Acts 17: 22 – 31 Rogation Sunday
I think Rogation days are probably a lost tradition for most of us. It used to be the day when
the Church asked for God’s blessing on the crops, that we would have a
bountiful harvest.
You may have heard of
the tradition of ‘beating the bounds’, when the Rector would get his cassock
dirty, while he and the church folk would walk round the boundaries of their
parish, praying for God’s protection over their crops for the next year.
Today, not many of us
get our livelihoods directly from the production of food, yet it is good to be
reminded of our dependence upon those who do – as well as our responsibility
for the environment - asking the Lord to
bless the fields, the crops, and the farmers who produce our food.
We’ve seen on the news
that our farmers are struggling, in the absence of migrant workers, to find a
work force to pick the crops.
That might make us more
grateful, more aware of what comes into our supermarkets and onto our table.
I wonder if any of you
have been using some of your spare time in ‘lock down’ to grow some of your own
food? We’ve been growing tomatoes from seed in the greenhouse and I hope you
will see Marilyn’s raised beds and a friend of mine’s strawberries.
Pottering in the
garden or going for walks makes us feel better, doesn’t it? It’s good for our
mental, as well as our physical well-being. God has given us this beautiful
world to enjoy that it might lift our hearts in praise and thanksgiving.
It’s interesting
how all this connects with our reading from Acts for today. The people of
Athens had their gods. Some were responsible for the harvest and if the Greeks
didn’t get a good crop, they believed the gods were punishing them. So they
built many shrines to many gods - and one in Athens was erected to the ‘unknown
god’ – perhaps so that all the options were covered.
The Apostle Paul
presents to them a very different God; one “who made the earth hospitable”, one
who could be known in Jesus; and one who doesn’t live in shrines.
I think that if the
Apostle Paul had been speaking today, he might have said ‘Neither does this God
who made the world and everything in it, live in church buildings’!
It is now 8 weeks since we met in our Church building. Are you
missing the building? it’s very understandable. We have a beautiful building
and the act of regularly meeting together there is sorely missed.
Instead, we are forced to
worship and pray in our homes and in our gardens, on our walks and even looking
at the computer screen! But maybe we are discovering this truth that Paul
conveys that God is everywhere
I do pray that the
presence of God who is with us everywhere, is becoming more real to us all
these days. Paul says: “God doesn’t play hide and seek with us. He’s not
remote, he’s near”. Is that what you are experiencing at the moment, or does
Paul’s description of ‘groping around in the dark’ trying to find him, fit you better?
That can be the case when we don’t have our church community to share with in
worship and study and conversation. If that’s the case pick up the phone to
someone you trust.
Maybe you just need to
hear again that the God who created us is reaching out to us in love. He’s not
far from any of us. In fact, “he is nearer to you than you are to yourself”. We
just need to turn around and look in the other direction – that’s what Paul
means here by repent. Turn around and look into the face of the Living, Risen
Lord Jesus.
May that be our
experience and then when we are able to meet again there will be lament for all
we and our world has lost over this time, but also joy, not just at our being
together again, but because Jesus is in our midst.
