good morning and welcome to the deanery garden at canterbury cathedral on this morning of tuesday the 6th of july we have woken to storm force winds and the trees dancing in the garden with enormously strong winds and there was much rain as well the rain has let up a little bit but because of the noise of the wind and wanting shelter from that we've come into the tomato greenhouse where we tend to grow tomatoes and squashes and cucumbers of that sort you remember it is the turkey greenhouse where nothing was growing in here but at the moment we're in here i certainly wouldn't want to be crossing the english channel today it is that the most rough day and we pray that there won't be too much damage amongst the garden plants and trees and at the same time others have taken shelter lizzie the the uh turkey whom you will well know has decided that this is the place she likes best so she is sitting in the corner behind me here being very content to be by herself darcy and the others are up with russell in the other shed but for the moment and tiger i think will probably come and go for his breakfast it's not a day for anyone to be outside and wherever tide uh anyone taking an umbrella into the precincts today they would take off like mary poppins i think and disappear so um please bring your own prayers and intentions from across the world as we say our prayers on this tuesday morning oh lord open our lips and our mouths shall proclaim your praise reveal among us the light of your presence that we may behold your power and glory blessed are you sovereign god of all to you be praise and glory forever in your tender compassion the dawn from on high has broken upon us dispelling the lingering shadows of night as we look for your coming among us this day 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 does we rejoice in the gift of this new day so may the life of your presence oh god set our hearts on fire with love for you now and forever amen our psalm on this sixth morning of the month is psalm 30 i will exalt you o lord because you have raised me up and have not let my foes triumph over me o lord my god i cried out to you and you have healed me you brought me up o lord from the dead you restored me to life from among those that go down to the pit sing to the lord you servants of his give thanks to his holy name for his wrath endures but the twinkling of an eye his favor for a lifetime heaviness may endure for a night but joy comes in the morning in my prosperity i said i shall never be moved you lord of your goodness have made my hill so strong then you hid your face from me and i was utterly dismayed to you o lord i cried to the lord i made my supplication what prophet is in my blood if i go down to the pit will the dust praise you or declare your faithfulness hear o lord and have mercy upon me o lord be my helper you have turned my mourning into dancing you have put off my sackcloth and girded me with gladness therefore my heart sings to you without ceasing o lord my god i will give you thanks for ever a lovely psalm on this sixth morning of the month psalm sashi but i always think the best verse is verse five his wrath endures but the twinkling of an eye his favor for a lifetime heaviness may endure for a night but joy comes in the morning this was the day in 1932 6th of july when the writer kenneth graham died his years mind we would say and we give thanks most of all for his story the wind in the willows and i mentioned that because if you remember when uh mo and rats have found mel's old home and it's christmas time and they're trying to get some warmth and then suddenly they hear music outside the door and it's the choir of field mice singing a carol and the chorus of that carol is taken from verse five of son satya joy comes in the morning joy shall be yours in the morning and no better time to sing that than on the eve of christmas time but at any time it's a lovely verse and a phrase for the knapsack on this particular morning let's go to saint matthew and continue from where we left off yesterday matthew has chosen during this time between the entry into jerusalem and the beginning of our arlo's passion in these days he's chosen to put a series of parables quite quite long parables and their wonderful parables he's gathered them together some of the parables are special to matthew here's tiger returning out of the wind and uh the and others he has taken from sin mark uh as luke has in certain areas of of his his gospel so we are beginning today if you remember from verse 33 of chapter 21 of matthew's gospel chapter 21 verse 33. you're going to read this or shall i here another parable there was a master of a house who planted a vineyard and put a fence round it and dug a wine press in it and built a tower and leased it to tenants and went into another country when the season for fruit drew near he sent his servants to the tenants to get his fruit and the tenants took his servants and beat one killed another and stoned another again he sent other servants more than at first and they did the same to them finally he sent his son to them saying they will respect my son but when the tenants saw the sun they said to themselves this is the air come let us kill him and have his inheritance and they took him and threw him out of the vineyard and killed him when therefore the owner of the vineyard comes what will he do to those tenants they said to jesus he will put those wretches to a miserable death and let out the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the fruits in their seasons jesus said to them have you never read in the scriptures the stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone this was the lord's doing and it is marvelous in our eyes therefore i tell you the kingdom of god the kingdom of god will be taken away from you and given to our people producing its fruits let me open the door again it's blown out and it's hiding me from fletcher's camera maybe if i put a stone against it that will help matches a lot there we are come back you scared tiger off for the moment it really is very very windy indeed this morning so uh let's continue from where we were jesus said to them have you never read in the scriptures the stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone this was the lord's doing and it is marvelous in our eyes a good image of the stone that i've just set there to keep the door open so that you get the words of life read to you therefore i tell you the kingdom of god will be taken away from you and given to a people producing its fruits and the one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces and when it falls on anyone it will crush them when the chief priests and the pharisees heard his parables they perceived that he was speaking about them and although they were seeking to arrest him they feared the crowds because the crowds held jesus to be a prophet many believe that it was this parable that sealed the fate of jesus in the eyes of the authorities matthew hintz said that when he says they perceived he was speaking about them he's delivered himself into their hands they were in a safe place but they've come to jerusalem he and his disciples and now they're surrounded by danger but let's first think two or three things to think about this before we have our reflection on dates um let's first think how jesus anchors himself not only in prophecy from the psalms but also in an image from the prophet isaiah let's start with the prophecy where psalm 118 the stone that the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone and that's something we've just had an image of how a stone can be a foundation stone and something that opens up the new truth gives us light and at the same time it could be a piece of stone like the one i just used which is of no particular merit used suddenly for a function of keeping the way open between you and me on this morning as we read the gospel together psalm 118 that's in but also psalm 118 is the psalm in verse 25 which in the hebrew bible uses the word hosanna which has been being shouted by the children the crowds in the entry to jerusalem has been a cause of offence to the authorities because of the noise they're making hosanna and we remember perhaps jesus being reminded of that and also of the text the stone that the builders rejected you're rejecting me he's saying to them has become the chief cornerstone and there's a prophecy that he feels is being fulfilled from the psalmist but let's go to the major story for this is the story of the vineyard and this will be helpful for us today here we are not in a vineyard but in the place where tomatoes and squashes grow and everything is set out in order when we come to palm sunday in our lectionary traditionally two lessons are read this is one of them the new testament lesson the old testament lesson is isaiah chapter 5 at the very beginning and if one looks at isaiah chapter 5 you realize let's let's look it up and read it together just the first few verses you realize how very near to what jesus is saying in the parable isaiah's prophecy is and his image is here it is this is isaiah chapter 5 verse 1 and it reads let me sing for my beloved my love song concerning his vineyard my beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill he dug it and cleared it of stones and planted it with choice vines he built a watchtower in the midst of it and hewed out a wine vat in it and he looked for it to yield grapes but it yielded wild grapes and right at the end just verse seven you could read the whole thing really but here's verse seven the vineyard of the lord of hosts is the house of israel and the people of judah are his pleasant planting he looked for justice but behold bloodshed he looked for righteousness but behold a cry how near to this the story is and if we come to the concept of the vineyard not the vine so much as the vineyards the ordering of it everything needed for fertility protection and all the the aspects of should we call it husbandry as it used to be called and i use that because in a moment i'll i'll reference a book which uses it too about the citizens of a particular place this sense of what is needed in planting the spaces needed the ordering of things within this little kingdom this little community not vines but tomatoes but the vineyard is an image of all of that and jesus says what the lord the creator desired when the vineyard was planted and if you start small what he required was the right exercise of the gifts there and the growing of the fruits expected and of course the whole thing is a metaphor for the community in which jesus lives but you can widen it up to any human community or you can widen it up to the whole planet in the sense of fruitfulness proper fruitfulness physical fruitfulness of plants shared one with another the the proper use of the planet to enable all that to happen or you can see it as a spiritual metaphor of what is expected of us from all the good gifts that the creator gives to us and in all that jesus delights in using the vineyard as a good parable and we see it here and rejoice in it so i want to turn to some of the dates because they can help us today and there are interesting dates first and foremost i wanted to wish his holiness the dalai lama a happy 86th birthday he was born on the 6th of july in 1935 above all else he is a teacher and in that she is taught not only those of his own faith and community but many lessons through the world and is much revered for his teaching but as you well know at one stage in 1959 he felt he for his own safety he had to leave his own community and since then as thousands followed him communities of his own faith have been set up and the rhythms of life of his community of faith have found their roots in other places and we remember that now you'll have many many images of the dalai lama because he has become very much a public figure and uh his his exile from tibet in 1959 caused his journeying in the world but also his anchoring himself in a community in a particular place so we pray for him and his community today and give thanks for the spiritual gifts particularly that he has shared across the world my most delightful image of him is in the book seven years in tibet which was written by the austrian mountaineer heinrich hara who was a friend a lifelong friend of the dalai lama hara died in 2006 and a beautiful message went to his widow from the dalai lama saying how much he owed to his friend heinrich hara who though austrian taught him to speak english and to communicate in in that language too and open up a what opened up a wider world for him even at the time of his seclusion now the stone i put in place is not enough i shall go and do it again properly [Music] shows the power of the wind but the stone that the builders rejected has been used again these are good images this morning so hara was mountaineering in the himalayas at in 1939 when war broke out and could not get back from so he went into tibet he had knowledge of tibet already and spent seven years there and there's not only the book about it but there's also that film based on hara's story which brad pitt uh made as he showed the the the way in which heinrich harrah lived at that time and there's the most charming interpretation of the young dalai lama and what he gained from hara it's a film that is based on that story the book is hara's own story of all of that well happy birthday to his holiness the dalai lama but remembering the community the vineyard he set up on the principles that he believes very much are essential for the way of life of a community the rhythms of that life let's go on because on this day in 1535 sir thomas moore was executed because he would not swear an oath of allegiance to or would not admit king henry viii who had been an enormous friend of him and he moore had been lord chancellor of england um he would not admit that king henry was the supreme head of the church of england and so for that he lost his life and as did john fisher the bishop of rochester but we think of moore on this day you know thomas moore is very precious to us in canterbury because his daughter margaret who became margaret roper when moore was executed eventually reclaimed his head from a spike on london bridge set there as an example to the people she brought it tenderly home and put it in to the parish church of st dunstan near their own family home the ropa home there's a plaque on the gauge of the roper house but there's also a very large slab of memorial in st dunstan's church saying beneath here lies the head of sir thomas moore he was canonized as a saint and in fact in the year i i think about the the year 2000 uh pope john paul ii announced that he was to be the patron moore was to be the patron of statesmen and women and politicians well there's a hard task for any saint but politicians are those who order the vineyard of community and i wanted to mention more particularly not only because of that link with canterbury because but because of his little book here's my copy of it in translation he wrote it in latin this is my little copy of utopia utopia the word means and i should be i think pronouncing it utopia otherwise it means something else that the word in greek means no place nowhere ooh and then toffos the greek for a place um but if you say you topia as in eu then you're saying a good place com completely a good play utopia and more at the end of his book makes play on that word utopia utopia what he has described in the book a good place and what he does is imagine a particular island where all of this society which he draws the best kind of society with the principles of allowing space and creativity and every opportunity for fruitfulness amongst the citizens he sets out what his ideal nation would look like and that he wrote in 1516 uh i think of moore at the end with his family uh saying to them when the the last prayers and messages we shall merely meet in heaven what a wonderful thing to think as you're facing death and trying to comfort your family shall merrily meet in heaven and then on the scaffold i die the king's good servant but god's first that will be the principle of his commonwealth so to speak his vineyard so utopia a vineyard and built on principles that thomas moore set down for his society with the rhythms of life and what they should be doing and then if i um um allowed to sort of think around that when i was thinking of that this morning i remembered at the back of my head a book which was written as the archbishop of canterbury's land book i know it was in 1976 because it was the year that i was doing the retreat i was talking about last week where we had to go and watch the wimbledon final in the middle of my my last weekend of taking that retreat as the retreat conductor and at that time john austin baker uh was i think a candidate westminster uh i remember him in in oxford as the cure as the chaplain of corpus christi college giving lectures when he wrote his book the foolishness of god but he he wrote a lent book for the archbishop of canterbury and he may not have moved from oxford then i've not checked at all um and it was called travels in udamovia and as far as i remember but i might get that wrong because i've lost my copy of it long ago it was only a a 70 or 80 page booklet a lend book more than a booklet sorry a lent book but i can't just find it now and uh it's certainly out of print but what he did was imagine a place where all the christian life was based on possessing i think only the gospel of sin mark now in that i might be wrong and i might be remembering a conversation i had with him afterwards where he said just imagine uh what it would be like if you only had the gospel of sin mark what would our worship and what would our interpretation be as a christian church same kind of thing really in in his books that in his uh his travels to udemovia he was thinking how the vineyard was set out in a particular place and why it might be a a good exercise for all of us to think in principle what would be the elements sort of ten elements of what might be in place essential to a good society from the way in our experience things have grown up it might have changed considerably by this pandemic but what would governments allow and what would governments actually prohibit all of those kinds of things totally different in different communities but it's a fascinating kind of exercise because we are saying that humanity has to live in community giving space for each other but a community which allows all kinds of creativity and fruitfulness within the context of the planet the vineyard that the lord god has given us in which to live our life and also not just be aware physically and mentally but also spiritually of the dimensions in spiritual terms of which we are capable and of what we can embrace so that we can confidently say in our prayers we shall merely meet in heaven well lots and lots of of thinking today in our vineyard here and thanksgiving for that wonderful image from the prophet isaiah which our lord interprets right in the middle of all that hostility and the violence around him in that particular society which even in the prophet isaiah was being pointed out as not giving justice and righteousness to those who needed it he looked for justice and behold violence he looked uh for mercy and behold a cry all of this and we want our own communities to be the lord's pleasant planting so let's say our prayers on this particular morning we are praying on this morning for the parish sorry let's do the diocese in the anglican communion first the diocese of cork coin and ross in the church of ireland in the dublin province this time of the church of ireland and then for archbishop dustin and bishop rose of dover bishop tim at lambeth and for the parish of west gate on sea since xavier and for karen gooding in her ministry there and all her people there bring your own prayers and intentions as we say the colic for this week almighty and everlasting god by whose spirit the whole body of the church is governed and sanctified hear our prayer which we offer for all your faithful people that in their vocation and ministry each may serve you in holiness and truth to the glory of your name through our lord and savior jesus christ amen so a moment of silence will follow the saying together of the our father in whichever language and whichever community you're in and whichever way you say it 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 lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil for thine is the kingdom the power and amen so [Music] the stone which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone this is the lord's doing and it is marvellous in our eyes 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