What’s a Christian to do? A sermon for Rogation Sunday 2020
Today is Rogation day, the Sunday in the Church year on which Christians would pray for God’s blessing directly on their crops, and more broadly speaking their endeavors in the natural world. You may hear in our hymns and other music today references to the natural world, that it’s a gift from God to those made in his image. And you may also hear the great responsibility we bear as God’s vicars, God’s image in the world.
Rogationtide by Enid Chadwick
As much as it’s true that we are different from all the other creatures of the natural world, we are fundamentally part of the natural world. We humans too are creatures, not the Creator. All creatures were made by the loving God; they were blessed by God; and they were given into humanity’s care. And humans and the natural world alike live and move and have their being in God.
And yet, we live in an unprecedented time; and here I’m not talking directly about COVID-19 or our quarantine and social restrictions, although that all has something to do with it. Rather, I’m talking about the ever growing rift between humans and the rest of God’s creatures, the increasing alienation we feel with our own world. You don’t have to read or watch much science fiction to catch on to the fact that we’re slowly letting go of this our island home and preparing for a future in which humans find a home elsewhere.
Or consider the endless documentaries and news reports of the ever changing topography, the disruption to local economy, the constant migration in search of better opportunities. Humans are unsettled and alienated.
And it seems that the same is true for animal life. As humans move deeper into animal habitats, and as animals find their ways into places populated by humans, we discover ourselves facing unintended consequences, consequences like COVID-19.
What’s a Christian to do in times like these?
If you are a Christian, that means you found in Jesus Christ a better way of living. You professed Jesus Christ the crucified and risen Lord, God from God, light from light, and you repented of your sins, and committed to a better way of living. Not just trying to be a good person, but a person who understands that God’s grace and mercy far exceed your own ability to be good. And that means that you stand as a testament not to clean and righteous living, but to admitting your faults and repentance because you know, in the end, that the healing power of God, demonstrated above all in the person of Jesus Christ, is way better than the self protection and isolationism that the other way of life brings.
In short, if you’re a Christian, you are a person who has experienced the life changing forgiving ness of God and you know that you will experience it again and again and again. Amend because you’ve had this experience, you know that you’re called to love your neighbor (who is everyone)—even to the point of offering them forgiveness too. We are people of admitting our faults and loving our neighbors because that is what happens when you defeat death. The way of life we are called to in our baptism is God’s way of slowly letting the power of the resurrection break into our world even now.
If you haven’t had this experience, if you aren’t a Christian, I invite you to talk to me or to Deacon Jan, because I’d like to tell you more about it.
So if that’s what a Christian is, a person whose very life is a commitment to the power of the resurrection, then I ask you again, what is a Christian to do in times like these?
What do the resurrection and forgiveness and loving our neighbors have to do with Rogation Day or with COVID-19?
Everything. Resurrection and forgiveness and loving our neighbors has everything to do with our situation.
Friends, our world is hurting - many of our neighbors are isolated, struggling with dysfunctional habits in order to cope with anxiety, stress, and unbearable burdens, burdens many of which they bore before this last March, but which have been terribly exacerbated.
And our world is hurting because collectively we have made choices that place our environment and economy under tremendous stress, the stress to produce and consume at a rate that is unsustainable and unhealthy. Do any of us really need that many cases of papertowels?
I believe our world is also hurting because we, people who have made public claims to be Christ in the world, we who call ourselves Christians, have repeatedly failed to be Christ in the world. And then subsequently, we have failed to admit our fault, and repent. We have not shown the power of forgiveness in the world, time and time again, when we could have. We have quenched the power of the resurrection when it could have been manifest in us.
Peter tells us in his letter that we aren’t the first to do this. The Bible is, among many things, a startling record of how those who have come before us have also failed in this way.
But Peter also reminds us that the forgiveness of baptism is always available, forgiveness that sign not of God’s condemnation, but God’s love for us. But love deserves to be returned with love. Jesus says, “They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me; and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them."
It is never too late to repent and return to the Lord, to receive mercy. Friends, let us repent and receive that mercy, and let us return to Jesus as our first and best love.