good morning and welcome to the deanery garden at canterbury cathedral on this friday the 30th of july the morning started with enormous showers of rain but now there's a brightness in the earth and there's sun dappling through this place where i'm sitting just at the beginning of the orchard we wanted this morning to say our prayers for the island of fiji which is suffering so badly from the pandemic and is running out of resources and finding it very difficult to to get the resources and vaccines that they need they're representative of so many other places but if we think of the hospitals there and the city of suva and all the the places on that wonderful island in the first in the pacific and uh let's use it as a representative island of all those suffering from the pandemic at this time in lockdown maybe some of you who are watching this morning say let's hold on this friday morning everyone in our prayers and particularly those who are attempting to heal people and care for people and also to vaccinate people and on this day also at the 30th of july in our calendar in the church of england we commemorate william wilberforce and oluardo acquiano and thomas clarkson three campaigners against slavery in the early days and very courageous in all that they did but an example and encouragement to those who after that began to take up the cause of the abolition of slavery in all its forms uh a cause which still goes on today and uh so that it's a good remembrance there is a lovely memorial stone in our memorial garden here with a quotation from william wilberforce on the first easter day after he was converted to the christian faith in a really deep way and it's lovely to read that extract from his journal which is carved into the stone here in the precincts in canterbury it's a constant reminder of the cause that he shook up and the encouragement we need to take up that cause as well and on this day uh also we are thinking of so many areas that that are still combating floods and fires and dealing with the aftermath and uh those who have really put their own life in at risk in order to help people in ongoing situations in different parts of the world well let's say our prayers on this day um i'm i'm sitting under the mulberry tree one of our ancient mulberry trees here uh and also on the other side of me what have i got a sycamore tree above me uh and a jack in the pool pitch in front of me here uh some lovely things around me but in this woody area of the garden and we shall continue on this day our reflections on st matthew but let's begin our prayers oh lord open our lips and our mouth shall proclaim your praise let your ways be known upon us your saving power among the nations blessed are you lord god of our salvation to you be praise and glory forever as a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief your only son was lifted up that he might draw the whole world to himself may we walk this day in the way of the cross and always be ready to share its weight declaring your love for all the world 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 oh god set our hearts on fire with love for you now and forever amen our psalm on this 30th morning of the month is psalm 146 alleluia praise the lord o my soul while i live will i praise the lord as long as i have any being i will sing praises to my god put not your trust in princes nor in any human power for there is no help in them when their breath goes forth they return to the earth on that day all their thoughts perish happy are those who have the god of jacob for their help whose hope is in the lord their god who made heaven and earth the sea and all that is in them who keeps his promise forever who gives justice to those that suffer wrong and bread to those who hunger the lord loses those that are bound the lord opens the eyes of the blind the lord lifts up those who are bowed down the lord loves the righteous the lord watches over the stranger in the land he upholds the orphan and widow but the way of the wicked he turns upside down the lord shall reign forever your god o zion throughout all generations alleluia so we turn once again to the gospel of saint matthew and take up from the point that we left off at yesterday at the middling point of chapter 27 and i'm going to start reading this morning from verse 45. now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour and about the ninth hour jesus cried out with a loud voice saying ailee ailey laymar that is my god my god why have you forsaken me and some of the bystanders hearing it said this man is calling elijah and one of them at once ran and took a sponge filled it with sour wine and put it on a reed and gave it to him to drink but the others said wait let us see whether elijah will come to save him and jesus cried out again with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit and behold the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom and the earth shook and the rocks were split the tombs also were opened and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised and coming out of the tombs after his resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many when the centurion and those who were with him keeping watch over jesus saw the earthquake and what took place they were filled with awe and said truly this was the son of god there were also many women there looking on from a distance who had followed jesus from galilee ministering to him among whom were mary magdalene and mary the mother of james and joseph and the mother of the sons of zebedee [Music] when it was evening there came a rich man from arimathea named joseph who also was a disciple of jesus he went to pilate and asked for the body of jesus then pilate ordered it to be given to him and joseph took the body and wrapped it in a clean linen shroud and laid it in his own new tomb which he had cut in the rock and he rolled a great stone to the entrance of the tomb and went away mary magdalene and the other mary were there sitting opposite the tomb the next day that is after the day of preparation the chief priests and the pharisees gathered before pilate and said sir we remember how that impostor said while he was still alive after three days i will rise therefore order the tomb to be made secure until the third day lest his disciples go and steal him away and tell the people he has risen from the dead and the last fraud will be worse than the first pilot said to them you have a guard of soldiers go make it as secure as you can so they went and made the tomb secure by sealing the stone and setting a guard this is again a story as matthew tells it it adheres in some ways closely to mark but there are important differences of detail and that becomes important to us as we begin to look at the matthew account first of all let's go back to that which matthew keeps insisting on all this is happening in order that prophecy be fulfilled prophecy in the books of the law or in the books of the prophets or in the book of psalms prophecy to be fulfilled and there are two occasions when this morning that becomes so but the first occasion is in the mouth of jesus himself as we have said since the time that jesus had said you say that i am to pilate he has been absolutely and completely silent we glean other words from jesus in the gospel of saint luke and in the gospel of saint john but in matthew it is the fulfillment of the prophecy of the of the lamb led to the slaughter in the prophet isaiah chapter 53 and reading that passage gives you the sense of the silence of jesus in suffering which is crucial to matthew but then suddenly that silence is broken with the loud cry about the ninth hour now matthew doesn't tell us as mark does when the crucifixion actually happened mark says it was the third hour when jesus was crucified but matthew then does take up the marketing account in the sixth hour so we're talking about nine in the morning the third hour 12 noon the sixth hour and there was darkness over all the us until the ninth hour for three hours and about the ninth hour jesus cries out with a loud voice breaking the silence the first verse of psalm 22 my god my god why have you forsaken me those psalms which jesus had pondered so often and quoted so often and which he believed as with the chapter in isaiah 53 that it was his vocation to fulfill as our savior now hanging on the cross those desperate words of total loneliness psalm 22 verse 1 and then at the same time later when those below soak a sponge in sour wine or vinegar as it was called in some of the translations it's exactly the same thing really and uh the the vinegar the sour wine is is soaked on a sponge put on a reed and held up to jesus's lips and matthew would see that very much as a fulfillment of psalm 69 verse 21 when i was thirsty they gave me vinegar to drink all these fulfillments of prophecy and the ancient scriptures but the biggest fulfillment is the delivering of the obedient servant of god to the vocation that offers life to draw the whole world to himself that is taking place and in matthew's gospel we've said without companionship being named below no one is named in that way simon of cyrene who at that time was probably unknown to jesus and and to jesus probably unknown to simon of cyrene coming in from the countryside and was simply seized because he was a strong man who could take the cross and carry it so that the journey to the the early crucifixion was a speedy one and not held up by the weakness of the prisoner they were beating along the road and now here we are with jesus on the cross and no one is named no companionship there is an aloneness a loneliness and now even the cry of desolation means that there's even a sense of of separation and as his human body begins to fail separation from the sense of that vocation too ailee ailey lemar my god my god why have you forsaken me it's a stark cry in matthew and soon afterwards he cries out again with a loud voice no words just the cry of his human body and the limitations that all of us have in pain sharing our human condition right to the end and then he yielded up his spirit as matthew says and at that time matthew charts a reaction which he wants his christians to realize the reaction is the testimony of the temple the testimony of the earth the testimony of the sky the testimony of the holy people from the past and the testimony of the foreign soldiers standing around who have witnessed this death and that paragraph when all these things happen is matthew's testimony to what this ministry means the earth and the heavens and the regularity of the temple and the separation of god's holy people from the rest of the world all of that is ended and testified and the centurion certainly not a jew below the cross says certainly this was the son of god recognizing something there of the divine dimension and they are all filled with awe that's a very different atmosphere from earlier on the mocking and the laughing and it seems almost as though all of those people have gone home job done and now those standing around who've witnessed the whole crucifixion the detachment of foreign soldiers who are on duty for pilate around this roman execution certainly this was the son of god that's what matthew wants us to hear as he wanted his own christians to hear it and now suddenly matthew names companions he mentions that watching from a little distance are mary magdalene mary the mother of james and joseph and also the mother of the sons of zebedee are watching it's the women who are there and it's the women who will carry the next part together with someone who is a stranger but matthew names him also not only as a rich man but as a disciple of jesus matthew doesn't name him as a member of the council we get that from other gospels but he does name joseph from arimathea as someone who stepped forward and there is a devotion in matthew's gospel in joseph that he brings the the cloth to wrap the body of jesus and he also provides his own new tomb and it's that tomb which he had had cut in the rock according to matthew's account for himself and it's in that new tomb that jesus is laid and the stone is rolled against it and all that is observed by mary and the mary magdalene and the other mary as they sat opposite the tomb they have watched what is happening and then the last little bit of this to take us to the end of the chapter is the nervousness still that something is going to happen with the disciples of jesus hardly likely because they are in complete disarray and terrified themselves but something is going to happen with the disciples of jesus and so they insist in matthew's gospel that the stone is sealed and and made secure and that a guard is put there and the roman governor pilate says very well he's gone along with all their their wishes so far and he does so now so that the scene is set for the beginning of chapter 28 which we will read tomorrow but matthew is true to his aim of saying all this was a fulfillment of the way in which the holy one of god the messiah the christ the son of david would fulfill what was prophesied in psalms and in isaiah the prophet and many other prophecies and there we believe that sealed and guarded if we look at other things today and again i won't dwell too much on any of them but it's an interesting day in in many ways so i'm going to go backwards today chronologically on this day in 1991 the great italian tenor pavarotti was celebrating 30 years of singing in opera and the creative powers that his his body had been given to sing in this spectacular way and he'd won all hearts and so he threw a great free concert in hyde park on this day and it was attended by all kinds of people the prime minister went the princess of wales went all kinds of people and uh he sang and the rain poured down it was a july like this one it was cold it was very wet did it trouble him not a bit and the crowd kept shouting to one another put your umbrellas down so they too were soaked and some of them were taken away so cold that they had to be tended but nevertheless the way in which pavarotti sang great arias from verdi and puccini and massenet and of great of course his great signature tune which uh later on was was used as a an anthem i think for the world cup um nesundoma and uh nesendorma had become things which people shouted for with that huge voice pavarotti by then was at the the end of his time and began to suffer soon after that with all kinds of difficulties in his singing so his 30 years of opera which he'd given to the world and that massive tenor voice which people cheered and cheered to the echo in the pouring rain on this particular day in london and at the same time in 1966 on this day this this 30th of july england won the world cup and the nation went wild and uh those of you who are old enough to remember will remember that jeff hurst became the only one to score a hat-trick in a world cup final uh and uh everyone uh was just so thrilled that that that game with west germany as it then was and the match was won by england i remember that the smoke-filled room that my father and my mother's brothers sat in watching this uh and and right on the end of their seats and it was truly a great day so human activity in creativity and of course we're still praying for all the people of japan and those competing as olympians in in japan today but there is one date that i did want to remember and a a little more length and that is the fact that in 1935 on this day penguin paperback books were launched by a man called alan lane he had a vision which was caused by him being on exeter station and looking at the the book stall and on the station there he found that the reading material was of a very poor quality and there was nothing he wanted to read and he thought well we can do this with all sorts of classics and wonderful stories and we can do it cheaply and so he launched penguin books seems funny to think there was any occasion in the last century when there weren't penguin paperback books but it happened on that day in 1935 and it went from strength to strength and there was a signature color for and a pattern which was given and also a little logo of the penguin which was drawn by an office junior in alan lane's company a man called edward young and he gave us i dug out this morning one of the oldest penguins that i have and here it is it's actually uh john steinbeck's of mice and men and cannery row but it's immaterial what it was i i pulled it out simply because it's one of the old penguin patterns it was instantly recognizable and very soon it became something that became the trademark of penguin books so orange and white for general fiction green and white for crime fiction series and white for travel and adventure dark blue and white for biographies yellow and white for miscellaneous red and white for drama purple and white for essays and belletre gray and wild white for world affairs and that was how it began and he brought up the rights to publish so many of these and they made their name of course in the second world war because he published them simply at six months each and you remember if you don't know the old money there were 20 shillings in the pound and a sixpence was only uh the the half of one shilling so you could buy this for six months but also in the war any any books sent to soldiers through the post actually what conveyed free and he made the best use of that and put notes on the books i didn't have any wartime books of penguin books but on that that it often said when you've read this leave it at a post office and mark it for soldiers and then it will be sent out and the the stories that he gave were stories of high quality now in when the war ended in 1945 he began in another way penguin classics and i had i do have an early copy here of a penguin classics it's dante's divine comedy translated by dorothy l sayers my own copies of that have really colored uh colored um uh uh covers in a wonderful way as penguin books do now but in those days it was simply done and the logo of the penguin was on the back and just a little roundel of dante but by that stage alan lane as a publisher was causing people to translate books afresh into good english and on the back here of this penguin classics you find that there are a series of of greek texts esops fables and homers iliad homer's odyssey plato sophocles latin texts of the conquest of gaul by caesar and medieval latin texts thomas the kempis the imitation of christ and so on and so forth and then inside the page you get french texts and russian texts and italian texts as the dante goethe german spanish cervantes portuguese camon and norwegian ibsen and the english canterbury tales translated into modern english by neville coghill all these at a very cheap rate now by then um this little book this is uh published in 1949 is still only one shilling and sixpence they're shilling a twentieth of a pound and then uh this one by the time this was published in 1954 it was what we called half a crown two shillings and sixpence a crown being five shillings seems incredible now that this was going on and then how the thing has developed so that now the the catalogue of penguin books of really fine translations with lovely artistic pictures on the front give you a treat just to look at the front cover and think now where is that painting or who has done that lovely drawing which illustrates the books and it went on of course with pelican books and puffin books for children it was really endless and the way in which that developed we give enormous thanks for because it gave out to a reading public books at a high quality and stories well translated so that they had access to all kinds of texts which they could read we could read and we find them on our bookshelves i was looking along the fiction section in the the idenary bookshelves this morning in the library and there are so many bearing the little penguin or the puffin or the pelican logo and the way in that which that has developed is something that we should all give thanks for say the first one published on this day in 1935 let's say our prayers then as we come together on this day and we are praying for let's see the diocese of dhaka in the united church of bangladesh and in this diocese for archbishop justin for bishop rose of dover for bishop tim at lambeth and for the parish of christchurch parkwood and the clergy there phil goody yvonne salmon and alan wharton and i'm praying for charlotte and ricky who i shall be marrying at 11 o'clock this morning in the cathedral and that will be a great event and we pray for all their guests too so bring our own intentions and prayers of joy and of sorrow and of need as we say the prayer for today almighty lord and everlasting god we beseech you to direct sanctify and govern both our hearts and bodies in the ways of your laws and the works of your commandments that through your most mighty protection both here and ever we may be preserved in body and soul through our lord and savior jesus christ amen so we say the prayer 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 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 of silence now for our own prayers ah [Music] oh 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 are men well the gang appeared but they've gone off to the stream to have a breakfast time cool drink from the water there