by CCW | 7 May 2013 21:29
The Genesis statement about the created world is the counter to so many of our fears and uncertainties. It is the strong reminder of the essential goodness of the material world as created by God and as such exists for God. Rogationtide would remind us of this fundamental truth. The world is God’s world and exists for his glory. And so do we.
Prayer and labour are thus intimately connected. When we see our labours as works of prayer then we are looking at the world in an entirely new and wonderful way. We see something of the grandeur of God in the beauty of the earth, something of the grandeur of God in the lives of one another. We are freed from the prosaic and dreary burdens of our endless manipulation of the world, as if it existed for us and not for God.
What then is our labour? Is it not about working with the world of seed-time and harvest so as to reap the fruits of nature and of human labour? Yes. But that is to work with the world as God’s world and to see our labours as prayer and praise.
The Gospel reading offers us a way of thinking about the world in relation to God, specifically, to the kingdom of God. Natural images are used to speak about our spiritual relationship with Christ. In one way, there is no comparison between the world and God, and, yet, in another way, through parables voiced and parables enacted, if you will, there is precisely the right kind of connection – one which opens us out to the great things of God even through the smallest things of nature and of ourselves, like the proverbial grain of mustard seed. But this is nothing more than the humility and the truth of prayer. It is “as if a man should cast seed into the ground; and should sleep and rise, night and day, the seed should spring and grow up, he knoweth not how.” We, of course, may think that we know but there is actually a wonder and a mystery to the marvels of spring. It delights us. The beauty of the spring of the year appears as a kind of miracle after the harsh and dread realities of the winter. No amount of prosaic argument detracts from the wonder and the delight which we see and feel at the sights and sounds of spring.
The point is that we work – preparing the ground, planting the seed, and so on – but what actually happens is in accord with the creative principle in the seed without which there are no shoots, no blossoms, no promise and hope of harvest. All we are doing is working with what God has provided. In a way, that is the deep truth of all our labours. And in this sense they are all a form of prayer, of waiting and looking upon God. We look to God.
This connection between prayer and work is captured in the service of Holy Communion. There are certain priest’s prayers at the time of the offertory that I often share with you. They capture the sacramental understanding of our liturgy and our lives. “Bless art thou, Lord God of all creation, through thy goodness we have this bread to offer; fruit of the earth and the work of men’s hands. It will become for us the bread of everlasting life… Bless art thou, Lord God of all creation, through thy goodness we have this wine to offer, the fruit of the vine and the work of men’s hands. It will become for us the cup of everlasting life. Blessed be God forever.”
God has made the world and all that is in it. It is all good and the whole “very good” and in spite of our sins and follies and, even through them, God makes something good and wonderful. He makes something good even out of our evil! Such is God’s redemption of the world and of our humanity. By prayer and praise, by work and service, we participate in God’s redemption of creation. It happens here by word and sacrament. The things of the created order, transformed by human labour, become, by the grace and power of the word of God, the sacramental instruments of salvation, of eternal life. They signal our participation in the kingdom of God. They bring to fulfillment the Genesis statement.
Fr. David Curry
Rogation Tuesday
May 7th, 2013
Source URL: https://christchurchwindsor.ca/2013/05/07/sermon-for-rogation-tuesday/
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