uh [Music] [Music] [Music] um [Music] oh [Music] [Music] good morning and welcome to the deanery garden at canterbury cathedral on this sunday morning the 27th of september we've come into the greenhouse for a very specific reason as you'll see later because we're thinking this morning of things lost and found and behind me is an old victorian wall which has been found again as the side of the greenhouse which it always was and we're going to enjoy that this morning with the plants of the greenhouse all around us this is a day when in the dates that we look back on on september the 27th there are many things about battles and sieges william the conquerors set out in 1066 from the river swam this day to conquer england the walls of jerusalem were battered down by the general titus in the seventy the siege of vienna in 1529 when sulaiman the magnificent tried to capture that city which is which was a great symbol of christian europe the home of the holy roman emperor and then in 1936 general franco captured the city of toledo in spain an iconic place and in the middle of all that there are dates about creativity to ellen willmott the gardener who died in 1934 created in her home at wally place the most magnificent and huge garden and it was a place that all kinds of people visited that reminds us that this is the united nations world tourist day and that kind of exploration and discovery we shall think a bit about it our reflection alan gray the composer whose work we still use his magnificat and nunctimitis for double choir in f minor is constantly on the repertoire of the english cathedral still and engelbert humperdinck the not the modern singer but the composer the german composer died in 1921 probably best known now for his opera hansel and gretel and the other night are choristers used as an anthem the prayer he composed for hansel and gretel to say before they went to sleep lost in the woods and invoking the protection of the angels around them but mostly we remember today thomas jahan the priest poet who died in 1674 aged 37. so with that sense of creativity of things captured of battles but at the same time of breaking out of that and being creative in god's world let's say our sunday prayers oh lord open our lips and our mouth shall proclaim your praise visit us with your salvation and sustain us with your gracious spirit oh come let us sing to the lord let us heartily rejoice in the rock of our salvation let us come into his presence with thanksgiving and be glad in him with psalms for the lord is a great god and a great king above all gods come let us worship and bow down and kneel before the lord our maker for he is our god we are the people of his pasture and the sheep of his hand the night has passed and the day lies open before us let us pray with one heart and mind and as we rejoice in the gift of this new day so may the light of your presence oh god set our hearts on fire with love for you now and forever amen this morning the 27th morning of the month gives us five pilgrim psalms but we're going to say psalm 121. i lift up my eyes to the hills from where is my help to come my help comes from the lord the maker of heaven and earth he will not suffer your foot to stumble he who watches over you will not sleep behold he who keeps watch over israel shall neither slumber nor sleep the lord himself watches over you the lord is your shade at your right hand so that the sun shall not strike you by day neither the moon by night the lord shall keep you from all evil it is he who shall keep your soul the lord shall keep watch over your going out and your coming in from this time forth forevermore we break on sunday mornings the regular reading of the acts of the apostles which we have with us on ordinary weekdays and this morning we're reading the sunday lesson which is written in the book of the prophet isaiah chapter 48 and beginning at verse 12. listen to me o jacob and israel whom i called i am he i am the first and i am the last my hand laid the foundation of the earth and my right hand spread out to the heavens when i call to them they stand forth together assemble all of you and listen who among them has declared these things the lord loves them they will perform his purpose on babylon and his arm shall be against the chaldeans i even i have spoken and called the one i have i have brought him and he will prosper in his way draw near to me hear this from the beginning i have not spoken in secret from the time it came to be i have been there and now the lord god has sent me and his spirit thus says the lord your redeemer the holy one of israel i am the lord your god who teaches you to profit who leads you in the way you should go oh that you had paid attention to my commandments then your peace would have been like a river and your righteousness like the waves of the sea your offspring would have been like the sand and your descendants like its grains their name would never be cut off or destroyed from before me go out then from babylon flee from chaldea declare this with a shout of joy proclaim it send it out to the end of the earth say the lord has redeemed his servant jacob they did not thirst when he led them through the deserts he made water flow for them from the rock he split the rock and the water gushed out it's continuing the theme of the fact that the lord has called all unwittingly cyrus who is a foreign monarch to do his will unbeknown to cyrus that is the he that was being spoke of who has been called in the earlier part of that lesson and we saw a bit about that last sunday and the sunday before but what they're being told to do now is to take advantage of the fact that king cyrus is letting them go from their exile breaking out from their captivity and they will return with joy and singing to their own land and be able to worship their god and enjoy his creation there this is a theme of breaking out of captivity but it's also a theme of the presence in the present tense of the lord god yesterday at evensong we had the lesson of the sadducees questioning jesus in the temple courtyard and setting him a ridiculous question about seven brothers who had one after the other when the one before died married the same woman and asking about what will happen in the afterlife when she'd been the the wife of all and they're really laughing at the idea that anyone could raise from the dead because the sadducees simply didn't believe in that and jesus says quite simply to them this is proven in the story about moses in the bush when god says i am the god of abraham i am the god of isaac i am the god of jacob these are not dead but living and in god's sight time is as nothing it means nothing but he enters into our time to give his gifts in this lesson god is always in the present and when he gives his name to moses it is the i am and jesus is fond of using those words in saint john's gospel i am the resurrection and the life i am the way the truth and the life today we think of thomas trahan because he was a simple parish priest in his own mind son of a shoemaker in the city of hereford who was clever enough to win a scholarship to go on from hereford cathedral school to braziner's college in oxford and then to not be ordained yet for in 1657 when he went to look after the people of credon hill the anglican church the church of england was banned and the bishops had gone in the years of the republic so for three years he looked after them and it was only in 1660 that he was ordained by the laying on of hands by the bishop and became the parish priest of credon hill a beautiful village near to hereford but traherne was one who dreamed as we said about chagall i didn't simply read the bible i dreamed it and if anyone dreamed in his words and his poetry it was thomas trahan maybe the people then knew it but his writings for a very long time were simply lost and then suddenly the house where some of his manuscripts had been in ledbury the family there in the late 19th century broke up their library and simply by chance a few years later in 1898 someone discovered in a barrow load of old books at a bookseller's stall which were destined really for the bonfire if nobody bought them discovered his manuscripts and then in 1908 his works began to be published his poetry and above all else his centuries of meditation and from that moment onwards they have been read and not only read but used as inspiration for us to know god's creation all around us we sense in the greenhouse here and i can i can smell the scents of the plants as well but behind me with the flowering plumbago and over here a fruiting papaya a pawpaw tree with fruit growing on it from different cultures because we're inside under glass but outside too as we see day by day as we say our morning prayers the glories of god's creation and that was what jahan spoke about and wrote about almost with the innocence of a child and it's those images he reaches for the wonderful thing as he's compared to blake and to whitman and to hopkins is that that lost poetry like ellen wilmot's garden at her home and ellen wilmot herself spent her fortune on the garden but her home at warmly worldly place at great wally in essex became a traveling point for all gardeners and now it's mostly gone the house has gone the garden has grown over how quickly in our time creation reasserts itself but how also we can join in with that creation and make something of beauty to point to god's works so that isaiah causing people to look around at god's gifts and to infuse themselves with his spirit daily becomes a wonderful message for us the composer gerald finzee wrote his wonderful cantata just before the second world war diaz natalis day of birth and he used trahearne's words we'll look at them in a moment but let me just say also that the wonderful stained glass artist and creator thomas denny has created in hereford cathedral beautiful windows showing trahan's inspiration and the light shines through them into the orderly chantry they were put there in 2007 and in the midst is the little figure of trahan exalting in god's creation but here's a little bit of his writing which finzi sets to music i was a stranger which at my entrance into the world was saluted and surrounded with innumerable joys my knowledge was divine i was entertained like an angel with the works of god in their splendor and glory heaven and earth did sing my creator's praises and could not make more melody to adam than to me certainly adam in paradise had not more sweet and curious apprehensions of the world than i all appeared new and strange at first inexpressibly rare and delightful and beautiful all things were spotless and pure and glorious the corn was orient and immortal wheat which never should be reaped nor was ever sown i thought it had stood from everlasting to everlasting the green trees when i saw them first transported and ravished me their sweetness and unusual beauty made my heart to leap and almost mad with ecstasy they were such strange and wonderful things sweet infancy oh heavenly fire o sacred light how fair and bright how great am i whom the whole world does magnify how like an angel came i down how bright are all things here when first among god's works i did appear how their glory meeted crown the world resembled his eternity in which my soul did walk and everything that i did see did with me talk the skies in their magnificence the lovely lively air oh how divine how soft how sweet how fair the stars did entertain my sense and all the works of god so bright and pure so rich and great did seem as if they ever must endure in my esteem reminiscence of innocence and childhood but also reminiscence of jahan walking in the beauties of the heritage countryside as the parish priest at creton hill and his works like this old wall lost until we took off all the scrapings on it and restored it as the greenhouse wall once again for which it had always been intended let's give thanks for the creative works of god and how they speak to us in all their magnificence and call us to be partners in his creation on this sunday morning in our prayers in our thinking in our activity and our serving of each other in being the hands of christ and the mind of christ in his world infused with the spirit of christ let's say our prayers together on this sunday morning and we are praying this morning in the anglican communion for the province of the episcopal church of the sudan and praying for the primate ezekiel kumar kondo the archbishop of the province of the sudan and the bishop of khartoum we pray for all the people in that vast land pray to here for archbishop justin and for bishop rose of dover bishop tim at lambeth and today we're praying for the little borden benefits that's the villages of ikem littleborn stoddmarsh wickenbrew and wingham pray for gillian craig who is looking after them as the priest at present and all those whom he is caring for with the help of the readers john stiles and catherine harris so let's say the prayer for this sunday and the coming week oh lord we beseech you mercifully to hear 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 the same through jesus christ our lord amen so each in our own language and in the way we like to say it we use 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 are men moment of silence now as we bring our own intentions to this day the peace of god which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in 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 would pray for today and always amen you