The reading from the First Letter of Peter looks forward to this coming Thursday, which is Ascension Day. Clearly it was chosen because it ends with the words: Jesus Christ who entered heaven and is now at the right hand of God. We’re coming to the end of the 40 days of Easter, the period between the resurrection of Jesus and his ascension during which he was seen every now and then alive by his friends.
And today’s Gospel is preparing us for the next great event and festival after Ascension Day - Pentecost, Whit Sunday, the coming of the Holy Spirit to the disciples. If you love me, St John has Jesus saying: If you love me, you will obey my commands; and I will ask the Father, and he will send you another to be your Advocate, who will be with you for ever - the Spirit of Truth.
That’s an interesting word, Advocate. The Holy Spirit is to be our lawyer, the one who pleads for us, represents us, stands up for us. And of course we’ve recently heard that our new Rector, Melanie, trained as a lawyer. We trust that she too will plead our cause and represent us and stand up for us. I’m sure she will; for these are priestly things.
But back to that history of salvation which the Bible sets before us: the death of Jesus; his rising to new life two days later; the 40 days of his appearances to his disciples culminating is his ascension; then, after a further ten days, the coming of the promised Holy Spirit at Pentecost - God with us and in us, God standing up for us, God inspiring us.
However, it’s today’s first reading that I want to think about most. That brief passage from the Acts of the Apostles is one of my favourite bits of the Bible, though of course one of many favourite bits. Actually, I think that the whole of the Acts is an unfairly neglected book.
I used to go into our local junior school voluntarily each week not only to take assembly but also to do what was called Church Teaching with the two year 6 classes, and we’d spent best part of a whole term looking at episodes from the Acts. It’s a marvellous, exciting adventure story - imprisonments, escapes, beatings, confrontations, surprises, dangerous journeys, shipwrecks and so on. Luke wrote it as the sequel to his gospel, volume two so to speak, and it’s been called the Gospel of the Holy Spirit, for it tells the good news of what the Holy Spirit achieved through the acts of the apostles. And Luke knew what he was writing about: he’d heard it first hand from Paul, and for at least part of the time he himself was there, in the thick of it.
If you’ve never read it right through, from beginning to end, then I recommend that you do - not as a piece of holy scripture but as the adventure story of how a new religion was taken from a remote outpost of the Roman Empire to its very capital, the capital of the world, Rome itself. And read it in a good modern version - the New English Bible, or the one we had copies of at school, the Good News Bible.
But to return to today’s reading. How brilliant, inspired Paul was: Men of Athens, I see that in everything that concerns religion you are uncommonly scrupulous. For as I was going round looking at the objects of your worship, I noticed among other things an altar bearing the inscription “To an Unknown God”. What you worship but do not know - this is what I now proclaim. What a tremendous, arresting opening gambit! And he goes on to say that his God, and theirs, created the whole world and everything in it: he is the Lord of heaven and earth, the universal giver of life and breath and all else. And what’s more, he intends people to seek him, and it might be touch and find him. Indeed he is not far from each one of us, for in him we live and move, in him we exist.
You feel that these words are universal: they could be spoken to ancient people all around the globe in their attempts - household figurines and within stone circles for example, in their attempts to find and worship and placate God - any god, the God, the God they instinctively knew must be there, involved in their lives and all life.
And they are also words that could be spoken to modern, post-religious people today, all those people who are looking for an unknown something, somewhere.
How often we’re told that that we should all be evangelists, all of us spreading the good news of God. Well, I think that this can sometimes be our best way in: saying to people that all the good and beautiful and loving things in and around their lives are attributable to and evidence for a good and beautiful and loving God. Don’t give up looking, we could say, and we could add the words of Jesus: ask, seek , knock. Ask and you will receive; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.
Ask and you will receive. That brings us neatly on to Rogation. Today is Rogation Sunday. Ask, rogare, rogation; it’s Asking Sunday.
The major Rogation Day was 25th April, and it came into being by the christianising of a pagan ceremony of processing through the cornfields to ask, to pray, for the crops to be free from mildew. And the Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday before Ascension Day were kept as minor Rogations Days. They were also ordered to be days of fasting and abstinence, but I suggest we forget about that.
So in the centuries before the Reformation Rogationtide came to involve a procession along the boundary of the parish - the solemn beating of the parish bounds. The purpose was not only to ask for God’s blessing on the growing crops, but also to banish evil spirits, and in addition to re-establish the precise extent of the parish. There’d be handbells and crosses and banners, one of them depicting a dragon with a long tail which would be cut off at the end of the procession to show that the devil had been vanquished.
Then, in 1547 after the accession of the protestant Edward VI, along with all other church processions it was banned, but later under Elizabeth it became the one procession to be reinstated, probably more for marking the boundaries than for the blessing of crops. However, it became part of parish life again, and, in muted form, remains to this day.
Twice in the last few years - in 2000 and then 2002 - we here, in place of our parish communion, have walked around our parochial boundary on Rogation Sunday. And what a splendid walk it is - from here up and over Oyster Hill to Hope End; from there swinging down to Petty France; over the railway to the Ledbury road; back across the fields to Evendine Corner; up to the Malvern Hills Hotel and along the ridge to the Wyche Cutting; down The Pulieu to Mathon Road; and then across more fields back to church - a good 13 miles. And I think you could say that, apart from in the Lake District, you’d be hard pressed to find a better circular walk anywhere in England.
But of course it’s more than just an enjoyable walk. With a hymn at the beginning and at the end, and with four or five pauses for a reading and a prayer, it becomes an act of worship offered to God. And perhaps we can imagine, as we walk along, that someone is walking with us, just as he did with those two people walking from Jerusalem to Emmaus in the afternoon of Easter Day itself. And when we share our picnic - a very important part of the walk, we can remember how Jesus, sometime before his ascension, also shared a picnic on the beach with Peter and Thomas and Nathaniel and James and John and two others. St John writes: None of the disciples dared to ask, “Who are you?” They knew it was the Lord. Rogation, significantly, comes within the season of Easter.
Well, let’s hope that Melanie is a keen walker and will want to reinstate our Rogation Procession. There were of course some people who understandably joined us for just part of the way. But to do part of it is to be involved in the whole of it. So let’s do it again, and let’s try to broaden it by inviting all the people in and around our village who like walking to come and join us in our celebration of God’s beautiful creation and as we once again acknowledge our dependence upon him for our daily bread.
It’s all a fitting response to St Paul’s words: God, who created the world and everything in it and is the universal giver of life and breath and all else, made us to seek him, and, it might be, find him and touch him. Indeed, he is not far from each one of us, for in him we live and move, in him we exist.
And to this we can add Jesus’ words: Ask and you will receive; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. So be it.