good morning and welcome to the dinery garden at canterbury cathedral on this very snowy day we've come into the garden to give you a taste of the winter landscape as we say our morning prayers this is a winter storm called darcy rather like our our turkey here in the greenhouse but we've come outside because the snow is quite light at the moment but we're promised heavy snow all day and we've done this partly also as a tease to our friend carys in south wales who last week was complaining that she never seemed to see real snow these days and she was thinking of moving to yorkshire well she could come to kent and i think she'd find some snow by the end of today which would satisfy her so let's say our prayers wherever you are bring your own concerns and your intentions on this day when we as a human race struggle against the pandemic and look out for each other and care for each other bring other concerns too and pray for those whom you love and would pray for o lord open our lips and our mouth shall proclaim your praise may christ the day star dawn in our hearts and triumph over the shades of night 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 creation 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 o god set our hearts on fire with love for you now and forever amen our son on this sunday morning the seventh of the month is psalm 36 sin whispers to the wicked in the depths of their heart there is no fear of god before their eyes they flatter themselves in their own eyes that their abominable sin will not be found out the words of their mouth are unrighteous and full of deceit they have ceased to act wisely and to do good they think out mischief upon their beds and have set themselves in no good way nor do they abhor that which is evil your love o lord reaches to the heavens and your faithfulness to the clouds your righteousness stands like the strong mountains your justice like the great deep you lord shall save both man and beast how precious is your loving mercy o god all mortal flesh shall take refuge under the shadow of your wings they shall be satisfied with the abundance of your house they shall drink from the river of your delights for with you is the well of life and in your light shall we see light o continue your loving kindness to those who know you and your righteousness to those who are true of heart let not the foot of pride come against me nor the hand of the ungodly thrust me away there are they fallen all who work wickedness they are cast down and shall not be able to stand so we turn to sin mark's gospel and we come to the point immediately after the feeding of the 5000 yesterday and the passage begins again with uh mark's word useless immediately we're moving on and here we are at verse 45 of chapter six of st mark's gospel immediately jesus made his disciples get into the boat and go before him to the other side to bethsaida while he dismissed the crowd and after he had taken leave of them he went up on the mountain to pray and when evening came the boat was out on the sea and he was alone on the land and he saw that they were making headway painfully for the wind was against them and about the fourth watch of the night jesus came to them walking on the sea he meant to pass them but when they saw him walking on the sea they thought it was a ghost and cried out for they all saw him and were terrified but immediately he spoke to them and said take heart it is i do not be afraid and he got into the boat with them and the wind ceased and they were utterly astounded for they did not understand about the loaves but their hearts were hardened they did not understand about the loaves there's a puzzle here but the puzzle will have to wait until we get to the second feeding of the 4000 and then perhaps those who yesterday were called apostles and today are called disciples again which is a significant balance for disciples are learners whereas apostles are heralds of the real message sent instead of the one who bears the message but given authority to give the message themselves the apostles returned from their mission we read yesterday and they were thrilled with their success and jesus said probably smiling at their enthusiasm just come apart and rest for a little bit you've deserved it we've all deserved it but of course you remember when they got into the boat and they can't have gone far on the lakeside they landed the other side and found that the crowds had second guessed where they'd be going and ran around in huge numbers and now here we are after the feeding of the 5 000 men you remember in their groups of hundreds and 50s and we said yesterday it was like an army and the next time it will be quite different the next feeding of of the 4000 in the market will be quite different but for the moment jesus is clearly riven inside himself with this question again which came to him first in the desert of what kind of anointed messiah was he to be and the temptation is clearly given to us in exactly the same place in st john's gospel as we shall see when we turn to that in in in lent exactly the same question am i to be a leader of all these people my own people in the way that they're wanting to me me to be in the in saint john's gospel it's made quite clear in chapter six also and it's jesus realized they were coming to seize him to make him king and he went away up into a mountain to hide himself here again he is riven with this this almost this doubt how is it to be and he goes up he sends the the disciples as they're called again because they're just not understanding what's going on they've much to learn they go out onto the lake in the boat to go on to bethsaida which clearly isn't terribly far away and so it's a shoreline that we're talking about all the way and jesus up in the mountains suddenly realizes that his disciples are in great trouble without him and comes down i think that explanations of miracles are fruitless but what they mean is fruitful and i'm seeing all of this as representing the turmoil within jesus himself as to what kind of messiah he is called to be he knows that he's called to bring peace and good news that is the scroll and prophecy of the prophet isaiah that he's felt like a drum beat through him in his own heartbeat as he grows up and then is baptized and comes from the wilderness to give this message to rural galilee and now the disciples are struggling with this struggling to understand and the the image of them on the waters is a a struggle in that way it's a also a metaphor of what jesus is feeling inside himself and he comes down to them and gets into the the the the the the the waters and and begins to to see exactly how they are because he cares for them and so here we are he meant to pass them by but when they saw him walking on the sea they cried out for they all saw him but immediately he spoke to them and said take heart it is i do not be afraid and when he got into the boat with them the wind ceased the turmoil ends but at the same time they have not understood about the loaves the baskets of 12 12 basketfuls of fragments that are given as a sign to the 12 for their own people first but not this is becoming more clear to jesus not as a political king not as a powerful war leader that's not his vocation his vocation is to give good news proclaim release proclaim peace and recreate wholeness in individuals in communities and eventually on a what much wider canvas but that's for the next two chapters and then the puzzle will be revealed let's look at one or two dates today and see that on this day the 7th of february sir thomas more was born he eventually was executed because his conscience could not support what king henry viii was doing and his loyalty to the what he saw the holy catholic church was great and he he said as he was on the scaffold you remember i die the king's good servant but god's first this is the day if we're thinking about challenges that uh in 2005 ellen macarthur became the fastest person to sail solo around the world she soon after became the youngest dame ever created in the royal awards and appointments and then this is the day also when the film uh pinocchio was was released by walt disney and what i always remember about pinocchio is that that lovely song when you wish upon a star makes no difference who you are anything your heart desires will come to you if your heart is in your dream no request is too extreme when you wish upon a star as dreamers do well it's germany cricket's song but uh we remember it for the beautiful tune and also the the lovely words this is a day when the composer and organist william boyce we still sing much of his music and here it played he died in 1779 and also in 2019 the actor albert finney died and the um we remember him i do best as winston churchill in the gathering storm that wonderful portrayal and in 1922 on this day hattie jakes was born well of course she was in so many carry-on films but to me she's the archetypal hospital matron in her black dress and white cap as she goes around with the the surgeon and with the consultants going from bed to bed with the patients we give thanks for all the fun she gave us we need to cheer fletcher up this morning because he's rather disappointed because he watched yesterday the first round of the six nations cup and saw england beaten by scotland and it was made worse by the fact that scotland were actually on that afternoon clearly the better team and so we've got a deal of cheering up to do so i hope the white snow is helping him as he sits behind the camera and then we also think of in 1613 michael romanov became the tsar of russia that dynasty was destined to last over 300 years and in 1913 a great celebration was held in st petersburg and moscow and across russia for the 300th anniversary of the of the dynasty but it was come to a tragic end only how many years later four years later five years later when um the tsar and all his family were brutally murdered at yekaterinburg in fact we we have here as part of our collection in canterbury cathedral the pectoral cross which was given to my uh predecessor hewlett johnson on a visit to russia and it's something that we treasure it was worn by the patriarch at the time who lost his life in the russian revolution so now um i want to go to the the main date that i want to remember today and that is the birth of charles dickens in 1812 he very much connected with kent and gave readings here but you remember we were looking at his tale of two cities a day or two ago and i want to return to that because i see in the way he writes that book all kinds of signs that he gives us which will unfold in the story later but also the way in which the crowd is a character in its own right which can change in a moment and we find that through the gospels those capricious crowds who give admiration or else hostility at a moment's notice and i remember one such sign is in the chapter i've got the book here the chapter which begins is chapter five the wine shop a large cask of wine had been dropped and broken in the street the accident had happened in getting it out of a cart the cask had tumbled out with a run the hoops had burst it lay shattered on the stones just outside the door of the wine shop shattered like a walnut shell i remember how the starving and hungry people raced to soak up the wine with their rags and handkerchiefs and even their headbands so that their faces become covered with the wine and dickens likens that to the way in which later carts will bear people to the guillotine but also the streets of that part of paris in which the wine cask falls and crashes will be covered not in wine but in blood and all the way through he keeps giving us signs but all the way through to love and faithfulness between not only lucy manette and charles dani real marquis de santiago who takes a title hated by her father but unknown that he was the person until he began to love him as his son-in-law and dr manette and lucy's faithfulness to charles is like a thread a golden thread running through but remember there's a chapter where footsteps begin to be heard and then dickens description of the difference of the crowds when they're sharpening their weapons for the attack in blood which is all caused but the paragraph about hunger is one of the most powerful paragraphs in all dickens and you remember how even in the christmas carol dickens gives the warning when the two starving children almost like starving creatures which are held in the cloak of the ghost of christmas and the ghost says beware of these because that will cause danger for humanity and just a bit of it here we are the mill which had worked them down was the mill that grinds young people old the children had ancient faces and grave voices and upon them and upon the grown faces and plowed into every furrow of age and coming up afresh was the sign hunger it was prevalent everywhere hunger was pushed out of the tall houses in the wretched clothing that hung up on poles and lines hunger was patched into them with straw and rag and wooden paper hunger was repeated in every fragment of the small modicum of firewood that the man sawed off hunger stared down from the smokeless chimneys and started up from the filthy street that had no offer among its refuse of anything to eat hunger was the inscription on the baker's shelves written in every small loaf of his scanty stock of bad bread at the sausage shop in every dead dog preparation that was offered for sale hunger rattled its dry bones among the roasting chestnuts in the turn cylinder hunger was shredded into atomies in every farthing porringer of husky chips of potato fried with some reluctant drops of oil and hunger is the warning and that's what makes this probably the book i go to again and again because signs and the activity of the crowd becomes something which almost we grow used to in the gospels themselves we look for them and the disciples are taught to look for them and to use them as opportunities not only for encouragement but of using and sharing our own resources to give comfort and not just the comfort which says god bless you but the comfort which works for the feeding of those who are hungry the release of those who are captive light in the darkness of people who feel themselves shut down or lonely all those things and we give thanks to charles dickens for the way in which he was able to describe things in the way he wrote so let's say our prayers on this snowy morning and we remember on this particular day the parish of uh let me just go over i'm thinking i'm going to be doing hawkhurst but perhaps i'm not i may have brought the wrong list on this this sunday morning so i'm going to catch up tomorrow with the parishes and everything else and uh forgive me for not praying for the the right parish or or the the diocese of the the anglican communion but let's just pray for all those that you are praying for and we of course pray for our archbishop justin and uh also rose bishop of dover tim bishop at lambeth and all whom you have in your hearts and minds in your own communities today it's a new colic today because of course it's a sunday morning and we've come to the second sunday before lent it's drawing very near now almighty god you have created the heavens and the earth and made us in your own image teach us to discern your hand in all your works and your likeness in all your children through jesus christ your son our lord who with you in the holy spirit reigns supreme over all things now and forever amen so we say each in our own language the prayer our lord taught us and taught his disciples too 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 prayers on this snowy morning straight from the benadry city oh you frost and snow praise ye the lord the peace of god which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds and the knowledge and love of god and if 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 pray for today and always amen now if even the warmth of my classic wasn't enough for leo this morning i think we're gonna have to take him inside because the snow is increasing so we look forward to what the garden will look like tomorrow but meanwhile please enjoy your day and keep safe and well