Loading...For all that we have, and all that we are, we owe thanks to God.
Early Christians knew this well. They set aside a few days every year, during planting time, to offer their thanksgivings and they asked for God’s blessing on their fields and crops. They called these days “Rogation Days”. The term rogation is from the Latin word rogatio, which means "asking."
Today we are celebrating Rogation Day — it’s a tradition of our church that most of us don’t know much about. Rogation days are usually observed during the three days before Ascension Day, which is this coming Thursday.
Many years ago, each church was identified with a particular geographical area. If you lived in that area, that was your church. The church belonged to the land and people around it. And so, every Spring, during their Rogation Day ceremony, the priest and church people would process around the parish and mark the boundaries. They called it “beating the bounds.” Many people in England and Wales still do this.
During the procession the priest then would ask God to bless the land and everything on it.
Today’s readings from the scriptures chosen for Rogation Day confirm who created the earth. God is talking to Job and says “Who is this that obscures my plans with words without knowledge? Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?”
Well, of course, we know the answer to that question. We know, from Genesis, that God created heaven and earth and everything on the earth and said it was good. The readings go on to affirm that God not only created the earth, but that all Creation belongs to God — we are but the caretakers.
We could call Rogation Sunday an Episcopal “Earth Day”. God loves the earth, its animals, its plants — everything — and God loves us. God put all of creation into our hands and gave us the responsibility to care for it. And so, the way we care for this church building and its grounds, the way we care for our own backyards, the way we care for all of Creation, is really about our relationship with God.
So, we recycle because it’s about the Earth that God made and gave to us, not because we feel guilty about it. We use less energy not just because it saves us money or reduces our dependence on foreign oil, but because it means less pollution on God’s earth and in God’s oceans, and in the lungs of God’s people. We treat the world with dignity and respect because God made the world and God loves the world.
In First Timothy we hear that, “We brought nothing into the world” and that, “God… richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment.” God has given so much to us, and so part of our relationship with God comes from how we use and how we treat what we’ve been given. We’ve been given soil, water, air, animals, plants, trees and we are the stewards of all of we have been given.
In May of 2013, following an environmental conference, Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, our Presiding Bishop at that time, joined with the leaders of the Church of Sweden and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America in issuing a joint statement. The statement contained a confession stating the role of the church in regards to the current challenges facing God’s creation. They said:
We confess that, even as God has entrusted the care of the world to human hands, we have treated this sacred trust as a license to consume rather than build up, to reap rather than to sow.
We confess that we have placed the interests of our own comfort and lifestyle before the good of creation and the wellbeing of others, particularly the most vulnerable among us.
We confess our own indifference to the wellbeing of the countless future generations who will bear the brunt of the choices we make today.
Their statement goes on to ask God’s forgiveness and they made a commitment that we will be the voices and the hands that will lead to change. That will lead us to fulfill the responsibility that God gave us, to be good stewards of God’s creation.
Bishop Katherine spoke for the whole Episcopal Church, for St James Pewee Valley and for each one of us.
What are we doing at St James to honor the Christian duty to be good stewards of God’s creation?
Personally I think we have been doing quite well. Like most Episcopalians we openly celebrate God’s creation. I am remembering the lambs that joined us on Easter morning.
When I think of St James there are two things that immediately come to mind. The first is that St James is a community of loving and caring people, always ready to reach out and support each other in especially difficult times. We have experienced that love in particular these past several weeks. This is caring for God’s creation as we are all part of creation.
The second image that comes to my mind is one of our grounds. We have been blessed with a plethora of God’s gardeners. They have shown their dedication to not only the beauty of our grounds and the beautiful prayer garden, but also to the protection of the environment. Our butterfly garden for instance provides a diner for butterflies and bees.
We, at St James, care for creation by recycling our paper products. We stopped using plastic water bottles several years ago and purchased ceramic coffee cups to replace the use of paper and Styrofoam. We changed many of our light bulbs to more energy-efficient ones. There is always more that can be done, of course. But it is clear that we do care about our little piece of this fragile earth, our island home.
What is also clear is the fact that giving lip service to environmental care is not enough. Everyone must open his or her hearts. Everyone must actively engage in the practice of creation care.
Today, we did not beat the bounds of our property in a procession, but as you can see in the bulletin, we have all been invited to walk around and experience our grounds and observe it’s beauty close up.
Debbie and Ann also have a gift for each family when you leave today. It is a packet of seeds — seeds that produce plants that attract butterflies. They want to encourage you and your family to enjoy working with the soil together and nurturing these plants — plants that will not only beautify the earth but will provide food for some of God’s creation.
My fellow stewards of the earth, on this Rogation Sunday, let us each in our own way make a strong commitment to the care for God’s Creation! And may God help us in these efforts! Amen.
