good morning and welcome to the dinery garden at canterbury cathedral on this morning of friday the 25th of february our prayers from across the world uh are very very much with the people of the ukraine this morning and those in russia near all of the border there the people who live there as they suffer extreme violence and right across the ukraine our hearts bleed and cry out in prayer for them and at the same time we pray for any world leaders who can really affect this this situation in any way at all it's difficult to use words on a morning like this but our faith in the undergirding of everything with prayer and intention remains strong and across the world as one we pray for the safety of those who are there but at the same time we know there's already been much loss of life and there is great fear and people fleeing from their homes and the end of the conflict is is nowhere nowhere near in sight and so this morning we offer up our prayers as a congregation stretched across the globe and beginning our prayers on this friday morning and at the the same time we're continuing our reflections uh and this also is a special date as i said yesterday we are remembering ethelbert the king of kent who welcomed augustine and we've come to this place in the garden because of its historic connections with the palace of king ethelbert and queen berser but i shall speak much more of that when we get to our reflection and come to think about ethelbert and all that went before him and also the heritage he's handed on but for the moment let's begin our prayers o lord open our lips and our mouth shall proclaim your praise hear our voice so lord according to your faithful love according to your judgments give us life blessed are you god of compassion and mercy to you be praise and glory forever in the darkness of our sin your light breaks forth like the dawn and your healing springs up for deliverance as we rejoice in the gift of your saving help sustain us with your bountiful spirit and open our lips to sing your 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 psalm on this 25th morning of the month is a section of psalm 119 i'm reading from verses 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 let's say 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 each of the eight verse sections of psalm 119 seem to teach us very special lessons and notice that first verse teach me o lord the way of your statutes and i shall keep it to the end not i shall keep them to the end the statutes but i shall keep to the way i shall keep it to the end the way of your statutes and how do i sense that way is it with my mind well verse 2 of course speaks of understanding but this is verse 34 the second verse that we read give me understanding mental and i shall keep your law i shall keep it how with my whole heart it's an intuitive and really loving following of the way and how many times do we have to remind ourselves that followers of the way was what christians were first called in the new testament lead me in the path of your commandments the commandments are there as guidance the heart senses which of them need to be used assimilated to follow step by step the way and then all these verses speak about all of that and and to this morning the lord beheld i long for your commandments in your righteousness give me life and that life is life found by the following of the way we're going back now to the second book of samuel which we left off reading yesterday when david had heard of the death of king saul and his beloved friend jonathan and chapter 2 takes up from there after the days of mourning and here we are i'm going to read from verse 1 to verse 7 of chapter 2. after this david inquired of the lord shall i go up into any of the cities of judah and the lord said to him go up david said to which shall i go up and the lord said to hebron so david went up there and his two wives also a hinom of jezreel and abigail the widow of nabal of carmel and david brought up his men who were with him everyone with his household and they lived in the towns of hebron and the men of judah came and there they anointed david king over the house of judah when they told david it was the men of jabesh gilead who buried saul david sent messengers to the men of jabesh gilead and said to them may you be blessed by the lord because you showed this loyalty to saul your lord and buried him now may the lord show steadfast love and faithfulness to you and i will do good to you because you have done this thing now therefore let your hands be strong and be valiant for saul your lord is dead and the house of judah has anointed me king over them at the moment then david is anointed as king simply over the house of judah his own tribe the royal line of judah as it will be um called later the royal line of david the house of judah that's where the seed bed of this sprig of jesse is planted within his own house and when he asks the lord where shall i go so that this will happen though at the moment he's he's hardly knowing quite what will happen and the lord said go to hebron and hebron is about 30 kilometers to the south of jerusalem in the mountains of judah it is now a unesco world heritage site like canterbury it's a holy place for jews for christians for muslims because there in hebron is the cave of the grave of the patriarchs and their wives of abraham of isaac of jacob and also of sarah and rebecca and leia but not of course jacob's wife rachel for she was buried as you will remember in bethlehem the city of david but for the moment this is a stronghold up in the mountains and the men of judah his own tribe come and they anoint david as king over them and for a while david is going to start small with one tribe that's how seedlings begin and there in the protection of that stronghold this begins but for the moment the minute he's told of the faithfulness which we were looking at yesterday of the people of jebus gilead he sends a message to them a message of faithfulness to them in return for their faithfulness to their lord king saul whom who david had always always part mind and so wanted to be loyal to and so desperately wanted reconciliation but here we're seeing qualities of kingship leadership the shepherd king and the one who is reaching out with grace to those who have shown grace david here not lacking in humility and surrounded by his own people very soon in this chapter we we meet those who will be around david remember that abner was the captain of the guard the leading commander-in-chief for saul's army and abner has remained faithful to the armies of saul and the house of saul and the the other 11 tribes at the moment are are gathering around abner so david has his own house of judah around him and also three of his nephews sons of his sister zerowaya and her husband sariah and they are called joab and abhishai and assahel and it's joab who will become eventually important in david's reign as the captain of his armies but in this second chapter as it moves on we meet joab the headstrong joab for the first time who's not above countermounting orders of his king and acting in his own right because david is his uncle but he's also and now they've anointed them david as king he's also his king so all these things at the moment speak about the qualities of leadership and those qualities of leadership and kingship are ones which our lord teaches us in all the gospels to use with humility as a sign of the service and welfare of those over whom one is set but at the same time in the word over is less important that whose welfare the leaders are responsible for it's an apt lesson at the moment as the world's leaders struggle with this huge crisis and it's a crisis that has broken out now in in violence and we are given this morning the symbols of leadership as david's reign begins and as i say it starts small with just his own house of judah this is the day as i said when we started that the calendars of the church remember sint ethelbert of canterbury king ethelbert who was born probably around the year 550 and is marked as having died on the 24th of february yesterday but the church moved his his liturgical calendar to today in our church of england in the roman catholic church and in the church of the eastern orthodox in the episcopal church of the united states he's kept on a different day in may but for the moment we are keeping him today and he's of enormous significance here to us in kent he if we look at the writings of the venerable bead and his ecclesiastical history of the english people ethelbert is a large and important character in that but first of all one might trace his history back a bit this part of kent has or this part of england rather kent has always been very near to the continent just really about 21 miles across the channel to the other side which is nothing at all on a fine day and when the romans came here they landed here in kent and brought their own civilization to a place that was already recognized to be fairly civilized with its own laws its own rules and with the cantiarchy tribe having lived here for thousands and thousands of years before the romans and hence the name canterbury but when the romans arrived they landed at pegwell bay in the same way and came and began to settle here and make fortifications and they made fortifications here in this particular place and there are roman remains amongst is this wall and that goes on with the the fortifications of canterbury here all the way around but in 410 the roman armies left and left the civilization that they had created over those years those really 400 years undefended and of course that meant that others began to invade and at that time king vortigan of britain asked for help and amongst the ones who came to help were taught two mighty men of valor who are known to history as hengist and horsa and both of those names in the old english are names for horses stallion and horse and something about them gave them those names they came themselves probably as jutes from uh the the base of the jutland peninsula and they came with others but they came to fight for warticon and in the end they became so strong that vortigan said okay that's that's enough but they then uh revolted against fortune himself and vortigan was was uh killed around the area of of of wiltshire in in near stonehenge but the others were left and in the end hengist became the first king of kent here and from his line ethelbert by tradition was descended and ethel bert's palace with his and i think i said this yesterday his already christian queen bertha who was the daughter of the king of the franks very powerful kingdom on the other side of the channel and uh she was the daughter of cherubic the first king of the franks and that made a good alliance for ethelbert who was extending his power and taking what uh is called the imperium over other saxon kingdoms too because they asked for his help to defend them against incursions of others but at that time although his queen bertha was a christian ethelbert himself was not yet bertha had brought with her by the the treaty made for her marriage her christian priest and had begun to worship in the old church of sin martin which had been used in roman times by christians here and the christian settlement here and that church was already a christian church with queen bertha worshipping in it the queen would go daily through the gate which was just behind me here in those days through the wall and you can still see the ground level was different in those days it would have been lower and you could see the roman brickwork of the arch that would go through that and the queen would go each morning walking through from the palace and the lines of the palace of ethelbert and bertha are all around us here and the fortifications of course are just here too um and she would walk up to the little church of saint martin now still very much active and a christian church and we always say that the cathedral church of christ in canterbury is the daughter church of that church of saint martin where bertha was worshiping when augustine landed in 597 again in peguel bay and came here bringing the book of the gospels which gregory the great had sent and coming to king ethelbert and he found a ready friend in bertha and was courteously received and ethelbert uh having received augustine augustine began with his monks to worship with bertha to start with but were actually from history shown that ethelbert very quickly himself converted to christianity and was baptized and the tradition is that he was baptized on june the second the day of pentecost in 597 the very year that augustine arrived and there are a multiplicity of windows and and uh paintings showing that and we have a fine window in our chapter house of of ethelbert being baptized by augustine with his queen standing by and then that of course followed that his subjects would also be baptized because he encouraged them to be christian too and gave land for churches in all sorts of places and his next grant of land having given the grant of land for canterbury cathedral here uh he gave a grant of land for our neighboring cathedral of rochester and then eventually gave a grant of land for saint paul's cathedral in london the three cathedrals as um ethelbert donated land for that and so we remember him as a generous benefactor as someone who encouraged his people to be christian and at the same time someone who himself formulated a set of laws really important laws and they were based on what had been the roman law here and also one suspects his newfound christianity which in had been taught the gospels by augustine in his monks would have given certain christian teaching too but kent because of vortigan and hengist and all of that kent had retained more of the roman civilization that was here not too long before than any other part of england and so when one looks at ethelbert's laws and they are now known as the in in a written form the textus refenses and refences is the the latin word for rochester the text of rochester the texas refences which has a document from probably the 11th century in rochester cathedral setting out those laws and they are laws which tend towards the idea of justice but there are also laws which fix penalties for bad behavior and establish rights of property rights and also the rights of a woman who's left as a widow or is is is left by her husband there's a fairness about them and a justice about them and so we give thanks for that really early law of of king ethelbert which was a foundation stone and rather like david you know planting small a foundation stone for the way in which law developed in these islands and uh there is a a lovely uh little film which rochester cathedral our beautiful uh neighbor has has put out and we'll try and put the link on for that today because it's a very interesting story this set of laws which king ethelbert promulgated and the sense that law and order and the welfare of people was absolutely prime in a leader's responsibility an anointed sovereign's responsibility and elected leaders responsibility first and foremost the welfare of people and the service of people and that's what those laws begin to give us this is the foundation stone for later on much later on magna carta and the foundation stone later on much later on for many laws not only here in england but also the american constitution all of that the the the way in which human rights are declared across the world all this coming out rather like the sprig of david blossoms into the royal line of david so this sprig of ethelbert's kingship and leadership blossoms out into systems of law which means justice and welfare from the leaders to the people and for the people themselves rights which they can claim from that set of laws so we do really give huge thanks for the image of ethelbert as a leader and an anointed sovereign as we think of david being anointed just for his own house of judah this morning in our reflection and so a good day to think about the leaders of the world the nations of the world with all their manifold tensions at this time of violence and war which at present seems to be escalating and we can only pray for so let's uh say our own prayers today and just completely preface them once again with prayers for the people of the ukraine and all in danger of their lives at present through violence people fleeing from their homes and people in search of help from others at this time people also who are grieving the those who have already died in this conflict and praying for the repose of the souls of those who have lost their lives so we're also praying today for the diocese of east kerala in the united church of south india praying for justin archbishop of canterbury and for rose bishop of dover and for emma bishop at lambeth and the parishes today of the west bridge deanery villages around bridge and the area dean cathy sigrist in her role as area dean and as always as the days proceed we shall pray for the villages around there by name another beautiful part of kent perhaps one should also say the image of kent uh is the image of the white horse and that probably dates back from those early leaders and king hengist himself and was taken on as the image of kent and it's a stallion hengist means stallion and it's a stallion rearing up and underneath always is the word invicta unconquered well maybe uh we can link that also to uh the rider in the white horse on the white horse in the book of revelation who rides forth as the symbol of our lord's presence and and the the sense of the being the guardian of those values of justice and the welfare of all peoples let's say the the prayer for today and this is the collect we've been using so bring your own prayers your own intentions your own concerns wherever you are in the world 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 and the holy spirit reigns supreme over all things now and forever are men so we pray each in our own language 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 now of reflection on this day uh [Music] is [Music] um is [Music] oh is [Music] is [Music] is [Music] this texas references has given us a chance to think and pray for our friends at rochester cathedral for dean phillip and his wife sujina and also for the chapter of rochester among whom are two of our very dear friends matthew and lizzie rushton matthew was here our presenter for somebody else who is now a cannon presenter at uh rochester cathedral but he and his wife lizzy have been in touch this morning and there at the moment in their house in northumberland i think it beric and uh having a little holiday at present so we wish them well and extend our greetings to them this morning as we pray for our sister cathedral and its community there 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 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 keep on praying through the day for this situation and for the people in ukraine the texas refenses the rochester book belongs to the chapter of rochester cathedral it has a special place in the history of the english-speaking people yet it is relatively unknown a hidden treasure at the time of the conquest the cathedral community here had shrunk to four cannons who were described by archbishop lan frank who visited shortly thereafter as rather dispirited the decision was then taken to refound the community as a benedictine house and as part of that enterprise a huge amount of effort went into building up a library for the cathedral by the time that the texas refenses was copied in the 1120s a library of about 90 books had been assembled most of them were the texts containing the fathers of the church saint augustine ambrose gregory the great those kinds of texts the texas refenses is a little different in that it contains the laws of kent and also copies of documents that describe the establishment of the cathedral at rochester going back to the seventh century the texas refenses is in two sections which at some point were bound together the first section contains the only known copies of 7th century law codes the first codes of english law drawn up under the anglo-saxon king ethelbert of kent the early law codes like ethel bert of kent are straight compensation you're not my front teeth out you pay this you cut my finger off you pay this you rape my serving girl you pay this it's a it's a system of compensation inflexible just a tariff and the brilliant thing about the book is that what you see in the course of the book is the transition of law from primitive compensatory retributive systems to a more flexible system where they are attempting to enact justice in response to the situation so it's an encyclopedia of english law if you like the texas refenses includes the master copy of the coronation charter of henry the first which influenced the wording of the magna carta of 1215 and later the american declaration of independence of 1776 this small book may not look remarkable at first glance but it is of great importance and tells us much about where english laws and language began and how our own present-day thinking is rooted in seventh century kent along with our literature and our language our law and our ideas on freedom our parliamentary system everything they are the things that have gone out across the whole world and that book is the very root of that this makes this book of absolutely supreme importance um i'm biased i know but i'd say that you know you've got doomsday book and you've got shakespeare's first folio there are a few crucial works in the in the history of our civilization in the british isles and this is one of the most important texts that you could possibly uh you could possibly have one of the most interesting questions about the texas offenses is why go to the trouble of making this book i think one of the possible answers to that question is that it's all about trying to express the identity of the community at rochester in a way that looks back to the earliest days of the cathedral now some of that story is told in the texts themselves the the legal texts and the the documents but it's also important to look at the physical artifact of the book the the script that they used in texas refenses is a variation on a book hand that they learned probably from the monks at christchurch in canterbury but that they developed into a style that is known as the rochester prickly style and also in the decoration in the book now it's not a very richly decorated book but there are decorative elements and of these the most striking is the initial letter that begins the cartilage which is a great r constructed of a saint and a dragon making the shape of the r and and and those components the script the decoration and the text all come together to really make a statement about rochester as a distinct community distinct especially from christchurch in canterbury as part of our hidden treasures fresh expressions project the cathedral has commissioned the production of a complete digital reproduction this will enable us to make a virtual version of the textus available to the widest possible audience via the internet allowing scholars and conservators to examine the book in detail not possible with the original i am senior photographer at the center for heritage imaging and collection care based at the university of manchester we provide object-centred digitization and collection care services to ensure the protection of the object is at the heart of the process members of the sheet team travelled to kent to carry out the digitisation the manuscript was transported to the kent history centre so the work could take place in a secure climate-controlled environment due to the age and unique nature of this book it needs to be maintained in consistent temperature and humidity conditions specialist equipment was used to ensure the highest quality images and to support the book throughout the entire process the images will be used for wide variety of purposes including exhibitions digital and paper facsimiles and academic study [Music] [Applause] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] you