Sermon for Rogation Sunday
May 17, 2009
by
The Right Reverend Royal Grote

Today is rogation sunday… the fifth sunday after easter. The observance of the ascension of our lord into heaven is but a few days away, and the easter season is coming to a close. Does anyone know what rogation means? No, it’s not a hair product for men. And it’s not a method of torture. Rogation means supplication… and what is supplication? Supplication is prayer. And prayer is our communication with the three-personed god, who made the heavens and the earth, and who desires our relationship with him to grow in grace. All loving relationships require proper communication. If the communication between a husband and wife has broken down, their relationship suffers. And our relationship with god is no different. If we are not on our knees, communicating with god, on a daily basis, this most fundamental and important of relationships will suffer. But, if prayer is indeed something that we are to do at all times and in all places, and especially when we assemble and meet together as the body of christ on The eighth day of the week, then why has the church enshrined her daily privilege and dutyTo supplicate the lord god for all sorts and conditions of men, with a feast day called rogation? Since the middle of the fifth century, this day, and the three days following, have been known as the rogation days.

At this time of year, the earth having been renewed with the advent of spring, the faithful would process from their churches into the fields, chanting litanies; offering prayers; supplicating the lord of the harvest that he would pour out his blessing upon the fruits of the field and the tiller of the soil, in hopeful anticipation of a bountiful harvest of the plants that rose from the earth with the spring awakening. And, so, this rogation emphasis is tied to the rhythm of the seasons. It’s also a deeply agrarian thing; something we city slickers are not as much exposed to. But underlying it all…is a special emphasis on asking god to bless and provide for all our needs. In an earlier day, the general population was more sensitive to god’s seasonal provision. If the crops failed to yield produce, you were in big trouble for the year; you had no food to put on your table, and there was nothing to trade with.

Our own bp. Grote learned a thing or two about this on his family’s orchard. He relates how when the winter was particularly cold or when a icy freeze followed the early spring, after the peach buds blossomed, there would be no peach crop and a very lean year was in store. And, so, whenever the blast of a freezing storm threatened, the grote family would go to their knees and ask god to protect the fragile blossoms through the night. Our rogation day collect reminds us that all good things come from god and that we rely upon him and are his humble servants. Thus is our supplication intensified and focused upon our total reliance upon god, in his infinite goodness and mercy.

Have you ever experienced a time when an unexpected, life impacting situation confronted you, leaving you stunned and questioning the wisdom of god’s providence, in allowing it to happen? Bp. Grote, again, relates the story of a person attending school, who was one semester away from his graduation. He had reached that final day when he could no longer defer paying his tuition. The tuition had to be payed now, and in full, if he was to complete his education and graduate the next semester. He had around $50 saved, but needed several hundred more to meet the required amount. And, so, he fervently prayed for god’s provision. He was unswervingly committed to following god’s will in the matter, come what may. And that mean’t facing the possibility of having to quit school before his graduation, and to allow all his hard-earned hopes and aspirations to vanish like a puff of smoke. But, on that last day, a check came in the mail from a long-forgotten overpayment he had made on an insurance policy, which, combined with the $50 he had saved, equaled the exact amount needed to pay his tuition.
Sometimes god blesses us in this way way. He will answer our prayers at the eleventh hour, and through means and circumstances that we could never have anticipated. He does this, brethren, not because he takes a perverse pleasure in making us squirm, but because he sees the big picture, and we don’t. Sometimes we get the precise opposite of what it is that we want so badly, because in the whole scheme of things, our heavenly father knows it is better for us. Regardless, what we have to do is trust… even when to trust god is the most difficult thing in the world.

How do we receive what we truly need? By making our petitions in and through jesus christ; by trusting in the merciful purposes of god’s providence, and in being faithful. “ask and you shall receive, seek and you shall find, knock and it shall be opened unto you.” Very simple instructions, these; but they are things which you and i can’t ever afford to forget. “verily, verily, i say unto you, whatsoever ye shall ask the father in my name, he will give it to you. Hitherto have ye asked nothing in my name: ask and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full.” In our gospel lesson, jesus tells his disciples that if they pray to the father in his name, he will grant their request. Now, this is no enchanted mantra; we are not speaking here of a spiritual “ace up our sleeves” that we wave in god’s face, in order to secure acquisition of whatever it is we want, and god’s will be damned.

American pop-christianity is rife with individuals, who have the chutzpah to proclaim that as long as you have enough faith, you can control almighty god, like a genie in a bottle, and compel him to give you whatever you want, no strings attached. No, my brethren, true faith in god is thankful for whatever god graciously gives. And that’s true whether it’s what we’ve asked for or not.

We pray in and through the lord jesus using his name because he alone can make our prayers acceptable to the father. It is only in christ that we are acceptable to god. In christ the incarnate word we are adopted and made god’s blessed children through baptism in the three-fold name. And like a tender human father, who adores his children and gives them all that they need, our perfect father in heaven gives his adopted children in christ, everything they need and often, though not always, frustrates their attempts to aquire those things us that will hinder them.

To ask in jesus name is not only to ask through him; it is to ask according to his will. The faithful child will want to be obedient to his father. Out of love and a salutary fear, he will not want to do, say or ask for anything that is contrary to that loving relationship he enjoys with his father. We as faithful children, adopted by god, must recognize that our will should not be out of sorts with his. When our will is consistent with god’s, we will ask of him and receive the very best there is for us.

Our savior gives us here the very charter of christian prayer. The pledge of prayer is his solemn and most emphatic promise: "ask, and you will receive." when we ask in jesus name, he will join our prayers to his own and his prayers to ours. One commentator says, “he will transmit or discharge or transport our prayers for everything which he can approve, and he will approve every reasonable longing of our nature.” Thus, when we pray in jesus name, we own that astounding proclamation of st. Paul, in ephesians 3:12 : "we have boldness and confidence of access" to the father.

It is fitting that rogation comes right before ascension… it is through our lord’s ascension to the right hand of the father that he is installed as our great high priest, our eternal mediator and tireless advocate. What an incredible gift … the son of god, eternally beloved of the father, supplicating on our behalf for those things which he died to give us. In the name of jesus , our prayers ascend to the very throne room of heaven itself, as he himself did, and which is so beautifully symbolized in the rising smoke emanating from smoldering resins of incense. The ascended lord jesus makes our faithful prayers a sweet smelling sacrifice to god.

The divine liturgy brings all of this together…liturgy is our corporate prayer to god, in jesus’ name. Our procession into the heavenly courts, led by the cross, incarnates a spiritual reality, made possible in and through jesus’ name. Our confession of sin is heard and absolved through the shed blood of the lord jesus, in his name… our corporate prayers ascend to the father and are answered “through jesus christ our lord”. Our tithes and offerings are acceptable to god only by the name of jesus. And our holy invitation to eucharistic fellowship and communion in the body and blood of christ is given through the work and grace proclaimed in his sacred name.

So we know who we are asking; we know in whose name we are asking; but what attitude are we to possess in asking. Thankfulness, of course, is a given. But obedience and faithfulness are also necessary. The voice of st. James was heard in today’s epistle lesson. There is a venerable tradition which says that his knees were calloused from his constant kneeling in prayer. He is thus well qualified to instruct us on rogation or supplication sunday. In his epistle, he capitalizes on the necessity, not only to be hearers of god’s word, but doers. He proclaims that we are to bridle our tongue; practice merciful love, self-denying, thoughtful, resourceful charity; and to keep ourselves unspotted from the world. The difference between one who hears only and one who both hears and does is found in the contrast between one who "thinks he is religious" and the genuine article; true religion; religion “that is pure and undefiled before god."

“the word translated religion is "threskeia," and its meaning is not so much religion [in general] but worship in the sense of the outward expression of religion in ritual, liturgy and ceremony.”

Hence, our worship, our liturgy, our corporate prayers are pleasing to the father and accepted by him when we are being faithful to him. If we are not serving god… if we speak wrongly of others, if we fail to love our neighbor… if we do not minister the grace and truth of the gospel to those who need it most… our worship, our prayer is negativelyaffected.

One commentator puts it like this, “all through history men have tried to make ritual and liturgy a substitute for sacrifice and service. They have made religion splendid within the church at the expense of neglecting it outside the church.” This is not to suggest that it is wrong to offer god the noblest and the most splendid worship within his house; but it is to say that all such worship is empty and idle unless it sends a man out into the world to “love and serve the lord” by loving his fellow-men, and resolutely resisting the temptions of the world, the flesh and the devil. We must worship the lord in the beauty of holiness; but we must also let that worship incline us to be a doers of the word and not unprofitable hearers. In chapter v, st. James tells us that, “the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.”

So, my brethren, let us live lives of prayer. Let us remember to ask god so that we may receive. Let us remember to ask in thankfulness thorough the work and grace of our lord jesus christ. Let us learn to trust in god’s provision and his answer to our prayers. Let us walk in faithfulness and obedience before him, that our prayers will indeed avail much, unto his glory and the salvation of our souls and bodies. Let us pray.

O lord, from whom all good things do come; grant to us thy humble servants, that by thy holy inspiration we may think those things that are good, and by thy merciful guiding may perform the same; through jesus christ our lord.
Amen.