Today is Rogation Sunday. The fifth Sunday in Easter, and the last Sunday before Ascension – where we commemorate Christ’s ascension up into heaven.

 

  Rogation days have been a time of tilling and planting. It is easy to forget in our modern world just how reliant people were on the sheer mercy of God for fair weather and a bountiful harvest. So many will not realize that it is only by His blessing that we are not in that same state today.

Beginning to be set apart in the church in the 5th century, the Rogation Day custom in England after the Reformation, was to have processions around the boundaries of the parish, praying for God’s blessing of the crops and a good yield. The word Rogation comes from the Latin word for prayer, which is rather fitting, as planting time truly is a time for faith. Who knows what lies ahead for anyone of us? May God bless this whole land, and may we ever remember how strange it is in history for any people to fear bad weather so little.

 

  Let us remember the bidding words from our Psalm earlier today:

“GOD be merciful unto us, and bless us, * and show us the light of his countenance, and be merciful unto us;

That thy way may be known upon earth, * thy saving health among all nations.” (Psalm 67:1-2 BCP)

Amen.

 

  In our first lesson at Morning Prayer, we read the promise that God spoke through His prophet Ezekiel:

“And I will raise up for them a plant of renown, and they shall be no more consumed with hunger in the land, neither bear the shame of the heathen any more.Thus shall they know that I the Lord their God am with them, and that they, even the house of Israel, are my people, saith the Lord God.”             (Ezekiel 34:29-30)

 

  As is so common in scripture, the promises of the Lord are true in more than one way. We are the people of the Lord, for He has planted the seed of faith in us. The seed of faith is the knowledge that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. God has planted this seed in us that, that through it we might produce good fruits.

 

  This same seed was planted in the apostles. Not only by God the Father, as Jesus tells Peter when he first correctly proclaimed that He is the “Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matthew 16:16), but also planted by Jesus Himself, through the 40 days He spent with the disciples after His resurrection. Like every new seed needs water to grow, through His proofs and His teachings, He was preparing them to lead the church after His ascension to the Father. Through such preparation would have started long before.

 

  He had taught them many things. One of which we explicitly do each day, when we pray the “Our Father”. It is the prayer that Christ taught His disciples, and we as disciples of Jesus Christ still say that same prayer.

Yet in today’s Gospel reading, we see the seeds He planted in them for what would come next, even before He was crucified:

“And in that day ye shall ask me nothing. Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, he will give it you.

Hitherto have ye asked nothing in my name: ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full.” (John 16:23-24)

 

  Such is the marvel of scripture. Here we learn that Jesus instructs His disciples to ask for all things in His name, but His instruction is not simply to them, but also to each of us. We are instructed by Jesus Christ Himself, to ask all things in His name. This is the planting of the Chirstian faith in us, as well as in them, for our hope rest in Jesus Christ. He is our Savior, and we have no other.

 

  He is teaching us, and them, to treat Him as their mediator and advocate. For from the moment He ascended into heaven, to sit at the right hand of the Father, that is exactly who He has been, for all those who love Him.

“At that day ye shall ask in my name: and I say not unto you, that I will pray the Father for you:

For the Father himself loveth you, because ye have loved me, and have believed that I came out from God.” (John 16:26-27)

 

  We bear witness to Jesus Christ in our love for Him and our love for one another. The Father loves the Son, and by our love for the Son, our Savior, who is both fully God and fully man, God the Father loves us too.

 

  But even here we see Jesus preparing His disciples, as He is does all of us, for the pain which lies ahead:

“I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world: again, I leave the world, and go to the Father.”

“Behold, the hour cometh, yea, is now come, that ye shall be scattered, every man to his own, and shall leave me alone: and yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me.These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.” (John 16:28,32-33)

 

  Therefore, in our trials and tribulations, our pain, sorrows, and discontents, let us ever remember the promise of God, that our “joy will be full”. For Jesus Christ is the Son of God, who died for us and rose again. It is in Him we can have hope, for it is in Him that we can trust. If by Him we produce good fruits, then from Him we have promise that we shall rise again.

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- Deacon Acker