In the year 1632 the Reverend George Herbert, poet, priest and Anglican Divine, sat in his Rectory at Bemerton, then just a little village outside Salisbury, and put the finishing touches to a small book which he called A Priest to the Temple, or, The Country Parson His Character and Rule of Holy Life. In it he wrote: “The Country Parson is a Lover of old Customs, if they be good, and harmless; and the rather, because country people are much addicted to them, so that to favor them therein is to win their hearts, and to oppose them therein is to deject them.”

Borrowing from Herbert’s words, today is a day of “old customs.” It is the 6th Sunday of Easter which is also known as Rogation Sunday. Now I have an older Book of Common Prayer here … a 1928 BCP to be exact. It was given to me on April 17, 1976 – the day Bishop Richard Millard, the bishop suffragan of the Diocese of California, laid his hands on my head conferring the sacrament of Confirmation. In the 1928 BCP, as in prior versions, this day appears in the lectionary as “The Fifth Sunday after Easter, commonly known as Rogation Sunday.” Take out your prayer books for a moment and turn to page 895. It is the lectionary for year A and you’ll see listed “Sixth Sunday of Easter” … but the word “Rogation” is missing. Rogation Sunday, and Rogationtide, was dropped in the 1979 Book of Common Prayer and it was also dropped from the Roman Missal about the same time. Part of the reasoning behind this was that Rogation Sunday seemed a quaint throwback to a time where our economy was more agrarian and, with the rise of urban and suburban living, it just seemed out of step with our modern life. But, with all due respect to the Standing Committee on Liturgy and the General Conventions of 1976 and 1979 who approved our “new” BCP, I’d like to suggest they were just a bit shortsighted.

Rogation comes from the Latin word rogare meaning “to ask.” The tradition began in Vienne, France in 470 … in the waning days of the Roman Empire. The town had suffered from a period of severe natural disasters which decimated the crops. Rogationtide was the Church’s liturgical response. By the time George Herbert wrote his book, this almost 1200 year “old custom” had four distinct aspects to it: “First, a blessing of God for the fruits of the field; secondly, justice in the preservation of bounds; thirdly, charity in loving walking and neighborly accompanying one another, with reconciling of differences at that time, if there be any; fourthly, relieving the poor by a liberal distribution and largess, which at that time is, or ought to be used.” So Rogationtide was more than just about crops and fields – it was also about the preservation of boundaries which led to the tradition of “beating the bounds” and noting where parish lands had encroachments. Part of this process was to engage in “loving walking and neighborly accompanying one another” so that reconciliation of differences (especially with respect to boundaries) could be attained. And finally, as an act of stewardship and recognition that all blessings come from God, the relief of the poor through liberal wealth redistribution was to be accomplished. Clearly, blessing, boundaries, justice and generosity were all interlinked in this liturgical act.

At the Convention of the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland in 2007, Resolution 2007-3 was brought to the floor. It was entitled “Caring for God’s Creation through Waste Prevention and Recycling” and it generally encouraged parishes to take up the cause of reducing waste and enact recycling programs as an act of stewardship. The final paragraph of the resolution read “Resolved, that this Convention urges parishes to designate the Sunday closest to Earth Day each year as Stewardship of Creation Sunday.” Now on the surface this sounds like a good idea, right? There’s only one problem … Earth Day was established in 1970 … one-thousand, five-hundred years after the first observance of Rogationtide. You see, the Church already knew about “Earth Day” – we’d been doing it since the end of the Roman Empire! But by dropping Rogationtide from our Prayer Book, the younger members of our Church had lost their history! Earth Day was copying the Church … and I thought it was time for us to take back the Church’s role in teaching the world about the stewardship of creation.

So I rose to speak to the resolution. I offered a friendly amendment to change the wording and strike the words “Earth Day” and replace them with “Rogation Sunday.” I gave the rationale for reviving Rogation Sunday and Rogationtide and was very appreciative that the Secretary of Convention was kind enough to let me speak before … calling me out of order because I technically wasn’t a delegate yet (I was 6 weeks shy of ordination). One of my fellow priests stepped in and offered the friendly amendment in my place and it was accepted and the motion carried on a voice vote.

The Church has historically defended care of the Earth, taught respect and preservation of boundaries, undertaken the work of reconciliation, and the teachings of Jesus speak directly to the rebalancing of wealth in care for the poor. This is our witness and this is who we are. This is why we blessed the Food Forest project today, why we blessed the animals and the town, and why we beat the bounds. And these practices are liturgically enacted this day but are reminders that what we do this day is part of the warp and weft of our lives as Christians.

In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus is the one who asks the Father to send the Advocate, the Paraclete, to guide us into all truth. There really is no good translation for the Greek word Paraclete – but it implies the one who comes alongside us to help and assist us. It is this Advocate who helps us become co-creators with God, if we just listen for the opportunities to do so. I believe this Paraclete has been quite active here in the past three weeks as plans for the Brunswick Food Forest have come together far faster than anything I could have imagined and residents of Brunswick have joined this vision to bring fresh and healthy produce to our community. This is the work of Rogationtide, isn’t it? To ask God’s blessing on our work and crops that they might be a blessing to all of our community and to continue the co-creating and reconciling work of God in this community.

I invite you this Rogationtide to claim your Christian witness as a steward of the earth, a steward of right relationships with others in the respecting of boundaries, to seek reconciliation as an expression of honoring Christ in others, and to be generous in your giving of treasure and talents. We have something to teach the world in these old customs … and something to learn about God and ourselves.

“The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” What does “abundant life” mean to you? Have you ever thought about that? What does it mean have “have life, and have it abundantly?”

The fourth Sunday of Easter is nicknamed “Good Shepherd Sunday” mainly because in all three years of our lectionary, there is some reading from the Gospel of John having to do with sheep. Today we hear Jesus is the gate by which the sheep come and go and find pasture. Baptism is our gate through which we enter the Church and each week we come back to be nourished at the Eucharist and then go out to be the Gospel in the world. But make no mistake, the thief who comes to steal, kill and destroy is ever present and ever trying to steal us away.

So who, or what, is this thief who tries to steal our “abundant life”? And what is abundant life anyway? In order to approach this, we need to see this story in context. The downside of the lectionary is it chops up scripture and we lose the context. This passage happens as the ending to the story of the man born blind – which we heard in Lent when Canon Slater was with us. Remember? That’s the story of when Jesus healed the man born blind. He didn’t restore the man’s sight; he created the man’s sight ex nihilo (out of nothing). The man is then brought into the temple and grilled by the Pharisees about what happened to him. There is a long interchange including bringing in his parents to testify. The upshot of it all is that in the narrative, the man born blind not only receives sight physically, he receives freedom and finds his voice to advocate for himself. This is liberation! And the price he pays is … expulsion from the community.

Immediately following the healing and inquisition is when Jesus teaches about abundant life. For the man born blind, abundant life was sight and freedom … but both came at a price of being cast out of the system. This implies that “abundant life” is contextual – what it meant for the man born blind isn’t what it might mean to you and me. And if abundant life is contextual, then the thief who would kill, steal and destroy it is also contextual. So what does this mean in our context?

I think we need to begin answering that by looking at our 21st century American life and the value system it promulgates. In theory, we live in a democracy (our political system) steeped in capitalism (our economic system) wherein all get to participate in the political process and the consumption of goods drives our economic engine to prosperity for everyone … right? Notice I said “in theory.” What we have seen as of late is this theory collapse on itself. If we look at economic date from 1979 to the present, it is clear that much of the economic gain has not just gone to the 1% … but to the 0.1%. Since 1979, the one-thousandths of uber-rich corporate executives have seen their incomes go up 400% while real wages for everyone have fallen. Even college graduates have seen a stagnation of their incomes since 2005. Now I didn’t get these statistics out of some “lefty” media organization like Mother Jones Magazine or MSNBC. These figures from economist Paul Krugman who won the 2008 Nobel Prize in Economics and teaches at Princeton University (“Oligarchy: American Style” – NY Times November 4, 2011). He knows a lot more about economics than I do. He has rightly pointed out that America’s political system, as a result of largely unregulated capitalism, has evolved into an oligarchy – a government of the few, by the few and for the benefit of the few. As much as we want to deny this, if we are honest we know it is true. Money and political power are now largely in the hands of big corporations who buy the political influence of both political parties. The Supreme Court has declared that corporations are people, for crying out loud! And this evolution towards oligarchy isn’t solely the fault of Republicans, Democrats or Tea Partiers … it’s the whole system. Politicians’ votes are largely being bought by corporate interests regardless of political affiliation. This is the natural consequence of unregulated capitalism. It will always move towards oligarchy.

The result of this shift to a “democracy in theory but oligarchy in practice” has caused the middle class to shrink and puts many of us on the brink of falling out of it each day. Most of us are one or two paychecks away from being in the line at the food bank. We are one illness or car accident away from personal economic collapse. When I hear people say, “We want our country back,” I hear the fear in this statement. Sadly, I believe we spend our time blaming and venting spleens on Facebook more than we do understanding that this is the norm of human history.

That’s right. Oligarchies, as a governance structure, are historically the norm! Government of the few, by the few, for the few has been the dominant form of governance throughout world history regardless of culture. What we experienced in the post WWII era of a stable middle class with rising incomes was a fluke! It happened as a result of regulated capitalism with a taxation structure that redistributed the wealth … and yes, that’s a form of socialism. If we consider our reading from Acts 2 this morning – we hear about the early Christian church pooling their wealth and redistributing it! That’s right – the early Christians were socialists in the economic sense.

If oligarchies, government of the few, by the few, and for the benefit of the few, are normative for the world, then we shouldn’t be surprised that our economic and political culture is becoming more like the era when Jesus lived. In ancient Rome, a narrow band of elites governed the empire. The economic structure was proto-capitalistic but largely based on barter trade. Our economy has some different mechanisms, to be sure, but the challenges of income inequality are quite similar. This inequality has made us fearful – and fear is the thief which steals, kills and destroys our spirit! So what, then, does abundant life mean in our world of wealth inequality and fears of scarcity and want and how do we claim back our abundant life from the thief of fear?

I think we can begin by embracing the idea that abundant life isn’t just something promised in some future time when we die; it is something we are called to live into right now. Abundant life is a challenge to our faith to live contrary to the message we are receiving from the world. It is our call to resist the fears which make us want to pull in our horns and withhold our time and treasure from others. It is our call to remember that all things come from God and that God will provide all we need when we are generous with each other and the world. It is trusting that abundant life looks like freedom and liberation in Christ instead of the acquisition of worldly goods and earthly power. It is knowing that when we gather in community for the common purpose of serving others, we can do so because of the power of the risen Christ. We discover abundant life when we extend it to others.

I had a Holy Spirit moment when Tom+ read the Gospel today. I realized the stole I pulled out of the closet in the sacristy is a symbol of abundant life from a place quite far away. This stole was made by a Muslim woman in Sarajevo. She's part of a cooperative of women who sew and embroider vestments for Christian and Muslim clerics. This cooperative was born out of the violence of the civil war which tore their country apart. The thief of sectarian violence, genocide, and destruction tried to steal away their abundant life. But in the aftermath of that horrible collapse of their society, these women are reclaiming the abundant life God promised in Jesus Christ. While they do not share the same faith, they are learning again to trust each other and work together for the sake of a greater love.

What does this all mean for us here at Grace Church? Well, I think it means we need to relate to what God has given us in new ways. We have this building (and the one next door). We have land around those buildings. I am persuaded we are being led to use these assets in new and creative ways to bring people together for the purpose of serving our community in a new way. Some of you have heard about the idea of stealing back the food supply and using our grounds to grow food. I made a phone call last Monday to Mike Dickson who runs a nursery and restaurant. He is an urban gardener and I called him to ask questions about what creating an urban garden entails and how it all might work. When I told him I was from Brunswick, he was ecstatic! Mike is part of the Convoy of Hope which has been an annual event to help those in poverty with food, clothing and medical care. They have been looking for a site in Brunswick to stage an event and part of that program would be to plant an urban garden. Now you know me, I don’t believe in coincidences … but I do believe Jesus when he said he came that we might have life and have it abundantly. The way that people and resources are quickly coalescing around this idea, the more I am persuaded it is something the Holy Spirit is asking us to do and be for the sake of God’s people. Maybe for us, abundant life looks like … tomatoes, corn, squash, green beans … and the people who will be fed both in body and in spirit from them.

“My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness. No merit of mine own I claim but solely lean on Jesus’ name. On Christ the solid rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand. All other ground is sinking sand.”

That hymn and the Thomas Merton prayer were the two things which saw me through seminary. This isn’t a hymn I knew from my youth – it wasn’t in the 1940 or 1982 Hymnals (it is in Lift Every Voice and Sing, though). This hymn is one I go back to when everything seems to fall apart and I need reminding of where to place my hope. Where do you place your hope?

Today’s Gospel reading takes us back in time. This story from Luke’s Gospel, commonly known as the Walk to Emmaus, is one which informs our weekly liturgy. We hear about the disciples being met by Jesus on the road and hearing the scriptures and having them opened through teaching – this is the first half of our worship each Sunday. This is followed by the Eucharist where Christ is known to us in the breaking of the bread. So if you think about it, each week we journey on the Emmaus road to find the risen Christ in this community which empowers us to take the good news of Christ into the world.

This is a joyous story of the appearance of the risen Christ which takes place on evening of the Resurrection. But there was something in the story this week which stuck with me – in fact, it haunted me. Luke tells us that the disciples were very sad as they walked towards Emmaus. They were depressed after all that had happened – their hopes were dashed. When Jesus comes alongside and asks what they are talking about, the disciple named Cleopas basically asks if he’s the only one in Jerusalem without a clue about what has happened. Jesus plays along and Cleopas tells him about himself – that he was a prophet, mighty in word and deed before God and all the people and how the chief priests and elders turned him over to the authorities to be crucified. He then says, “But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel.” But we had hoped …

The disciples were Jews who had a very well formed idea of what the redemption of Israel would look like. It would be when a descendent of King David would rise up, drive out the Roman occupiers, and reestablish the Kingdom of Israel under their own autonomous control. This redemption plan had a very earthly and concrete set of expectations as to how it would happen. A suffering and dying Messiah just wasn’t in the equation! They had pinned their hopes on a vision of a preferred outcome and the loss of that outcome depressed them. They couldn’t see another way.

We are not so different from these disciples, are we? We can get caught up in our visions of preferred outcomes to situations. Don’t get me wrong, having a vision for the future is not inherently a bad thing. But when we set our hope on a preferred outcome instead of the risen Christ who is there regardless of the results, it is devastating and becomes idolatrous.

We have had many hopes dashed since the beginning of this year, haven’t we? Those haunting words of Cleopas, “but we had hoped,” are in our hearts too. But we had hoped … to avoid the layoff. But we had hoped … to get the job and didn’t. But we had hoped … at least one of those bids would have come through. But we had hoped … the chemo would have worked and Lila would still be here. But we had hoped …

Today we bring those dashed hopes to Christ here at Grace. We bring them to this altar in this community. We will be offering the sacrament of unction shortly, right here in front of this altar. I invite you all to come forward with those shattered hopes, your hurt and brokenness to meet the risen Christ, be anointed in his name, and to receive his spirit in touch and the oil. And then, may our eyes be opened to see the risen Christ in the breaking of the bread and the sharing of his Body and Blood.

“His oath, his covenant, and blood sustain me in the raging flood. When all supports are washed away, he then is all my hope and stay. On Christ the solid rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand. All other ground is sinking sand.”