by CCW | 12 May 2026 11:30
Nothing better reinforces the Rogation idea of the interrelationship of our humanity, the created order, and God than these readings for The Fruits of the Earth and the Labours of Men[1]. They ground us in the logic of creation – good in each of its parts and very good in its unity as a whole. As the Gospel suggests, our relation to God’s creation provides a key analogy or metaphor for our spiritual lives. The kingdom of heaven is likened to “a grain of mustard seed” which when sown and grown “becomes greater than all herbs, and shooteth out great branches; so that the birds of the air may lodge under the shadow of it.”
This offers a different way of thinking about our relation to nature than what belongs to the Darwinian world of endless competition. It emphasizes instead a sense of co-operation and interdependence and one that mirrors the life of God as Trinity. Creation, in the Jewish and Christian understanding, insists on our connection to everything in the created order and our being made in the image of God. “In the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.” The pronoun “him” refers to Adam – meaning our humanity generically speaking; the pronoun “them” to the fundamental distinction between male and female that belongs to the reality of our humanity within the distinctive order of all things created. Creation is really about a relation to the Creator through a world where each thing has a distinctive quality and is good in itself and good for us in the forms of its distinctive being. Creation in this sense is providential care for what is created and in its relation with every other thing in creation. Genesis teaches that God has “given every herb bearing seed” to Adam, our humanity, for food, for our good within the goodness of creation as a whole.
This analogy belongs to many such parables with which, as Mark puts it, Jesus “spake the word unto them, as they were able to hear it.” Through the visible things of creation we learn to think about the invisible things of God. It is a powerful way of thinking known as kataphatic theology which argues for a positive relationship between God and the world; thinking through images, through parables and likenesses.
This is echoed in the lesson from Deuteronomy about “a land flowing with milk and honey,” “a land of hills and valleys, which drinks water by the rain from heaven, a land which the Lord your God cares for.” And not just the land but also the sea as in the lesson from Luke about gathering up a net full of fish but signalling the call to be fishers of men in the life of the Apostolic Church. And Solomon’s dedication prayer at Evensong from 1 Kings recalls God’s covenant with Israel and with creation itself; a point which carries over in the 2nd lesson from James. In so many ways, creation itself points us to our life in God.
Yet, as Rogation Sunday reminds us, we learn something more that goes beyond parable and analogy to grasp an underlying and all sufficient truth about God communicated to us through the words of Jesus. He is the Word and Son of the Father, and prayer, as he teaches, is about asking the Father in the name of the Son in the power of the Spirit. Creation is theologically speaking the work of the Trinity, of all three divine persons. To speak of God as Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier focuses only on the modes of activity but fails to ground them in the co-inherent life of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. They are not the names of God so much as indicators of the actions or activity of God. Properly speaking, they belong entirely to God the Father, Son and Holy Ghost or Spirit, something which we learn from Jesus. “No one has ever seen God but the only-begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known.”
Here on Rogation Tuesday our human labours in the land, planting the seed and nurturing its growth, is an image of prayer which signifies all the service, all the activity of our lives, as ordered towards God. God is all in all, and Rogationtide signals the gathering of all things into unity in God from whom all good things do come. Prayer is work and work is prayer that makes us partakers of the divine nature, drawing us home to God as Trinity. Ultimately that gathering is Ascension. The lifting up of our hands and heart to God. Such is the very motion of our liturgy; our life in prayer.
Fr. David Curry
Rogation Tuesday 2026
Source URL: https://christchurchwindsor.ca/2026/05/12/sermon-for-rogation-tuesday-2/
Copyright ©2026 Christ Church unless otherwise noted.