Sunday Talk

It's been a while since I posted here!  I need to get back into business . . . this is a talk I've given this morning, Rogation Sunday :-

Some churches call today Rogation Sunday. The days leading up to Ascension Day (which is Thursday) are called Rogation Days. They don’t really have a Christian origin, so far as I can make out - it seems the original tradition goes back to pre-Christian times, when crops were ritually blessed in the hope that they would then grow free of disease. Rogation isn't a word we use very much, but it’s to do with prayer. In particular, rogation is asking prayer.

Because the original rogation days were to do with the growing crops, Rogation Sunday these days is often used as an opportunity to reflect on the world around us, its riches, its resources, and on how we use it and value it and conserve its natural beauty and richness. Our responsibility to generations still to come, and our responsibility to God to care for his creation.  “We plough the fields and scatter the good seed on the ground” was originally written, in Germany, as a rogation hymn not a harvest hymn.

I do value the chance to preach now and again on things to do with ecology and conservation, and indeed God’s bounty and the wonder of his creation.  But I’m not going to do that today. Invite me back sometime to preach at harvest. Today I’d like to focus if I may on prayer;  and in particular about what we should be asking of God, and how we might do that.

I might be better listening to a sermon on this subject than trying to preach one. Asking isn’t one of my strong points.  I've always been impressed by colleagues who're good at delegating, bit it’s not something I do all that well.  It's not that I want to do it all myself;  or that I think I can do things better than other folk can (sometimes I can, often I can't).  I think the main reason I don't like to ask is that people might answer 'no' - and I don't like the way that makes me feel when they do.


So I set up stress for myself simply by being afraid to ask.  If that can happen in a single human situation, it also happens in our relationships with God.  It's why prayer becomes humdrum or half-hearted.  It's why we end up not praying at all, or else praying in a way that ceases to include much real asking.  But really, prayer that lacks rogation - asking - is prayer that's incomplete.  It's not all there.  So there’s something worth thinking about on these last few days leading up to Ascension Day.

Prayer - asking prayer - is a vital part of the story of the Ascension, because from Ascension to Pentecost the disciples stayed in Jerusalem, as they’d been told to do, and there - as we’re told - they were constantly praying to God. They were asking God to fulfil his promise to them, and to pour upon them the gift Jesus had told them they must wait to receive.

And I think, reading that, that when we begin thinking about what we might ask of God, before anything else the burden of our prayer should be the same as that of the disciples; we need first to ask God for himself, to ask him to be present with us, and to pour out his Spirit upon us.  But what would that entail?  The other day someone was telling me that he reckons the Holy Spirit is regarded in some circles rather like the chap who doesn't quite fit in with the ethos of the club.  The chap who comes in wearing no tie, or choosing to wear his suit with brown shoes; One of my fellow choristers last night at Theatr Hafren was wearing brown shoes with his dress suit. “No-one’s going to see my feet, I’m on the back row,” he said. “What’s the world coming to?” remarked one of the other basses. “How can anyone sing a concert in brown shoes?”

For those who like their Church to be orderly and domesticated, the Spirit comes as a disruptive and unruly intruder who isn’t always bothered about etiquette or rules. The Anglican communion service includes the words: 'The Lord is here!’ and the response is ‘His Spirit is with us.'  But do we really mean that?

The Spirit is the Spirit of Christ, or so St Paul writes. To ask for the Holy Spirit is to ask that our Lord himself be present with, within and among us as his people; and how else would he be with us, than as an uncontrollable and uncontainable force, encouraging us to action, exposing our shortcomings in faith and service, enabling our fellowship, our understanding, and our prayer; and not necessarily playing to the rules we so often chose to make.  Luke’s account of the first Christian Pentecost uses images of wind and flame, uncontrollable and even terrifying things, to describe what it meant on that day for the Holy Spirit to fall on the disciples. Of course the Spirit is also the Spirit of gentleness and fellowship, and the bringer of joy. But here’s the thing: the Church was born by the gift of the Holy Spirit. So can Church truly be Church, wherever it may be, unless it prays this prayer today, for the gift of God’s Holy Spirit.

The Church is God's possession; it isn’t that God is somehow a possession of the Church.  So if we're asking God for anything, that asking has to begin with our placing ourselves in his hands, and under his power.  Our first request of God should be that he himself will be with us, and that he'll open our eyes and minds and hearts to what else we need of him.  It's then that our asking will be made appropriate and adequate, because then we find that we pray according to his mind.  'Ask anything and I will grant it' Jesus says (as St John records him).  Now there is the most amazing offer!  In fact, what Jesus says is 'Ask anything in my name and I will grant it'.  And to ask in his name is surely also to ask according to his mind.

One problem is that often we don't really ask at all.  Or we don't ask with confidence.  I'm like that as well;  asking people things but including a get-out clause in the question.  Or even worse, asking people for much less than I really require of them, and then either having to ask again, or else feeling frustrated that I haven't really got the things I need.

We should pray with confidence.  Anything, Jesus said.  Nothing is too much for God.  But we should also pray in humility;  a prayer is not a magic spell.  Praying doesn't give us power to change the natural order of things.  That's not to say God might not do that, but our praying has to leave space for his complete freedom of response.  We cannot demand a specific answer of God, any more than a small child can (or should) demand a specific answer of its parent. The child may know what it wants;  the parent should know what it needs.  The two are not the same.

One famous prayer begins with the lines: 'I asked for strength that I might achieve;  I was made weak that I might learn humbly to obey.'  And it ends by saying:  'I got nothing that I asked for,
but everything that I hoped for.'  God knows our needs, and our needs may not be the same as our desires. Good parents often have to say no to their children, and to say “You’re not doing that, you’re doing this; you’re not eating sweets all day and watching DVD’s, you need to eat your cabbage and do your homework.” We shouldn’t be too surprised if our prayers to God are answered in much the same way.

Finally, when we ask things of God in prayer we should be praying that prayer with commitment.  For an asking prayer in effect is inviting God to offer himself in our service (maybe not ours individually and personally, but for the healing and helping of our world).  To pray such a prayer with honesty and integrity must involve our own self-offering.  Another famous, but simple prayer says: 'Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me'.

God does answer human prayer. He does change things that need to be changed - and he uses our self-offering to do it.  It's no real prayer to say, "I haven't the time, energy, interest, money to do anything about this so here, God, you sort it out." 'Show me, Lord, how I can be part of the answer, and not just part of the problem.'

That simple but profound prayer is maybe where I should leave this little talk.  Except to make one more small point.  The disciples were constantly at prayer, we're told.  So should we be.  Make time - make regular time - for prayer (I'm sure you do), so that your relationship of prayer with God is a real one.  Rogation means asking, but not all our prayer is asking prayer;  and our asking of God should always be within the context of a wider and deeper and continuing relationship of trust, friendship and worship.

To quote one last short prayerful word:  'You must seek him in the morning, if you would find him through the day.'  Amen.