Grace to you and peace from our loving God, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

Today we're having a quadruple observance. It's the Fourth Sunday of Easter—Shepherd Sunday. We hear about our Lord as shepherd in the Psalm and John's gospel—and then as guiding lamb in Revelation. These images of field and nature provide perhaps an appropriate context for the other observances of this day.

It is also Earth Sunday—with the well-publicized 40th anniversary Earth Day last Thursday. Moreover, we bid one another Godspeed as our ways part for a time of renewal and sabbatical focused on creation care. And I discovered recently with some delight that April 25th is the primary day on which Rogation Day was observed for centuries, if not on the Fifth Sunday of Easter, Then the practice was interrupted in the last century. "Rogate" is Latin for "pray." Because Jesus is risen and now intercedes for us in heaven, we can pray on earth, and for the earth.

My delight was connected to having read one of the books in our library recently-at the behest of Sam Eichmiller—that has a chapter devoted to Rogate. It's the book Open Secrets by Richard Lischer. It's a bit of a memoir about this Missouri Synod Lutheran pastor's first parish, and it is a delightful read.

Here are a few relevant paragraphs:

"When April's sweet showers had bathed the dry veins of March, callused palms the size of gourds would cradle a few hybrid seeds as if they were crystal, and our church would ask God to make the crops grow. At the end of the service, representative farmers would lead the congregation through the back doors of the church and across the road into Norbert Semanns's muddy field, which at this time of the year was as rank and sweet as black bread soaked in port. Then we symbolically planted the seeds.

"The seeds took their place among the sediment and minerals deposited there by the scraping and removing of prehistoric glaciers. They joined the deposits of flints and particles of iron left by every person who had ever cultivated the land or hunted on it. All the humors were present in the humus, including pieces of every bird and animal that ever fed off the land, burrowed into it, and died on it. The water, blood, meat, bone, gristle, hair, and ammoniac gasses left by their carcasses was joined by the good Lutheran humus up the hill in the cemetery, which, incidentally, was draining into our well and contaminating the parsonage drinking water. "Aw, Pestur, don't worry," Gus chortled, "they was all good people!"

"That was the joke of my first year. We couldn't drink the water because of its abnormally high Lutheran content. I thought of Whitman's line from "Song of Myself," "If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles." Communing with one's ancestors is one thing, but drinking the dead was quite another. In reality, the vast underground river of nitrates and herbicides probably was killing us all, but we yukked it up about the cemetery" (p. 143-4)

Lischer bemoans the loss of the more colorful rhythm of seasons, with Sundays carrying intriguing Latin names like "Laetare"—"rejoice"—even in Lent.

Let me offer a brief primer on this other perhaps puzzling tradition, now being somewhat reclaimed, called "Rogation."

There are two connected patterns of observance. There are "Rogation Days," which are the Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday before Ascension Day. This practice originated in Vienne, France, in A.D. 470 after a series of natural disasters had caused much suffering among the people. 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 can mean "to ask, beseech, or pray," thus these were "rogation" or prayer processions. In an agricultural society, closely connected with the soil and highly vulnerable to the uncertainties of nature, this was an idea that took root (so to speak) quickly, and the custom spread around Europe and over to Britain. The Sunday before the Rogation Days came to be considered a part of Rogationtide and was known as Rogation Sunday. In the Roman Catholic Church, it was observed on April 25 until the reforms of the 1960s eliminated it from the calendar. There too, though, it is experiencing some resurgence. The Gospel formerly appointed for that day was from John 16, where Jesus tells his disciples to ask, and ye shall receive.

The route of the rogation processions was around the boundaries of the parish, which was a civil as well as a religious unit. Thus, the processions were useful in teaching people, particularly the young, their parish boundaries. Known as "beating the bounds," the processions customarily stopped at boundary marks and other significant landmarks of the parish, such as a venerable tree, or a great rock, or perhaps a pond. The priest would read the Gospel and affix a cross to the landmark. Then the boys of the parish would suffer some indignity intended to help them remember the spot. Boys were bumped about against rocks and trees, thrown into the water, held upside-down over fences, thrown into bramble patches, or beaten with willow wands—and then given a treat in compensation. In later times, the marchers beat the boundary marker with the willow wands, beating the bounds, rather than the boys.

The reminder of boundaries had another important impact on communal life. In a poem by the 20th century American Robert Frost, the poet's neighbor asserts that "good fences make good neighbors." Boundaries are often very important in relationships. As members of parishes beat the bounds, they would often encounter obstructions and violations of boundaries. The annual beating of the bounds provided an opportunity to resolve boundary issues. It also led to the tradition of seeking reconciliation in personal relationships.

George Herbert gave the following good reasons to beat the bounds: 1) a blessing of God for the fruits of the field; 2) Justice in the preservation of the bounds; 3) Charity, in living, walking and neighborly accompanying one another, with reconciling of differences at that time, if they be any; 4) Mercy, in relieving the poor by a liberal distribution of largess which at that time is or ought be made. (borrowed and adapted from various web sites)

In the coming season of rest, renewal, and sabbatical, I hope that we will all continue a journey that reflects the values and purposes of Rogation. I pray that we and God's creation are blessed; that insights into and works of justice grow among us; that charity, reconciliation, and mercy become more vitally present in our life with others and the earth.

Perhaps we will be brought closer to the earth-to the blessedness of the various places we find ourselves, to the holiness of an altered pacing of life, to the sacredness of soil and earth. I will be collecting bits of soil from the places of my travels to mix in with those we merge following worship in our new Memorial Garden. I will be searching out ways of understanding the humus and humanity in the places of our mission and of my ancestry. I will be studying ways of enhancing my grasp of root and source—both personal and planetary:

- So that I might be more grateful for who I am, from where I have come, and in whose creating hands I rest.

- So that I might live in a way that honors more fully all of those gifts of life.

- So that perhaps we together might learn to live with a greater awareness of the interconnectedness of all persons and all of God's creation.

- So that I and we may seek to live more gently and more consciously and more faithfully.

If I were writing anew the grant application that permits our beginning tomorrow the expansive engagements—with financial blessings for me, my family, and for this congregation—I might call it "Sacred Soil." As I learn better about how to enhance and enrich the soils of our gardens as well as of our souls, I am amazed at how deeply satisfying it is. I find myself being altered more fundamentally and moved more profoundly by news that deals with the degradation of soils, whether of practices of agriculture that lead to erosion or of the formations of earth violated for the sake of the ore beneath.

We have lost some of our direct connection with the soil, but that psychological distance does not lessen the actual dependence of all people on the gifts of nature. And responsible stewardship of all of these gifts is the concern of all people. Perhaps adding Rogation Day to Thanksgiving Day, our national harvest festival, would help us reconnect to the earth.

May this sabbatical help us along the way to discovering and enriching the sacred soils of our lives. Amen.

May the peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep our hearts and minds through faith in Christ Jesus our Lord unto eternal life. Amen.