Sermon for Rogation Sunday
“And the Lord showed him all the land” (Deut.34.1)
Sometimes the smell of the land can be quite overpowering! You know what I mean – the odour of ordure, the smell of manure. It is a reminder of the realities of the land in a farming community. Perhaps, today that pungent aroma will be offset by the bouquets of Mother’s Day flowers! Yet, apart from the secular observance of Mother’s Day, this is the Fifth Sunday after Easter, commonly known as Rogation Day.
The days of rogation are days of asking, days of prayer, but with a particular emphasis upon the land. Rogation Sunday would remind us of the redemption of creation itself and our place in the landscape of creation redeemed. The resurrection is cosmic in scope. It concerns the whole world – the world as ordered to God.
Prayer is an activity of redeemed humanity. We make our prayers in the land where we have been placed. Our places in the land are to be the places of grace. How? By prayer. Rogationtide embraces the world in prayer. The world is comprehended in the relationship of the Father and the Son in the bond of the Holy Spirit. Nowhere is that more clearly signaled than in today’s Gospel where Jesus speaks of his going forth from the Father into the world and his return to the Father out of the world. The redemption of the world is captured in those words. What is “overcome” is sin, which is the world as turned away from God and as turned against God, the world as infected and stained by our sinfulness, by the forgetfulness of our place and so of ourselves in the landscape of creation redeemed. The consequences are our disrespect for the land and the sea, for the world in which we have been placed. We make a mess of it. We forget the place of creation in the will of God; we forget about the redemption of creation.
