Sermon for Rogation Sunday
admin | 25 May 2014“[He] slew mighty kings … Sihon king of the Amorites … and Og the king of Bashan: / for his mercy endureth for ever”
Psalm 136 has the wonderful recurring refrain for each of its twenty-six verses: “for his mercy endureth for ever.” We “give thanks unto the Lord, for he is gracious:/ for his mercy endureth for ever.” He is “God of all gods”, “Lord of all lords” “who only doeth great wonders”, “who by his excellent wisdom made the heavens” and “laid out the earth above the waters” and all that is in them. The whole of creation arises from the enduring mercy of God, a theme which is especially important on Rogation Sunday in Eastertide. But the psalm then turns to the theme of redemption, to the story of salvation.
We are bidden to give thanks to the God “who smote Egypt in their first-born” who “overthrew Pharoah and his host in the Red Sea” and all because “his mercy endureth for ever.” And while we may easily rejoice in Israel’s deliverance from Egyptian tyranny, it might just give us a moment’s pause that it comes at such a price. We may easily rejoice, too, in the God “who led his people through the wilderness” and provided for them but, then, what exactly are we to make of the God “who smote great kings” even “mighty kings” like “Sihon, king of the Amorites” “and Og the king of Bashan” and all because “his mercy endureth for ever.” This is mercy?
Mercy here seems rather selective and rather vengeful and violent. Yet the psalm recalls the deep and profound and difficult lessons by which Israel learns about the truth and the majesty of God and, ultimately, about the divine mercy which underlies the whole of creation and redemption. The Scriptures challenge our presuppositions and sentimentalism. These are stories about tough love!
The challenges of the Scriptures come in many different forms. The context of the enduring mercy of the God “who smote great kings and slew mighty kings” like Sihon and Og is, perhaps, even more challenging than our unease about violence. The context of those verses is God’s victory over human presumption by way of a talking donkey! God makes dumb asses speak! I don’t just mean you and me. Let me explain.
Balak, the King of Moab, has seen what God has done through Israel to “Og the King of Bashan” and “Sihon, King of the Amorites”, those mighty kings whom he slew “because his mercy endureth for ever”. But in order to avoid a similar fate and be ousted from the land, Balak undertakes to hire the prophet Balaam to curse his enemies, namely Israel. In other words, Balak wants to employ God’s power for his own immediate political ends. Balaam is to be his agent. Rent a prophet. Rent a priest. It is all the same. It is really a kind of idolatry which reflects a kind of atheism.
The story of Balaam’s ass confronts us with the principle of God as Absolute that defines the Judaic, Christian and Islam understanding in which both idolatry and atheism are strongly repudiated. The biblical story here is both complex and profound. It captures a certain moment: the problematic of making God subject to us rather than us subject to God.
In one way of reading the story, Balaam temporizes, at first, refusing to come to Balak and, then, agreeing to come, the implication being that he has succumbed to Balak’s repeated and forced demands. There are the strong temptations to conform to worldly expectations and demands; in short, to pervert the word of God to serve human ends and purposes, whether to curse what should not be cursed or to bless what should not be blessed; in short, to do what pleases people rather than what pleases God.
Balaam will indeed go to Balak but it will be after receiving a lesson from God about what he is to say, a lesson learned by way of his dumb ass who speaks to warn him about messing around with God’s word and way. “How can I curse whom God has not cursed,” says Balaam, “Must I not take heed to speak what the Lord puts in my mouth?” That is, after all, what it means to be a prophet.
Balaam has come out of the confusions and ambiguities of the prophetic ministry to learn the word and will of God which must condition his discourse. Our lesson is the oracle of Balaam, “the oracle of the man whose eye is opened, the oracle of him who hears the words of God, who sees the vision of the Almighty, falling down but having his eyes uncovered.” Eyes wide open. He has become enlightened about the majesty and the truth and the power of God which cannot be manipulated, twisted and perverted to our imaginary goals and purposes. We deceive ourselves. God cannot be fooled. We fool ourselves. The dumb ass is God’s agent who enlightens us about our folly. We are dumber than any dumb ass yet God can use the simplest things of creation to teach us about his grandeur, his wonder and his truth. He can even use me and you! But let us be clear. It is for our sake and for our good and for God’s glory. In the long end of the day, only the truth can be known and loved; only truth and love triumph over human sin and presumption.
Today is known as Rogation Sunday. Rogation refers explicitly to prayer. Prayer is not about our groveling before God. Prayer is not about our whining. Prayer is not about manipulating God. Prayer is not about us simply. It is about our participation in the life of God revealed in Jesus Christ. Prayer, properly speaking, places us in the motion of the Son’s love for the Father in the Spirit. We take our part in prayer with the God who seeks our prayer. Prayer unites us to God.
It requires the constant purifying of our hearts and minds. In the Eucharistic gospel for this day (BCP, p. 197), Jesus lays out wonderfully and powerfully who he is and what he is for us and what it means for prayer. “In the world,” he says, “ye have tribulation. But be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.” In a way, it simply means that we are not to be defined by the world, the place of passing fads and fantasies, the place of limitation and incompleteness, the place of machinations and agendas, such as the Balaks of our world and day, our churches and communities. What is that overcoming of the world? It is the triumph of God’s grace restoring not destroying nature. It provides the meaning of prayer. Everything is gathered into the primary relationship of God with God in God signaled so perfectly in Christ’s words: “I came forth from the Father and am come into the world: again, I leave the world, and go to the Father.” Amazing words. Everything is gathered into that relationship, the divine relationship.
Prayer places us and our world with God. “You never love the world aright,” the poet, Thomas Traherne, notes, “until you learn to love it in God.” And so with everything else. We never love aright until we love in prayer, placing ourselves, our friends and our world with God in prayer. Prayer reaches out into every aspect of our lives. To pray is to live what we pray, or at least to attempt to do so, hence confession remains an ever present and necessary presence, itself a form of prayer and praise. God gives us words to say and think, words to live by and act upon in our lives. Sometimes challenging and complex stories awaken us to the grandeur of God’s engagement with our humanity without which we are dead in ourselves and therefore not alive to God and his mercy.
Balaam learned from a dumb ass whom God made to speak. Balaam learned that blessing (and cursing) can only arise from the heart that is with God in prayer. That means honouring God in his truth and majesty rather than taking God captive to our whims and follies or giving in to the little schemes of petty tyrants like Balak. God is God and not simply what we want him to be for ourselves. To learn this is mercy, the mercy that “endureth forever.”
Fr. David Curry
Rogation Sunday, MP
May 2014