[Music] good morning and welcome to the deanery garden at canterbury cathedral on this friday the 5th of march welcome to morning prayer wherever you are in the world this is saint piran's day and that is the patron saint of cornwall a fifth century monk there and today becomes a great festival day in cornwall so here's the flag of cornwall and also uh tiger has come to help us celebrate sin piran's day he's here under the table having his breakfast but on the table because in paren is also the patron saint of tin miners we brought two of the canaries out of the large aviary the outdoor aviary here so they're used to being around and very friendly as canaries are because they've been domesticated birds for a very long time now and uh i brought them here uh we carried them across or freshly carried them across from the outdoor aviary because of course they were the sign of going down into mines and testing the air before the humphrey davies safety lamp was was uh invented the canaries were carried for that gave a sign of the quality of the air that the miners were breathing so we think of cornish pasties and cornish cream and the lovely rocky glades of cornwall the mossy glades deep down on the coastline and all the water and here is the stream running into the well here in uh in the deanery garden to give that sense of water and moths and greenery so we give thanks for cornwall and give thanks for creation and also the chance of coming together on this friday morning let's begin our prayers oh lord open our lips and our mouth shall proclaim your praise hear our voice o lord according to your faithful love according to your judgment give us life blessed are you god of compassion and mercy to be praise and glory forever in the darkness of our sin your light breaks force 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 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 psalm on this fifth morning of the month is psalm 24 the earth is the lord's and all that fills it the compass of the world and all who dwell therein for he has founded it upon the seas and set it firm upon the rivers of the deep who shall ascend the hill of the lord or who can rise up in his holy place those who have clean hands and a pure heart who have not lifted up their soul to an idol nor sworn an oath to a lie they shall receive a blessing from the lord a just reward from the god of their salvation such is the company of those who seek him of those who seek your face o god of jacob lift up your heads oh gates be lifted up your everlasting doors and the king of glory shall come in who is the king of glory the lord strong and mighty the lord who is mighty in battle lift up your heads o gates be lifted up you everlasting doors and the king of glory shall come in who is this king of glory the lord of hosts he is the king of glory turn to the gospel of saint john and we are in chapter 7 and yesterday we ended our reading at verse 13. we're beginning today at verse 14 of chapter 7. about the middle of the feast jesus went up into the temple and began teaching the jews therefore marveled saying how is it that this man has learning when he has never studied so jesus answered them my teaching is not mine but his who sent me if anyone's will is to do god's will they will know whether the teaching is from god or whether i am speaking on my own authority the one who speaks on their own authority seeks their own glory but the one who seeks the glory of the one who sent them is true and in them there is no falsehood has not moses given you the law yet none of you keeps the law why do you seek to kill me the crowd answered you have a devil who is seeking to kill you jesus answered them i did one work and you all marvel at it moses gave you circumcision not that it is from moses but from the patriarchs and you circumcise a man on the sabbath if on the sabbath a man receives circumcision so that the law of moses may not be broken are you angry with me because on the sabbath i made a man's whole body well do not judge by appearances but judge with right judgment appearances can be deceptive and that little statement takes us right back to the anointing of david when each of the sons of jesse are brought before samuel and the uh obvious ones to be the great leader because of how they looked powerful and strong were not the ones to be chosen and samuel says do not judge my appearance the lord judges by the heart and here is jesus saying the same kind of thing to us do not judge by appearances but much more than that we find him once again in contention and surrounded by a violent atmosphere there in the temple yesterday we concentrated on the sense of what time means and in doing that we were thinking about jesus saying my time is not yet and to his brothers and his his family your time is now but you go up to the festival my time is not yet but you remember he did go up to the festival but went in crypto secretly and when he came to the festival he kept himself privately so we think today of the way in which suddenly things change and he knows that he has to begin teaching there in the temple courtyard and that's exactly what he begins to do and the people begin to wonder first of all by the teaching itself where does it all come from he's one of us so where does all this learning come from and so they ponder and and question and jesus hears all that going on around him and says why do you question the teaching isn't mine it is from the one who sent me he is sure he's doing god's will in all of this and handing this on to them and we've seen how hard it is for him to get his message across but on this day i wanted to return to the sense of the depth of time and i'm going to use a an illustration for it i've got here a a program from a play which we saw in i think june of 19 2019 at the southwark playhouse i had no idea what i was going to see and it's called the curious case of benjamin button it's based on a short story by scott fitzgerald and there is a film which is starring brad pitt which some of you may know forget that completely this is nothing like that whatever this was a play a musical play which was written by jethro compton and the music provided by darren clark and it was an extraordinary performance in that little theater where you sit round on benches all round the stage the atmosphere of cornwall was completely conjured and one felt that atmosphere all around one but it was conjured amazingly not only by the um play itself and the music which was very um cornish folk music and included both songs and really big choruses so some were haunting and some were full of uh full of matchy music for and this would do well for cornwall's natural natural day today their patron saints days in pyron but at the same time it was the story of benjamin button and in scott fitzgerald's story benjamin button lives time backwards he is born old and dies as a baby so he is actually going through time from end to beginning and everyone else is going through time as we do living our lives and everything from the beginning through to the end and maybe there's a a crossing point at some stage but in the program there's the sentence even a stopped clock tells the right time twice a day and then a sentence from scott fitzgerald about human age 25 is two worldly wise 30 is apt to be pale from overwork 40 is the age of long stories that take a whole cigar to tell 60 is oh 60 is too near 70. but 50 is the mellow age i love 50. well that's scott fitzgerald but what we found in the theater were five actors only five two women three men all young actors and they were not just actors they were singers they were accomplished musicians on instruments and at the same time they were puppeteers and around them were all the aspects which reminded one of a cornish fishing village and in the play in human time you lived through from just after the first world war right up to the 1980s but remember benjamin button was born old and so benjamin was living his life the other way around and his perspective was quite different that may seem odd but actually it was totally and weirdly convincing and the short story that fitzgerald tells is at the base of it but the whole setting in cornwall quite quite different we were there with the cornish mists we were there with the cornish village we were there with the cornish people conjured up by these five actors playing completely different roles save for benjamin himself who was the same actor all the way through except when a baby and then the puppets came into play and they were totally and when he was old and again the puppet came into play and rather like a puppet puppet in the way in which you remember those little cork things you had where they were standing straight but there was elastic inside them and if you push them then the whole figure just began to collapse so that his disintegration at the beginning and also his childhood at the end were provided by these actors in amazing puppetry and oddly one made the switch just from there but what was going on in one's mind the whole time was this sense of time kairos my time is not yet says jesus and benjamin's time challenges everyone else because it's going in a different direction time like an ever rolling stream there's all its sons away says that famous hymn oh god i help in ages past and that too is something we need to think of this morning but what i also want to think of is that of course we do live time back to front in the way that we reflect and remember we have to remember back through time in the reverse order we ourselves can't jump back to there and be the people that we are but especially during this pandemic there's been so much occasion of reflecting on time our own lives in time and the way in which maybe we have changed and the way in which we've learned and the way in which in body mind and spirit we've embraced that which god wants us to be and that which others expect of us relationships have changed us physical places that we've been in and different situations have completely changed us but we are thinking back when we sit as t.s eliot says under the lamplight and reflect and pictures show us we are thinking in the benjamin button way backwards from 2021 years back yesterday we were thinking of happy birthday to you and how the canadians count up are you one are you two are you three going forwards but when we're thinking we go in a different direction are you 70 are you 69 or you jump back 60 are you scott fitzgerald and try to place yourself there but the you that is thinking that is a very much more experienced with lessons to teach the view you would have been at the time when you think back time is strange and the clock regulating our day gives a sort of rhythm what some have found is that the lack of rhythm in life because of the pandemic somebody wrote uh last week saying every day is blurs day i just don't seem to know what day of the week it is even and yet in one way our lenten progress our workbooks are picking a thought from each day counting through gives us that kind of rhythm which actually we need in our life as well coming up tiger or not and as we do that then we're doing both what benjamin button did and also his long-suffering wife and even more the son that they have because to see somebody getting younger and younger and younger while she is getting older and older becomes a strange thing well i can't convey that the wonder and beauty of that particular situation to you because you'd have had to be in that hagamaga theater impossible with social distancing they packed the people in onto those benches but the event took us to cornwall as we've tried to do on this particular day and there in that community we lived the life of benjamin button as he got younger and younger and then seeing on a television screen men arriving on the moon and taking their first steps when he himself was very young and his wife was getting very old all of these things about human time caused it to be a jumble and that kind of reflection takes us straight to jesus himself my time is not yet and yet suddenly in this little passage the time to go and teach the people in the temple was there and bravely he stepped forward and began to teach and face their criticism and the melody of violence that was around him and that we shall continue when we go on tomorrow in chapter seven my time is not yet but there are aspects of time which he does seize and the teaching he gives is from the one who sent him so as he says to the people do not judge by appearances but judge in the right way judge with right judgment so here we look at one or two other dates this morning which gives us a bit of perspective through time in i said that pyramid was from the fifth century but uh the 12th century 11 33 saw the birth on this day march the fifth of henry ii who went on he was the first plantagenet king but he went on to be the king whose rage caused the four knights to come across and murder the archbishop thomas beckett in the cathedral church and later henry's penitence became part of canterbury's story as well and then in 1496 this is a journeying henry vii commissioned john cabot we used to call him in bristol from where he set off and the cabot tower in bristol looks over the city and down to the port of bristol from where this italian giovanni kabul kabuto set off with the commission of henry vii to explore new lands and it was cabot who went across the atlantic and touched the coast of labrador in newfoundland the first european to do so since the vikings so the sense of exploration there becomes important as well in the journeying of us all at this particular time and then we might go to 1778 when thomas ahn died composer some people are remembered best for just one thing there's lots of our own music but he's remembered especially on the last night of the proms for rural britannia and arne's music to rule britannia lifts it off the ground for people to sing and what else can we say in 1850 robert stephenson's britannia bridge another bridge we've had several bridges recently bridges making connections and uh stevenson's bridge linked anglesey and banga in wales it was destroyed by fire in 1970 has now been rebuilt reopened again in 1980 but we give thanks for the capacity to make those connections and make travel possible 1936 the first spitfire made a test flight and in 1946 churchill again in just a throwaway sentence almost talked about an iron curtain falling across europe and for the next few decades that was very much in people's minds that there was an iron curtain and they would say countries beyond the iron curtain one has to be careful with words because it's the most carefree words that get picked up and then used uh and what else do we have well the birth in 169 96 of the venetian jamberta tiapolo the artist the rococo artist and one sees that so much of his work is all about biblical and biblical and classical themes but rococo art on the ceilings of venice and the royal palace in madrid and various palaces in the holy roman empire uh become really colorful and and dramatic things and mostly as i say they are scriptural things like the the gathering of the manner or something of that kind so we give thanks for his artistry and of course we as i say right at the beginning give thanks today for the county of cornwall and the culture of cornwall and the nation of cornwall as some see it in that particular way so this is a national day in their minds for the cornish and that is a very different area because of course celtic christianity went across to the west and the the celtic christianity of cornwall predated augustine coming here uh by many years so let's say our prayers as we think of the cornish pasties of those strange-shaped with the little rimmed hard pastry on the top which was a way in which the tin miners could hold what they were going to eat which was meat and vegetables inside pastry and not eat what they'd held because their hands might be poisoned with the material they'd been dealing with and so nowadays we tend to eat it all but a cornish pasty has that funny shape and cornish clotted cream so much different from devonshire cotton cream with that very very golden crust that the cornish seem to to be able to uh to produce so let's say our prayers and on this day we are praying for the diocese of asante mampong in the church of the province of west africa the ghana province and praying also in the diocese for archbishop justin for bishop rose bishop tin at lambeth and for frontline workers chaplains who are working at the most difficult places during this pandemic and the uh given in the calendar here is by david slater the joint lead for kent emergency chaplain scheme so we pray for all those chaplains ministering in places of of where brexit and covid and migration have made life very difficult for some on the coastal front line of this diocese we use therefore the prayer for this day which is the second sunday of lent prayer which we've been using this week almighty god you show to those who are in error the light of your truth that they may return to the way of righteousness grant to all those who are admitted into the fellowship of christ's religion that they may reject those things that are contrary to their profession and follow all such things as are agreeable to the same through our lord jesus christ amen so we say the prayer that our savior taught us in whichever language you like to use 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 the glory forever and ever are men moment of silence now as we say our own prayers [Music] christ give you grace to grow in holiness to deny yourself take up your cross daily and follow him 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 are men so happy saint parents day and particularly happy sin parents day for the people of cornwall and those across the world with cornish connections so tiger you're having a happy day here it's your breakfast i hope we shall now take the canaries back to their big aviary in the front part of the garden to join all their friends again let's stay out here for a bit [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] [Music] do [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] do [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] and flows [Music] farewell [Music] of joy is [Music] foreign [Music] thou easy [Music] is [Music] and is [Music] brightest scenes i see above brightest scenes i see above in the realms of peace and love in the realms of peace [Music] of peace [Music] peace [Music] of peace [Music] of peace [Music] of peace [Music] peace and love [Music] you