Sometimes I wish the Book of Common Prayer included a glossary in the back. I worry about visitors and newcomers, who wonder what in the world we’re talking about when we talk about things like Candlemas, or Epiphanytide or “ordinary time.” To say nothing of Vestries, Sextons, and Canons to the Ordinary. As if everyone knows exactly what those things are.
So please don’t feel bad if you have no idea what the term “rogation” refers to. It comes from the Latin word rogare, which means “to ask,” and so Rogation Days are when the Church asks for God’s continued blessing on its immediate surroundings.
For centuries, that meant the fields, gardens and natural spaces of the parish. Clergy would lead long processions that started on the church grounds, then made their way through the village and its vicinity, reciting litanies of praise and thanksgiving along the way.
In other words, Rogation Days are a throwback—not only to an agricultural society that’s largely disappeared, but to a time when the Church’s identity was grounded, quite literally, in a physical place—what we still call the parish.
The parish was the name for the entire geographic region served by the local church. And the local church provided all the spiritual services—as well as many of the secular ones—for every human soul within its boundaries. If you lived in the parish, you automatically belonged to the parish church, and were legally entitled to be married, buried and have your children baptized there. That’s still the case in England to this day.
The parish is familiar; the parish is comfortable; the parish is home. I think most of us feel that way about St. Mary’s. And that’s a wonderful thing, no doubt; but it also makes it easier to forget that, in the very beginning, the experience and character of the Church was very different.
In the earliest years, the Church was in constant motion. It had no formal organization, no fixed location, and certainly no dedicated buildings. In many places it was literally forced to operate underground. The idea of the parish, with its own church building, wouldn’t emerge fully for several centuries after Christ.
What that means is that the Church’s roots are in mobility not stability. From the beginning the Church was defined by mission and evangelism—going out, to live and work among people who had not yet heard the good news, and being living witnesses to the love and peace of Christ in the wider world.
That’s the story we hear in the Book of Acts, as we follow the first Apostles and evangelists, who set out from Jerusalem to proclaim a gospel that sounded almost too good to be true—the salvation of the whole world, announced by God’s resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Last week, we heard the story of Peter’s vision, which revealed that the Holy Spirit was being made available to all people, and that the promise of salvation had been extended beyond the children of Israel to include all who hear and respond to the Gospel.
In this week’s passage we now join Paul, who, in the wake of Peter’s breakthrough, has been tasked with bringing the Gospel to the Gentiles. And he had plenty to keep him busy among the diverse cultures, languages and religions of his native region, Asia Minor, or modern-day Turkey.
But then, like Peter, Paul too receives a vision. In a dream, he’s visited by a man from Macedonia—a country on the other side of the Mediterranean Sea, just north of Greece. And the man in the dream is pleading with Paul. Come over…and help us, he says.
And Paul doesn't waste one second. He doesn’t weigh the pros and cons, doesn’t do any research; he immediately sets sail. Paul responds unconditionally to this need for ministry, even though it will require a perilous sea voyage and a move into foreign territory, among people of a different culture and religion.
But as someone very astutely pointed out at Lectionary Brunch this past Thursday, although this was a bold and risky move into the unknown for Paul and his companions, they had a very practical strategy once they got there. They didn't just go anywhere in Macedonia; they chose the city of Philippi, an important economic hub. And they didn’t approach just anyone; they sought out something like the local synagogue, where they expected to find people already open to their message. And sure enough, they found a group of women who were able to recognize the good news they had to share.
One of them, a wealthy merchant named Lydia, was so taken with the Gospel that she had her entire household baptized—which laid the foundation for the congregation in Philippi, and marked the Church’s first entry into Europe.
Those early missions worked all too well, planting congregations all over the world, so firmly that the Church’s presence is now mostly taken for granted. But, as Canon Claire Woodley explained so vividly last Sunday, the world has changed—rapidly and radically.
The model of the parish church as the center of local life has all but faded away. So many of the services that we used to provide—cultural, social, medical, philanthropic, and yes, even spiritual—these are now covered by other institutions, who quite frankly in many cases do it better than the church ever did.
So then what’s left for the Church to do? Only what it was created to do, and the most important thing it can do—which also happens to be what the world needs more than anything else, and now more than ever.
Our job today is the same as it was two thousand years ago: to communicate, through word and action, the Gospel of Jesus Christ; to embody in our lives his resurrected life, which we partake of in the sacraments, and then share with the world through our everyday witness: helping, healing and sacrificing ourselves for the sake of others, whether family, friend or stranger.
And I know there are people right here, in our town, in our neighborhoods, in our parish, who are dying to hear a word of love and forgiveness, hope and peace. Who are eager to join a congregation of flawed human beings who nevertheless strive to practice unconditional compassion and work to restore right relationships between all of God’s creatures.
It’s clear to me, just from my conversations with you, that in this time of fear, anger and despair there is a desperate hunger for hope. And I’m convinced that no other institution can truly satisfy that hunger—not Silicon Valley or Wall Street, not medicine or the law, not Democrats or Republicans, not NATO or the UN or NGOs. I believe the world’s best hope is the Body of Christ. And that’s to say, the world’s best hope is us.
And so I believe our call today is to recover our original, missionary instinct, the instinct that inspired Paul to follow his dream to Philippi. It won’t be easy, because for centuries we’ve thought of mission as something that happens in faraway lands, aimed at people of different cultures, languages and beliefs; and that missionaries were rare individuals who were called to leave their lives behind and set off for parts unknown.
But today we live in the negative image of that picture. Today the Church is exploding in post-colonial Africa, Asia, and South America; it’s Europe that’s become a desert of faith, and North America is not far behind. So what we might call our “mission field” is no longer on the other side of the world; it’s literally right in front of us, on our doorstep.
Today, ironically, our parish is now our mission field. Which means we’re called to be something that would’ve sounded like a contradiction to our ancestors: we’re called to be a missionary parish. And whether we like it or not, the Church’s future—and certainly, I think, this congregation’s future—depends on that.
So what does an ancient ritual like a Rogation procession have to do with mission, in this strange new world we live in? Well I think a couple of things. First, it gets us out of our little fortress here, and reminds us that God doesn't live exclusively in temples of brick and mortar; that every inch of creation is blessed by God’s presence.
It also makes us visible; it’s a public display of our commitment to a different pattern of life, one that does not bend to the pressures of the state, or the market, or popular culture.
And it’s a reminder that, although the heyday of the parish church may have passed, we’re still here. We’ve inherited a modest but wondrous patch of God’s good earth; we still enjoy a small but solid foothold in the hearts and minds of our community, and even the world. And we’ve inherited from the apostles the great privilege, the great adventure, of going out into the world and sharing the good news we’ve received, to the glory of God.
Just think about it: we have exactly what the world needs, and the world is crying out to us: come over and help us. Can you think of more joyful or exciting work to do? Can you think of holier work to do? I know I can’t. And I can’t think of anyone I’d rather do it with than you.
The Church of St. Mary the Virgin, Chappaqua, NY
The Sixth Sunday of Easter, Rogation Sunday, May 25th, 2025