We are a small Episcopal Church on the banks of the Rappahannock in Port Royal, Virginia. We acknowledge that we gather on the traditional land of the first people of Port Royal, the Nandtaughtacund, and we respect and honor with gratitude the land itself, the legacy of the ancestors, and the life of the Rappahannock Tribe. Our mission statement is to do God’s Will in all that we do.

2024 Sun May 5

“Friendship Is at the Heart of the Gospel”- Easter 6, Trinity NY

In our scripture reading for Sunday, Jesus makes a bold pronouncement: “I have called you friends.” Here, Jesus makes a claim of intimacy with his followers. Those who love him are not indebted to him or under his thumb, rather Jesus invites us into a mutual relationship, one that will “bear fruit that will last.”

But what does this mean? Since Jesus is God incarnate in the world, we might wonder how we, mere humans, can be in a mutual relationship with the God of the universe, who knows and see all things.

In the Hebrew scriptures, God calls Abraham, the father of our faith, “my friend” (Isaiah 41:8). Like all healthy friendships, though, Abraham’s relationship with God has its ups and downs. Abraham has to wait a long time for his prayers to be answered (Genesis 12–21), he has to have faith even when God’s commands seem paradoxical, and he even negotiates with God (Genesis 18), asking God to change God’s mind. This is a real relationship, forged in real time — a friendship suffused with both tenderness and obligation.

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“I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.” – John 15:11

1 From the SALT blog for May 5, 2024 –  Following directly on last week’s passage in which Jesus casts himself as “the vine” and the disciples as the vine’s fruitful branches, here Jesus elaborates on just what sort of “fruit” he has in mind: works of love for the sake of joy.
Here Jesus elaborates on just what sort of “fruit” he has in mind: works of love for the sake of joy.

2 The key to understanding the “farewell discourse” in John (John 14-17) is to remember that Jesus is engaged here in urgent pastoral care, assuring his distraught disciples that his imminent departure is not abandonment, but rather a move that will make way for an even deeper intimacy. Accordingly, the exhortations in this week’s passage (“love one another”) are expressions of care and reassurance. Hearing Jesus this way shifts the tone from mere imperative (“you must go and do such-and-such”) to warm encouragement and consolation (“take heart, I’m not abandoning you — as you go and do such-and-such, we’ll be together!”).

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Life From Above

Four Sundays of May commemorating  agriculture, the Ascension, Pentecost and Trinity Sunday – are four feasts of great importance in the life of the Church.  They are distinctively “named” Sundays.

Rogation Sunday on May 5 (Easter 6) goes back to prayer and fasting in early Christian times for protection for crops from disease. It was also a reflection of the Roman holiday of Robigalia at which a dog was sacrificed to propitiate Robigus, the god of agricultural disease. In England they were associated with the blessing of the fields at planting. The vicar “beat the bounds” of the parish, processing around the fields reciting psalms and the litany. In Christian years it involved fasting and abstinence in preparation for celebrating the Ascension. Traditionally, Rogation days are the three days before Ascension Day on which the litany is sung (or recited) in procession as an act of intercession.

The Ascension (May 9, celebrated May 12) is usually described as marking the completion of Jesus’ ministry on earth as he returned to Heaven. But it is far more than that. It marks the exact moment when Jesus, Son of God, commissioned his disciples to begin the gigantic task of converting the whole world. As recorded in St Mark’s Gospel, Jesus said: “Go into all the world and proclaim the good news to the whole creation. The one who believes and is baptized will be saved; but the one who does not believe will be condemned.”

Luke tells us that Pentecost (May 19) occurred a short time after the Ascension, and marked the fulfillment of Jesus’ promise, at his Ascension, to send the Holy Spirit on the disciples.

The gift of the Holy Spirit electrified these fearful followers – who only weeks before had run away when Jesus was arrested, and were still hiding for fear of those who had been responsible for their Lord’s death – and transformed them into men and women willing to lay down their lives for their faith, as many of them did.

The feast of Holy Trinity (celebrated May 26), though logically linked with the other two, was established much later. Although its existence was clearly stated in the New Testament, and early recognized as a doctrine of the faith, it was only when the Arian heresy – which denied Jesus was God – was spreading in the fourth century, that the church Fathers prepared an Office with canticles, responses, a preface, and hymns, to be recited at Mass. From these, the feast we now celebrate as Trinity Sunday gradually evolved.

Together, these latter three great feasts mark the promise which Jesus gave to his disciples, and its fulfilment in the Church on earth. As recorded by Matthew, the very last words Jesus said to his Apostles before going up to Heaven, were: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of time.”

Rogation Sunday, May 5, 2024

Rogation Sunday, a time of celebration and prayer, is a time set aside to appreciate and recognize our dependence upon the land for our food and most importantly upon our dependence of God for the miracles of sprouting seeds, growing plants, and maturing harvest.

The Rogation Days, the Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday before Ascension Day, originated in Vienne, Francein 470 after a series of natural disasters had caused much suffering among the people.  Originally, the Christian observance of Rogation was taken over from Graeco-Roman  religion, where an annual procession invoked divine favour to protect crops against mildew.   Archbishop Mamertus proclaimed a fast and ordered that special litanies and prayers be said as the population processed around their fields, asking God’s protection and blessing on the crops that were just beginning to sprout.

The Latin word rogare means “to ask”, thus these were “rogation” processions.  The tradition grew of using processional litanies, often around the parish boundaries, for the blessing of the land. These processions concluded with a mass. The Rogation procession was suppressed at the Reformation, but it was restored in 1559. The poet George Herbert interpreted the procession as a means of asking for God’s blessing on the land, of preserving boundaries, of encouraging fellowship between neighbours with the reconciling of differences, and of charitable giving to the poor. The tradition of ‘beating the bounds’ has been preserved in some communities. In the latter   a group of old and young members of the community would walk the boundaries of the parish, usually led by the parish priest and church officials, to share the knowledge of where they lay, and to pray for protection and blessings for the lands. Others maintain the traditional use of the Litany within worship. In more recent times, the scope of Rogation has been widened to include petition for the world of work and for accountable stewardship, and prayer for local communities, whether rural or urban.

The Sunday before the Rogation Days came to be considered a part of Rogationtide (or “Rogantide”) and was known as Rogation Sunday. The Gospel formerly appointed for that day was from John 16, where Jesus tells his disciples to ask, and ye shall receive.

At St. Peter’s we have used this occasion to plant trees, “beat the bounds” by reviewing our property condition, pray for rain and to ask God to bless us with a good harvest later in the year.

A Rogation Treat – OnBeing interview with author Robin Wall Kimmerer.

Listen to the interview

She is the author of the Braiding Sweetgrass. From Bookshop.org “As a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, she embraces the notion that plants and animals are our oldest teachers. In Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer brings these two lenses of knowledge together to take us on “a journey that is every bit as mythic as it is scientific, as sacred as it is historical, as clever as it is wise” (Elizabeth Gilbert).

“Drawing on her life as an indigenous scientist, and as a woman, Kimmerer shows how other living beings–asters and goldenrod, strawberries and squash, salamanders, algae, and sweetgrass–offer us gifts and lessons, even if we’ve forgotten how to hear their voices. In reflections that range from the creation of Turtle Island to the forces that threaten its flourishing today, she circles toward a central argument: that the awakening of ecological consciousness requires the acknowledgment and celebration of our reciprocal relationship with the rest of the living world. For only when we can hear the languages of other beings will we be capable of understanding the generosity of the earth, and learn to give our own gifts in return. “

Organic Suburbs- Rogation re-defined

Smithsonian in the May, 2015 issue writes about a new trend in planned living involving farm life. Housing is connected not to golf courses or lakes but to gardens.and farm land. Interconnectively is the key concept. In some developments, apartments and homes are wedged together to make use of limited space and encourage social interaction.

There are already dozens of agritopian developments and, fueled by the local-food movement.  There is highly planned housing together with an environmental focus .  Waste water, for example is filtered in a biological treatment system and reused for irrigation. There as much focus on providing bike and hiking paths as streets.  Parks become common meeting grounds.

Serenbe is perhaps the country’s most popular and profitable “agritopia,” outside Atlanta. It tries to combine what it would term the “good life.” – arts, agriculture, education.

At Serenbe, there is a 25-acre organic farm. Plus there farmlands  all of which produce enougth vegetables to supply a number of restaurants, a farmers’ market and a  Community-Supported Agriculture program

Their website provides an attractive description “Year-round cultural events include outdoor theater from Serenbe Playhouse, culinary workshops and festivals, music events, films and lectures, boutique shopping, art galleries, a spa and trail riding, plus a robust Artist in Residence program featuring dinners and talks. “ Currently there are 400 homes

Links 1. Serenbe  2. Smithsonian article

Artists for Climate

 

Just in time for Rogation Sunday!

 

In 2021, TED Countdown launched a partnership with Fine Acts – a global creative studio for social impact – to kick off a series of SPRINTS, creative boot camps held at TEDx events worldwide.

The goal: Engage artists to envision a better future. In three years, this extraordinary collaboration has produced hundreds of inspiring works for The Climate Collection – a unique vault of open-license visuals.

They are here