Category: Sermons

“Whereunto shall we liken the kingdom of heaven?”

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. 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.

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“I will therefore that men pray everywhere, lifting up holy hands”

Rogation Monday provides an extended commentary on the nature of prayer. The Eucharistic readings are complemented by the Office readings from Deuteronomy 7. 6-13 this morning and from Matthew 6. 5-18; and then in the evening from Deuteronomy 8 and Matthew 6.19-end; in short, a theology of the land as grounded in prayer, particularly the Lord’s Prayer which is given in both its Matthaean and Lucan forms.

The reading from Deuteronomy this morning emphasizes the theme of holiness through prayer in terms of God’s love for his people; in short, God’s mercy and goodness as distinct from our deserving. Paul in 1st Timothy expands on that sensibility in exhorting us to pray “for all” by way of “supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks”, particularly “for kings and all that are in authority”; the condition for leading “a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty.” In the Christian understanding, that is explicitly grounded in Christ. “For there is one God, and one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus; who gave himself a ransom for all.” Prayer shares in that work of divine mediation. We are gathered to God in prayer which is nothing less than God’s gathering us to himself and to our life in him and with him. His work in us and our work in him.

This understanding impells the sense of the universality of prayer, “praying everywhere, lifting up holy hands”. Praying everywhere and for all. Luke gives us the shorter form of the Lord’s Prayer taught to us by Jesus not on the basis of “if you pray” but “when you pray” before going on to emphasize the necessity of prayer as importunity. Prayer makes demands of us towards the good of others in spite of what is convenient and easy for us. Thus prayer is more than our personal interest and goodwill; it is rather about the larger sense of God moving in us. “Ask, and it shall be given you” – Rogation reminds us about the essential aspect of prayer ias asking; “seek, and ye shall find” – desire  assumes a good that is to be sought and known; “knock, and it shall be opened unto you” – a reference to the theme of importunity and the necessity of asking and persevering in asking and seeking, not unlike the Canaanite woman or the blind man, Bartimaeus, on the roadside outside Jericho. Prayer is our life in and with God through seeking his will and purpose for the whole of our humanity in all of its diverse circumstances and needs. The very act of prayer as asking is equally about our learning what to pray for and in what kinds of ways.

That sense of prayer as learning is seen in the evening lesson from Deuteronomy and in the remaining verses of Matthew 6, the continuation of The Sermon on the Mount. In other words, we are taught about prayer as belonging to God’s will through Moses and the Law and then from Jesus himself in Matthew, once again, complementing the eucharistic Gospel from Luke. All of this extends to the Collect, Lesson and Gospel for the Fruits of the Earth and the Labours of Men provided for Rogationtide that recall us to our humanity as made in the image of God and placed in the world to act in the image of God’s domination or lordship of all creation. Our labours are understood in terms of the parable of the mustard seed. How much is made out of something so little and for the good of the whole created order! Prayer is our work, our work in and with God through Christ Jesus the mediator and the redeemer of the whole of creation. In the lifting up of hands and the lifting up of our hearts, all things are gathered to God by God and by God in us by prayer. Rogation and Ascension reveal the radical nature of prayer.

Fr. David Curry
Rogation Monday, 2026

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“The Father himself loveth you, because ye have loved me, and have believed
that I came out from God”

Rogation Sunday highlights the radical nature of prayer. It does so by way of attention to the threefold relationship of humanity, nature, and God. The word, rogation, derives from the Latin, rogo, rogare. It simply means to ask. Prayer in its most basic sense is about asking. To ask is like the desire to know. Wanting to know is really about asking to learn. It assumes, first, that we don’t know all and everything, and, second, that there are things to be learned, knowledge to be gained and appreciated, as it were, in short, loved. To ask for anything assumes that we lack something which we think is good and right to have. Our wanting acknowledges our lack.

But in asking there is the spiritual insight and acknowledgement that all and every good belongs to God, and that all knowledge and wisdom comes from God. Prayer in this sense is the honest awareness that nothing that we have or enjoy is simply of our own making and doing. It belongs to our relationship with God and with one another. Rogationtide brings out how our relationship with God and with one another is grounded – pardon the pun – in the land where we are placed. Rogationtide in the Christian understanding offers a theology of the land and of the meaning of human labour and life in prayer and in situ.

The Easter mystery of the Resurrection is not about a flight from nature into some vague and indeterminate fantasy of human imagination. It is the most radical affirmation of creation and of human individuality. It is found in the gathering of all things back to God from whom all things come. It signals the freedom of our lives as spiritual beings in the very places where we live. Where we live is where God is to be praised and honoured. What Rogation Sunday celebrates is the redemption of all things to God, especially, the things of the land, of nature. Here is a corrective to Earth Day, to all of the environmental concerns of our global world. How? By reminding us of our connection to creation and to the redemption of the world and our humanity, we are to be not just “hearers” but “doers of the word,” learning how to “think those things that be good” and to “perform the same,” as the Collect puts it, albeit only by God’s “holy inspiration” and “merciful guiding.”

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“The Spirit of truth … will guide you into all truth”

The paradox of the last three Sundays of Easter is captured in the recurring refrain, “because I go to my Father.” Jesus prepares the disciples for his going away which is the condition of his being with us in his body, the Church. It is all part of the “farewell discourse” of Jesus in John’s Gospel.

The Gospel engages the world. That is not the same thing as being collapsed into the world or being conformed to the world. Nor is it about making accommodations to the world with respect to the agendas and issues of our day. There have always been such tendencies and temptations. They can be, perhaps, the occasion for the discovery or recovery of the deeper truths of the Gospel. “The Spirit of truth,” it is said in today’s gospel, “will guide you into all truth.”

But what is that truth? Is it simply something which we happen to agree upon today only to change our minds tomorrow? Is the truth simply our acquiescence to the loudest voices drumming their mantras of social and political correctness into our heads? Is truth simply the will of those in power? Is it simply our feelings and opinions? “The Spirit of truth,” as we shall hear at Pentecost, “shall teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said to you.” Somehow truth is found in the divine relations between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit; in short, in the divine life opened to view through the Resurrection and Passion of Jesus Christ and which has its culmination in the Ascension. All truth and wisdom belong to God.

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“Believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father in me;
or else believe me for the very works’ sake.”

The centrality and the uniqueness of Christ is an essential doctrine of the Christian Faith. For Anglicans, this is captured in Article XVIII of the Thirty-nine Articles; the only anathema in all of the articles concerns the denial of the centrality and the uniqueness of Christ. It is only through the centrality and the uniqueness of Christ that Christians can and must engage the religions of the world as well as the forms of contemporary culture. And sometimes the pattern of the Sanctorale, especially of the Apostles of the Christian Church, coincide with the themes of the season and illustrate certain features of the Apostolic Faith and teaching.

The Feast of St. Philip and St. James is one of three apostolic pairings in the cycle of the Church Year and falls within Eastertide. The other pairing is found in the late Fall with the joint feast of St. Simon and St. Jude which completes the cycle of the twelve apostles and usher us into the omni gatherum feast and festival of All Saints. At the end of June there is another pairing though of a somewhat different provenance in The Feast of St. Peter and St. Paul. The readings for all these feasts in the Offices is instructive about the Scriptural witness to their lives, sometimes simply through the mention of their names.  The readings for Philip and James canvass a number of important texts about their witness, particularly the witness of Philip. But note that the Epistle and Gospel for their feast complement the Eastertide readings from the Gospel of John and on the next two Sundays, the Epistle of James. The Gospel reading is the beginning of Jesus’s farewell discourse that illustrates the radical meaning of Christ’s going from us in going to the Father and what that means for his abiding in us and us in him. The Epistle reading from James exhorts us to seek the wisdom of God and not to waver in our faith and understanding. James also will emphasize the importance of the works of faith.

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“Your sorrow shall be turned into joy … joy [that] no one taketh from you”

The Gospel readings for the next three Sundays encompass almost all of Chapter 16 of John’s Gospel. The central part of Jesus’s “farewell discourse” (Ch. 14-17) ends with his high priestly prayer in Chapter 17, which carried us into Good Friday and Easter. Look in your Prayer Books for a moment and note how Chapter 16 is read on these Sundays.

Today on The Third Sunday after Easter we read from verses 16 to 22 of that chapter. Next Sunday, The Fourth Sunday after Easter, we read from verses 5 to 15 and on The Fifth Sunday after Easter, Rogation Sunday, we read from verses 23 to 33, the very end of the Chapter. In brief, we go from the middle to the beginning and then to the end of the Chapter. The only verses not read on these Sundays are verses 1-4, though they will be read on The Sunday after Ascension Day. In a way, they signal the entire project of Eastertide and Ascensiontide. “These things have I told you,” Jesus says, “that, when the time shall come, ye may remember that I told you of them” (vs. 4).

We begin today in media res, in the midst of things, at least the midst of Chapter 16. Jesus is preparing the disciples and us for the meaning of his going from us in terms of Death, Resurrection, and Ascension which are, paradoxically, the very conditions of his being with us. His words preceding that movement now serve to teach us what it means in terms of our abiding in him and he in us. His going to the Father is ultimately the homecoming of the Son and the exultation of our humanity. Such is the Ascension and our joy.

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“I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known of mine”

Jesus says that he is “the good shepherd”, emphasis on the adjective “good” which, I will argue, is also substantive, meaning the Good that is God. He is “the good shepherd,” he says, not once, not twice, but three times. And he explains what it means.

It is one of the most concrete of the seven so-called “I am” sayings of Jesus. All the others are to some extent or other more abstract and general: the bread of life, the light of the world, the door of the sheep, the resurrection and the life, the way, the truth and the life, the true vine. They are notable metaphors for the nature of our incorporation in Christ. They speak to who he is essentially and absolutely in himself and what that means for us in our lives. They are, in this sense, analogies that point us to the mystery of God understood universally through the particularities of human experience that at the same time reveal who he is in himself. Like his saying “before Abraham was, I am”, they echo God’s Revelation of himself as “I am who I am” to Moses in the burning bush.

Good in Greek, (αγαθος) also means beautiful, (καλος). The terms are interchangeable. Three times Jesus says that he is the “good shepherd” (καλος). Beautiful. It is a strong statement. You know, of course, the Parable of the Good Samaritan, one of the essential stories for Christians about the ethical understanding, meaning what is it that is right to do because it is what is true and good to think and be. Nowhere in that parable is the Samaritan actually identified as the “good” Samaritan. That is, understandably, an interpretation that arises from our reflection on the power and truth of that story.

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“He showed unto them his hands and his side”

They were behind closed doors, huddled in fear and uncertainty. It is an apt metaphor for ourselves and our culture hiding behind the closed doors of our minds in the endless confusion of opinions and uncertainties about ourselves and our world, caught in a maelstrom of conflicting ideas, no longer “assured of certain certainties”, (or, for that matter, chained to our digital devices whose whole purpose is to make us think in a mechanical manner). The closed doors of our minds are like tombs where we are buried in ourselves. Yet in the wonder of the Resurrection the tomb becomes the womb of new life, the radical new and ever renewing life that is Resurrection. This story shows that transformation from death to life most compellingly.

The seventeenth-century preacher, Lancelot Andrewes, preaching on this Easter text in 1609, notes that there are five Resurrection appearances of Christ on Easter Day but suggests that this story is the chief or the most significant. Christ appears to Mary Magdalene, to the women coming from the sepulchre, to the two on the Road to Emmaus, to St. Peter, and now here to eleven of the disciples and those with them behind closed doors. As Andrewes suggests there is something comprehensive and universal in these stories. They transcend, I think, the conflict narratives of competing universalities and point to something greater, more complementary, and inclusive.

He observes that “the first two appearances of Christ are to women, the last three to men; so to both sexes. To Peter and to Mary Magdalene, so to sinners of both sexes. To the eleven as signifying the clergy, and to those with them signifying the laity; so to both those states of life as well … But of all the five, this is the chief for this here is when they were all together rather than scattered.” Gathered not scattered.

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“Behold my hands and my feet”

The Gospel for Easter Tuesday follows immediately upon the beautiful story of the Road to Emmaus, one of the most comprehensive accounts of how the Resurrection comes to birth in us. The crucial feature is that Jesus teaches us the Resurrection most clearly and most fully.

In Luke’s account in the Gospel read on Easter Monday, two things stand out: first, the opening of the Scriptures and the opening of our eyes in making himself known through the breaking of the bread. In the first, the opening of the Scriptures, Jesus gives us a way of understanding the events of the Passion by reference to Moses and the Prophets “the things concerning himself” but it is the second, his action in breaking the bread and giving thanks that crystallizes and confirms the teaching.

On Easter Tuesday, two things also stand out that are critical to the making known of the doctrine of the Resurrection: first, he shows them his hands and his feet and he opens our understanding again through the Scriptures. The first shows us one of the primary aspects of the Resurrection. It is made known through the signs of the Passion. This underscores the theological point that the Resurrection is known in the Passion and the Passion in the Resurrection as testament to God as life and love made manifest and alive in us. The point here is that Jesus shows them the marks of his Passion in his hands and his feet. He bids us look on him whom we have pierced but those marks of sin and human cruelty have become the signs of transforming love and life.

The second is the opening of the Scriptures which follows upon his showing us his hands and his feet. This is the reverse order from Easter Monday where the opening of the Scriptures precedes his making himself known in the breaking of the bread. All these ‘events’ go together and complement one another in the gathering of the understanding into the mystery of Christ now risen but showing us the marks of the Passion now transfigured, we might say, to become the means of our learning about the radical truth of God as love and life, that is to say, Resurrection.

The Easter Tuesday Gospel underscores the point that it is really the opening out of the whole of the Scriptures – meaning the Hebrew Scriptures – that provide the Christian understanding of the Resurrection but through Jesus as the exegete we might say. Luke here has Jesus makes reference to what is “written in the Law of Moses, and in the Prophets, and in the Psalms” concerning himself; in short, the TANAKH, the acronym for the Torah (the Law), the Nevi’im (the Prophets) and the Ketuvim (the Writings) as embodied in the Psalms. But Luke also shows us what this means for us: the preaching of repentance for the forgiveness of sins as belonging to our witness to the truth of the Passion and the Resurrection.

Just as our heart burned within us when he walked with us on the way and opened the Scriptures to us on Easter Monday, an image of being inwardly pierced or moved in our hearts and minds, so on Easter Tuesday, we are inwardly pierced by beholding Christ pierced but alive. The marks of the Passion are like words written in his body that open us out to the radical understanding of the Resurrection.

“Behold my hands and my feet”

Fr. David Curry
Easter Tuesday, 2026

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“Did not our heart burn within us?”

This complements the text which has carried us through Holy Week and Easter: “a sword shall pierce through thy own soul also, that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed”. Luke’s story of ‘The Road to Emmaus’ is the most comprehensive account of the coming to birth in us of the idea of the Resurrection. It shows us its most essential principle: It is the Risen Christ who teaches most clearly the doctrine of the Resurrection and its meaning for us and in us.

This Gospel story read on Easter Monday presents us with the logic of our learning about the Resurrection. Two disciples are fleeing from Jerusalem in fear and uncertainty following the events of the Passion and the first report of the Resurrection via the witness of the empty tomb and the vision of the Angels’ to the women. Jesus comes alongside Cleopas and the other disciple and enters into their conversation. He is not recognised by them because they think he is dead. But he effectively draws out of them exactly what they think has happened about which they are in perplexity.

It is a perfect scene of teaching in its Socratic sense. They are in fear and utter confusion about what has happened. Only then are we capable of learning because we can no longer be “assured of certain certainties” (T.S. Eliot, The Preludes). Jesus draws out of them an account of what has happened – the crucifixion, the finding of the empty tomb by the women, the angelic vision, all which is conveyed to the disciples but all as uncertain and confusing. Only then Jesus says, “Foolish ones and slow of heart to believe”. Only then does he explain the Scriptures from Moses and all the Prophets “the things concerning himself.” In short, he provides them with a way of understanding his Passion and the culmination of its meaning in his Resurrection. All through the opening of the Scriptures, meaning the Old Testament as Christians would later say.

But that isn’t the whole story. They don’t get it all just yet. Only in the last part of the story does the proverbial penny drop. They reach Emmaus and persuade Jesus to stay with them. “And it came to pass,” Luke tells us, that “he took bread, and blessed it, and brake, and gave to them.” This recalls the Last Supper. Luke simply tells us, “their eyes were opened, and they knew him.” The action crystallizes and confirms the teaching; a perfect witness to the complementarity of Word and Sacrament. And it changes them wonderfully, piercing them with a new understanding. “Did not our heart burn within us, while he talked with us by the way, and while he opened to us the Scriptures?” They return to Jerusalem no longer in fear and anxiety and tell the other disciples “how he was known of them in the breaking of the bread.”

The moving principle in the making known of the Resurrection is the Risen Christ by the Word audible and visible, his Word spoken in the witness of the Scriptures and his Word enacted in the Sacrament. Their hearts are moved and they are changed. And so may we.

“Did not our heart burn within us?”

Fr. David Curry
Easter Monday, 2026

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