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Sermon for Easter 6A: Rogation Sunday

May 5, 2002

Today is the Sixth Sunday of Easter; and the semi-official subtitle for today is Rogation Sunday. In the traditional calendar of the Church Year, the Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday following today are the Rogation Days—and, by extension, that makes today Rogation Sunday. Rogation Days, according to old Roman custom, were days of processions from the church out to the farm fields, where the priests and the people would pray for a good growing season, would pray that the season would be fruitful and the crops would grow well to bring in a bountiful harvest in the fall. It’s kind of the beginning of the process that ends with the harvest festival at Thanksgiving. In our times the idea of Rogation has been expanded, so that we pray not only for the growth of agricultural crops, but we pray for the fruitfulness and well-being of the whole created order—including human beings within that created order. Today we give thanks to God for all of Creation, and we pray to God to sustain the Creation, and grace the Creation, so that Creation will grow and flower and bear the fruit of God’s will for good in all things. Our Prayer Book has special prayers for Rogation Days on pages 258-259; you might want to use them in your own prayers today and tomorrow and the days after tomorrow. Today is our day to celebrate the life of the Risen Christ as a gift of new life for all of Creation.

“Creation” is a very interesting word in the English language, because we can take it in two senses: a kind of noun-sense, and a kind of verb-sense. In its noun-sense, “Creation” refers to “that which is created,” the thing that is the product of creativity, the creature. In that sense we talk about an artwork as an artist’s creation, or the whole Universe as God’s Creation. But in its verb-sense, “Creation” refers to “the act of creating,” the process of creativity, the creative work that brings something into being. In that sense we talk about God’s Creation, not just as the Universe that is made, but the ongoing and ever-present work of creating by which God keeps the Universe in being. Both the “thing that is created” and the “act of creating” are there in our word “Creation.”

And both of those meanings are here in our celebration of Creation for Rogation Sunday. We celebrate the great wide world that God has made, and at the same time we celebrate God’s continuing presence in the world, and the gift of sharing in God’s own creativity that God gives to all us creatures.

Psalm 148, the portion of the Psalter assigned for us today, is a marvelous poetic representation of the act of creativity spread through all Creation. Psalm 148 depicts the entire Universe as one vast coordinated choir of praise. All the levels of Creation come together to praise the Lord: the heavens and the heights, angels, sun and moon and stars, weather in the atmosphere, sea monsters in the deeps, mountains, forests, wild animals, domestic animals, nations of humanity, all arranged in concentric circles of song and praise. And in the center of it all, leading the whole choir in the sacrifice of thanksgiving, God’s faithful people, a people who are near God’s heart, a people who know God’s Name, and praise the Name of the Lord in and through all things. The psalm shows the world not just as a created thing, but as a creative thing; the psalm shows that God created creatures in such a way that they can participate in their own creation, and use their gifts of creativity to bring forth thanks and praise to God.

And it is in this context that Jesus speaks to his disciples—Jesus speaks to us—in the Gospel today, and calls us to be part of the creativity of the Universe in a special and faithful way.  “I am the vine; you are the branches,” Jesus says. “Apart from me you can do nothing; but if you abide in me and I abide in you,” Jesus says, “then the same creative power of God that is in me will be in you, and you will bear God’s fruit.” The Word of God incarnate in Jesus, the Word of God through whom all things were made and in whom all things hold together, that Word can be in us, too, the way the sap of the vine flows in the branches, so that, through our creative gifts, through our intentions and actions in the world, through us, God will create justice and peace and love, right relationships and well-being and giving and receiving in generosity and grace, to be shared with the whole cosmic choir of Creation. That’s what it means for us to bear God’s fruit; that’s what it means for us to become Christ’s disciples.

And we show forth that creativity in all our acts of celebration and in all our acts of service. We show forth creativity in the way we share the fruits of our labors—our money, our talent, our time—to support ministries like Episcopal Homes, which is a special focus of our prayer and offering this day. We show forth creativity in the way we bring together bits and pieces and odds and ends and all sorts and conditions of stuff and make a rummage sale that’s a service event for the neighborhood and a social event for parish volunteers—and a good fundraiser for special projects and ministries. We show forth creativity in the way we worship, the way we blend our voices and our thoughts and our prayers and our sorrows and our joys to make one shared offering to God and one shared receiving of God in communion. We show forth creativity in the way we go forth from church, go forth into the world, to work and to play, to spend time with family and friends, to do our jobs and do them well in faithfulness to the potential God has put within us, to go for bike rides and read novels and have dinner parties, to share words that bring a little beauty into someone’s life, to do volunteer work that brings a little more justice and compassion into our society, to reveal the joy of the Lord that brings joy to the world. All of these things are ways of bearing Christ’s fruit; all of these are ways of showing thanks and praise to God in whom we live and move and have our being; all of these are ways of being creative in the Creation that comes from God.

So on this Rogation Sunday we celebrate Creation, and we pray that God will make us truly creative, so that we will bear much fruit, and so become—and so be—Jesus’ disciples.

In the Name of God: Yahweh, Jesus, and Holy Spirit. Amen.