SERMON

Year B 6 Sunday of Easter ROGATION 5 MAY 2024

Readings Acts 10:44-end, Psalm 98, 1 John 5:1-6, John 15:9-17

It is good to be with you this morning celebrating Rogation Sunday in the heart of a thriving rural community. As Christians we have a duty to cherish God’s creation and care for the environment. Looking for information about agriculture today I came across some thoughts from the diocese of York, which like most of Cambridgeshire is a mixture of rural and urban economies. We depend completely on the biodiversity around us - the healthy soils, water and air we enjoy, as well as for the beauty of nature. We are in an area of arable and locally we see oilseed rape, wheat and barley in the fields around us here and in he surrounding area.

As well as the large farms there are orchards, small holdings to cater for the increased interest in home produced products is helping the industry. Farming is in a very interesting position at the moment. The industry offers great potential for those who can cope with change and manage risk. It will continue to increase its efficiency and become a vibrant contributor to the recovery of the world's economy. How are these comments related to Rogation Sunday.

So thinking about what Rogation means to us here in this farming community and surrounding area how do we interpret and make rogation relevant to us here?

What does Rogation mean? The word Rogation comes from the Latin verb ‘ rogare’ = to ask. Throughout this service we have been asking God to help us look after his creation and use it wisely and efficiently to enable us to live together in this community. However, we have to be careful not to turn Rogation Sunday into ‘ASKING’ Sunday. If we are not very careful asking can be at the centre of our praying and our understanding of what praying is. Sometimes it could appear that we are trying to persuade God to do something which he is not in fact already doing because we don’t trust him. We are not asking God to do any more than He is already doing. He is looking after his world, although with natural disasters, wars, famine, climate change. These are the impacts of centuries of man’s effect on earth.

Psalm 98 reminds us we must praise God for his creation, celebrate the wonder of creation, even though we know that we are being judged by God who ‘will judge the world with righteousness and the people with equity’. We must praise God through the natural world, the roaring of the seas, the mighty wonder of the hills and mountains, the produce of the earth and its precious resources. Without his help we would be worse off and we obtain his help through prayer.

When we ask for God’s blessing on the harvest and all that is going on in farming in our community we are not expecting any special treatment to ensure a good harvest. Alongside the complex climatic pattern of the world God’s rain falls on the just and the unjust, all of us equally. We pray in the name of Christ. Our prayer is part of our being in Christ. It is what we want to say to God, when we share as much as we are able, as is shown in Jesus’ commitment to his Father, his concern for God’s rule in the world and his faith in God’s care. Jesus gave us the prayer as the model for our praying. What is there is written so that we know what Christians can and should be saying to God. It states:

Our father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven

– acknowledging that we know God is our father, and his work is here around and within us on earth and in heaven.

The asking begins; ‘Give US this day our daily bread.’ All of us should share unselfishly with the whole world, the whole of creation including its man-made imperfections. We are asking God to give us enough to sustain us, spiritually as well as physically and as the beneficiaries of his abundance in the access to food, resources, technology and a comfortable life-style let us remember that whilst we praise God for creation, he is judging us all equally, and that we are all being changed by him as we learn more about his will for us through prayer and living our lives as best as we can showing our love and faith in God our creator. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Amen.