Rogate – What Shall We Ask?

Every 6^th Sunday of Easter I somehow get pushed into the same meditation. When we date things we find a calendar and just write say 5/3/24 – May 3^rd, 2024. And that time encodes where we are in the earth’s annual trip around the sun. It is handy for calculating interest owed or accrued as the days are easily countable. In other words it is a practical notation, but it is also a skinny one. Through at least the 19^th Century, something on May 3^rd might have been dated – On the Feast of Philip and James. This Sunday would have been known as Rogate. The Sundays all took their names from the first words spoken in service from the Introits originally in Latin. Rogate means to ask. The First Sunday in Easter was Quasimodogeniti which means “as newborn babies.” You might recognize Quasimodo from the Hunchback of Notre Dame. He was born on that Sunday. Marking time in those ways is thick. It isn’t as practical for calculating interest, but it communicates a lot more than simply where this rock is in its yearly journey. It is centered on what we the people of God are asked to be in contemplation about that week. And if you are a mystical sort, it might communicate what God is about at that time.

So if you come across a document dated Rogation week, what we are asked to contemplate is asking. Originally this Sunday was tied to the Spring Planting. Whether the seeds were already planted or if you were behind and still needed to get some in, Rogate was the Sunday that you asked God for his blessings on the ground and on the crops. Deep rural congregations would often exit the sanctuary and turn the soil while asking for blessing. Give us this day our daily bread. And that daily bread starts with these seeds and this soil.

Rogate for a long time also had a specific meaning in parish life. Sometimes just the Pastor, sometimes it would be an entire procession, if you were Roman Catholic a Eucharistic one, would walk the boundaries of the parish. As the community prayed for its daily bread and the planting, so also would you pray for the entire people entrusted to the care of the parish. The idea of a congregation and the idea of a parish get treated as synonyms today, but they are quite distinct. You could have many congregations within a parish. You could have “rogue” congregations. A congregation is ultimately just a gathering of people. The parish was a defined geographic space full of sinners and saints and everything in between. The parish priest/pastor/vicar was called to hold a spiritual office for the parish – all those within it. Those seen daily, and those never seen. Rogate was the week to be seen. And to ask God for the soil, that it might prove good soil.

I get to thinking in the same veins because I think these changes tell us a lot about ourselves. We no longer really have parishes, even the Roman Catholics. We are all “rogue congregations”. Singular outposts of believers gathering around word and sacrament. And this is still meaningful. And the promises are still present. But it is thinner. It is the church admitting that she no longer influences larger areas. At the same time the boundaries which once were very easy to recognize – you walked the boundary stones yearly. They are now moved all over to who knows where. Which means questions about what exactly one is called to. And if you bump into the neighboring vicar walking the boundaries, what do you owe him? But maybe more importantly who and what are we asking for these days? At the same time as our lives have often become so busy, they have become so thin. The thickness of living with family and known neighbors, has thinned out in many ways. Lifelong work partners now come and go every six months. People who you might spend 10 hours a day with for months leave and rarely cross our minds. The mystic cords of memory are thinner. No longer strands of 3 connected by water, blood and spirit, but cords of one. So thin that we would rather worry about people half a world away than our literal neighbor.

We can see and feel the thinness and know it isn’t good. But the thicker actually binds us. And are we binding ourselves to the right thing? St. Patrick knew what he was binding himself to (LSB 604). So I return yearly, made more difficult by myself having uprooted and moved a long way, and my Son heading back where we left for school, to questions about thick and thin. To what needs Rogation. For what should we ask the Father?

Changes in Thinking.

An inside joke in the Brown house is going “Spatula City, Spatula City (fade out)…” anytime someone asks for the spatula. If you know, you might already be chuckling, if not, I’ll ruin the joke by explaining it. It’s a line from the 1989 Weird Al movie UHF. And even the name of the movie has to be explained these days. As I sit watching TV alone most nights, everyone else in their own private sphere doing their own thing, I remember what 1989 (my Junior year) was like. We did not have cable. That meant that we got 4 channels on VHF (low numbers on the “top dial” – 2, 5, 8, and 13 for us representing CBS/NBC/ABC/PBS). You also occasionally, if the weather and the antenna were just right, got a couple on the UHF (high numbers on the “bottom dial”.) We got WGN on 53 on a repeater out of Chicago and something like 26 which was pure Weird Al UHF local. Full of game shows like “Wheel of Fish” sponsored by the local fish market and recasts of the area High School Football games captured by one stationary camera at the top of bleachers. And that might be what people agreed to watch at 9PM because you had to negotiate, unless Dad just said “I’m watching 8.” It’s a lost world that was occasionally very funny. Something Weird Al captured perfectly and lovingly. And it is completely lost on my kids although not the wife.

Sharing that memory is part narcissism, but not completely. In those days the topics of general discussion were set by that limited number of outlets along with the big city daily newspapers. There might be highbrow, midbrow and lowbrow takes, but the subject was the same. Whatever was on the front page of the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune and the LA Times would be the day’s subjects. Time Magazine (or Newsweek or US News) would come along end of the week with the solid midbrow summary. And then there were fortnightly and monthly magazines that would do the highbrow thinking. The idea that today you could get everyone in the country talking about the same thing is a dream. Even the Superbowl only gets about 1/3^rd of TVs, something that a normal episode of MASH used to pull. Today, everything is narrow cast. Just by the outlet you know who people are trying to talk to.

Which is why a couple of things have caught my eye recently. Stories in places that would signal a change in thinking. The recent regrets of one of the “Four Horsemen” of the New Atheist apocalypse, Richard Dawkins, kicked it off. He proclaimed himself a Cultural Christian. Looking at the direction of the civilization that is downstream of him, he somewhat realized himself in the cartoon posted nearby. But it was an article in The Atlantic that nailed it. The Atlantic is something aimed at aspiring-highbrow-money-to-spend-in-the-know-want-to-be-with-it people. And for The Atlantic to publish “The True Cost of the Churchgoing Bust” thinking must be changing. And some of that re-thinking is grounded in the reality that those who seem to be managing their way around a cell phone virtual world best, are those who have deep attachments to things like ritual, like liturgy and the Lord’s Supper. Things that make meaning in a world bereft of it. That give solidity. That touch the real. Having The Atlantic audience open to such thoughts is something new.

And that kicked off several chats of the form “How much do I have to believe to be a part of your church?”

And that answer comes in layers. The doors are always open. Always have been. Anyone can attend a worship service. Most things that take place in the church are open to participation. A specific question I got was “I maybe believe in God 30%, but I don’t believe in a divine Jesus. Would I be welcome.” My answer was “Yes. Most of us don’t have Road to Damascus conversions. But if you hear the Word of God consistently, are baptized, one of these days you’ll find yourself saying the 2^nd article of the creed – because that is what churches do – and actually believing it.” The word of God does not return empty, but accomplishes its purpose (Isaiah 55:11). My answer also included the question, “are your doubts private, or would you intend to demand the pulpit to spread them?” As I explained, private doubts are things people of faith wrestle with all the time. Although as one matures in faith the wrestling is less about the creedal basics and more about the often unfathomable will of God. But public confrontation would require protection of the flock. The church contains a multitude of sinners, but it proclaims one message. Jesus Christ is LORD and savior of sinners.

My answer also included the distinction between membership and participation. Membership ultimately includes the willingness to stand up and publicly confess what the church does. Does that mean the end of all doubts. No. What it does mean is the good faith to struggle and maybe to occasionally accept that 2000 – 4000 years of people interacting with this revealed God know more than one 21^st century man. Finding yourself in that third square of the comic is often the start of repentance. And Repentance is always the first step of faith.

Spirit Led Change: Vision, Experience and the Word

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Biblical Text: Text: Acts 11:1-18, John 16:12-15

Change in the church is always a contentious issue. But even Jesus assumed that it would happen. And the book of Acts gives an example of a significant change. What these biblical texts give us is a Spirit Led pattern. This sermon takes Jesus’ words as the basis and Acts as the enaction of those words. Peter’s “ordered argument” is meaningful. It is not that revelation or vision and experience are meaningless. They are quite meaningful and Peter includes both as part of his argument. But his real argument is “remembering the Word of God.” This sermon looks at Peter’s Spirit led example and encourages us to examine our own changing in the same light.

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What’s Your Ending? – Hope or Fear

Biblical Text: Mark 16:1-8
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The Easter Text in Mark’s gospel ends on a strange word – fear. What this sermon does is look both at our discomfort at fear and at what Easter has to say about it. Mixed in with a bit about that interesting ending of the gospel.

Happy Easter! He is Risen! He is Risen Indeed. Alleluia!

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Circuit Meeting

March 8, 2011 – Circuit Meeting

This is the sermon delivered at the pastor’s meeting. If you heard the transfiguration sermon below, it is similar, but modified in a couple of ways for the audience. 1. I brought in the text for this coming Sunday hopefully to give the pastors a step or a bridge on this week’s meditation. (They really fit together, but that was something that got cut on transfiguration day as too confusing. The pastor’s have the advantage of holding both in their heads.) 2. The application is mostly reworked. Where the congregation sermon focused on individuals being open to the transfiguring grace of God, to the pastors the charge was both personal and as shepherds of congregations. 3. The personal story was ditched in favor of a tie into a presentation title given by the District President.

In one way, audience matters a lot. In another, the gospel is the same today, yesterday and tomorrow. The best parts of these sermons probably could have been boiled down to a couple of paragraphs. But I like hearing my voice. Just kidding, a little. What I do think is that this sermon given to the pastors is probably a better fit of message and audience. I was probably thinking a little too much about this one when I was composing Sunday’s.

We know the who…

Full Text

Transfiguration is an evocative word. Being creatures in a half dimension of time, we know the past but can’t do anything about it. We don’t know the future, and usually fear it, especially when we know that it will transfigure us. We can either let that fear change us, or we can let the Spirit transfigure us. What the transfiguration shows us is just how much Jesus was in the same situation. He trusted his Father (our heavenly Father) enough to put aside the glory for the cross. He trusted the character of the Father, the Father he reveals to us. We don’t know the future, we don’t know what Jesus will ask us to transfigure next, but we do know the Character of Jesus. We know what He did for us. Not that transfiguration won’t scare or leave scars, but that is the core of Faith. I trust that one – the crucified one – to change me by his grace.