb which killed 11 people 10 of them young soldiers 21 people injured but it was an attack on not they were soldiers but they were musicians and they were young bands men and they were also the pride of the community there at deal and so much an integral part of of their life and that moment is remembered by all those who were living here in 1989 and in deal because it tended to tear the heart out of deal uh on that day fletcher remembers being in a tutor group early morning at school when suddenly the explosion took place this is in canterbury not not a deal and he remembers that the windows shook and no one knew what had happened but people soon did because the hospitals around including the kentuckian canterbury hospital here began to receive those who were badly injured and then it was realized how many had died in 1996 the government made a decision to move the um royal um military royal marine school of music to portsmouth and that too was a time of enormous sadness for the people of deal and walmart because those like so many um garrison cities here had been a place which had soldiers living there and and living with them and and growing up with them and now suddenly and it's so all along the the coast here and uh in canterbury itself that that which had been a garrison town is no longer because things are done differently but the effect on communities of which that had been such a part is unquantifiable it's it's uh saying um fletcher was reminding um me of the game of jenga this morning and saying how you build it up and you've got to take a a a brick away so carefully because although it looks as though it's built in a particular way and that maybe one brick isn't very important here and there one the removal of one thing can bring the intricate web of a community's memories present tense and aims for the future tumbling down and the balance has to be so carefully interpreted i think about a a week after the the the the those who survived marched through the town of deal and into warmer and citizens came from everywhere fletcher's parents were among them and saw the band march past and they had left spaces in their march past where one of the people who'd been killed should all at that time injured still should have been and it must have been one of the most touching ceremonies now the bandstand between deal and uh walmart is actually there on walmart green in memory of those who used to play concerts to the people and it's one of our favorite walks and i'd recommend it to anybody who actually um lives near enough here to do that walk because the deal itself and the coastline there is the most wonderful scene of georgian and mixed uh architecture from the past it almost was demolished to make a sort of sun city there and was saved by the work of someone who was the uh cathedral surveyor to the fabric anthony swain who died in 2013. i remember him well he was a fellow freeman of the city of canterbury but his work in getting listing of places of great value protected became crucial when he saw what was being done to the remains of canterbury following the bombing and deal was saved so if you go there go to the end of deal pier and have the most wonderful breakfast and then afterwards you can stand there you can look out to see if you like or you can look back and see a a landscape that jane austen would be proud of because it's all been protected and then walk it's all on the flat back towards steel turn left and walk all the way along past deal castle and walmart castle where the lord warden of the sink ports now have their headquarters and that's a an ancient office held by so many distinguished people in the past and is also a most beautiful garden there too and our old head gardener philip ostenbring is now the head gardener there at walmart so take that walk you can go on to kingstown as well along if you want to go even farther it's all totally flat or if you want to do you can you can bicycle along it quite safely because there is a bicycle track as well all these things to remember as we remember from the past and remember creative and good things as well as real pain which the memory of 1989 on this day evokes in the citizens here who were here at the time let's say our prayers then on this particular day and we are praying this morning for the diocese of fianna ranan tezoa in the province of the indian ocean and we're praying in this diocese for justin our archbishop and the parish of saint michael and all angels marden and nicola harvey the parish priest there and all her ministry and the people that she looks after so bring your own prayers on this day when we've been thinking back in order to go forward and use those prayers of scenes from the past not as scenes of sadness because they're lost forever because deep within us they're not and we can embrace them and take the day forward with the gift of the new day let's say then the collect for today oh lord we beseech you mercifully to hear our prayers the prayers of your people who call upon you and grant that they may both perceive and know what things they ought to do and also may have grace and power faithfully to fulfill them through jesus christ our lord amen let's join together in the prayer our savior 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 amen moment of silence now for your own prayers and concerns [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 foreign [Music] is [Music] oh [Music] r [Music] oh [Music] oh [Applause] r [Music] you