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The ales were part of a period of festivity which ended the Easter season as the Church celebrated the Ascension and then Whitsun or Pentecost. Today, Rogation Sunday, is the beginning of that as our Gospel anticipates the coming of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles and the Church.
The word, Rogation, has its roots in a Latin word meaning to ask or more strongly, to beseech. It follows on from the end of last Sunday's Gospel when Jesus told his disciples that if they asked for anything in his name, he would grant their request.
In England, where Rogation is still a popular festival in rural areas, it became a specific kind of asking. The seed for harvest had been sown and the prayer of asking was for God's blessing for rich and fruitful harvest. Alongside this was the custom of beating the bounds which is not as violent as it may sound. The custom, still practised in some places, is to process around the boundaries of the parish with suitable prayer pauses through which God was asked to re-consecrate and bless the land for his loving purpose. It must also be said that in the days before accurate map-making, it was also a way of ensuring the church and clergy's rights over a particular geographical area was preserved. Sometimes these processions did lead to violence, especially if two parish processions met at the boundary with each other at the same time. It was not unknown for some to carefully orchestrate the timetable so that this happened, providing an excuse for the young men of the parishes to fight each other - in a Christian way, of course.
The 17th century priest and poet, George Herbert, gave a better reason for such processions which he maintained the clergy loved. He offered four advantages as to why beating the bounds was beneficial:
First, a blessing of God for the fruits of
the field; secondly, justice in the preservation of the bounds;
thirdly, charity in the social activity of walking together
with neighbours and perhaps reconciling difficulties between people
where they existed, and finally, mercy
in
relieving the poor by a liberal distribution of food and
money to those in need.
This seems a better, more noble reason for beating the bounds than merely
preserving self-interest or seeking an opportunity for a good fight.Of course, the concentration on parish boundaries and local territory can be a narrowing of vision. Rogation seems to concentrate on the local, the parochial. One of the purposes of being part of a Team of churches is that we can widen our vision and share things in common with each other. Our Team Prayer, which I suspect is not generally known beyond the members of the Team Council, prays that we should share our different gifts and abilities and grow closer to each other for the sake of the Kingdom. This is what it says:
God of Unity, who is three persons in one,
Help us to celebrate our different gifts and abilities;
and, sharing them,
grow nearer to each other and to you,
to the glory of your name
and the building up of your kingdom.
Through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Teams remind us to set our sights beyond the
immediate, the obvious and the local. The aim of a Team is to
widen our vision as well as set common goals by which we live out that
vision. It was CS Lewis who said that if you Help us to celebrate our different gifts and abilities;
and, sharing them,
grow nearer to each other and to you,
to the glory of your name
and the building up of your kingdom.
Through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Aim for Heaven, you get earth thrown
in.
But if you aim for earth, you get neither.
Small visions reap small harvests.
But if you aim for earth, you get neither.
Small visions reap small harvests.
I once knew a priest who had a very wide vision. Just after Rogationtide one year, he told me that he had recently blessed the Atlantic Ocean. As his parish was situated a few miles from Blackburn and exceedingly land-locked his remark seemed rather strange. So I asked him to supply further details. Well, he said, every Rogation Sunday we hold a service at one of our local farms. This year I blessed the local spring, which supplies the farm with water. The spring flows into a stream, which then flows into bigger streams. They then flow into the River Ribble, which then flows into the Irish Sea. Further on, the Irish Sea joins the Atlantic, so the drops of water I blessed eventually because part of the Atlantic Ocean. You have to give it to him - he had a pretty wide vision!
As, of course, did Jesus and we are given a glimpse of his in today's Gospel. What we heard was part of that long section of the Gospel between the ending of the Last Supper and our Lord's subsequent arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane. For Jesus, who knew far more than his disciples what was likely to happen, this was a deeply emotional time, albeit that it lasted less than the first part of a night. He had a big agenda to get through as, in Chapters 13 to 17 he gave his followers the final and most significant piece of teaching. This was his last will and testament and it is packed with detailed theology, words about God, that even today with all our scriptural insights, we have to pray it through extremely carefully. Today's Gospel gives us just a part of it, but it is shot through with the vision Jesus is trying to get across.
The central theme of what Jesus is saying is that the thing which binds us to God and to each other is love. Jesus spends a lot of energy throughout the Gospel trying to get his across and very shortly after our Gospel passage ends, he demonstrates the supremacy of love through Crucifixion.
Love involves keeping our Lord's Commandments which are not the ten that Moses brought down the mountain long ago, but the two Great Commandments by which Jesus tells us:
You shall love the Lord your God with all
your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind: and
You shall love your neighbour as yourself.
Love is central that isn't me
talking - it's Jesus, but it isn't sentimental - it depends on mutual
love for each other, for the world God created and for God the Trinity
- and that love is rooted in obedience.You shall love your neighbour as yourself.
But in those precious hours before his arrest he is worried that the disciples still might not grasp it. Their subsequent flight from the tribulation of the Crucifixion will sort of prove him right.
So, says Jesus, you are not going to be alone. I will not leave you orphaned.
There is life after our Lord's death. There is a vision of the Kingdom which doesn't hit the buffers when it slams against the Roman torture of the Cross. The Cross becomes not a closure but an opening. His death will not mean a complete separation from Him and they will continue to know the divine presence in their lives but it will be in a different, bigger way. Beyond our Lord's death is new and vigorous life. Beyond is the wide horizon of the Kingdom.
And to make sure that the disciples and the Christian Church through them, keeps sight of this great vision, Jesus will ask his Father to send another whom he calls Advocate which is a judicial title for one who stands besides us and pleads our cause. The word in Greek is Paraclete which does have the idea of advocacy, one who speaks for us, but there are other translations, including comforter which many scholars prefer. Whilst Comforter can mean one who cares for us in times of distress, sickness, need or bereavement, it also has the meaning of giving strength and courage, both of which became the hallmarks of the Apostles after Pentecost when their bold witness not only showed people the greater vision of the Kingdom of God but also, through their becoming members of the Church, became part of the vision.
To share our Lord's Vision and to be energised by the power of the Spirit then you have to want to live your life as lovers of God and lovers of people and lovers, actually, of yourself, not in any vain or arrogant way but is that joyful astonishment which comes when you realise that you are so infinitely precious to God whose love for you is unconditional. If you want to understand what Christ's vision is, then you need to live by our Lord's command to love and in so doing you will realise the truth of God's love for you.
But it has implications not only for us as individual Christians but also for us as the Church. We can get so blinkered by our own concerns and by the preoccupation with buildings, with are mission centres and important, but we must never lose sight of the truth that the loving community we call the Church is people-centred because it is Jesus-centred and therefore God-centred. If our vision of the Church is narrow, we shall beat the bounds because we want to preserve our territory - our safe haven, our comfort zone. If we are a wide Church, there are no bounds to beat except the boundaries of the Kingdom which are infinite. The territory of the Church is not defined by parish boundaries, useful though they may be. It is defined by how much Christ really has claimed each one of us for His own; how much His love has penetrated our hearts and therefore our Church communities. The map of the Church is not traced on Ordinance Survey paper. It is etched on human hearts and when we see that, then we are living in the Kingdom of God. The idea that we are the visible and touchable signs of the Kingdom may need a very wide vision. Fortunately, that is exactly what God is.