Rogation 23 (5th Sunday of Easter)

Over View: Prophesies to the Exiles of Judah, while in Babylon. There are 4 sections to the book, The Call, Judgement of Judah, of Nations Restoration of all things. Apocalyptic in Nature.

33, 34: Our reading is part a unit made up of chapters 33-34. 33 is a direct oracle of Judgement against the people in Judah, outlining the case for why they are in Exile and while he is giving the oracle there is a messenger who comes and reports on the Fall of Jerusalem, it is finally destroyed and the Exiles in Babylon have no where to go home to. That leads to our Chapter 34 where there is an indictment against the bad shepherds that have been leading the People of Israel astray. All that leads to our reading for today. The oracle of restoration and an arriving Good shepherd.

Verses 25-31: Now Ezekiel does not exist in a vacuum it is very mindful of the revelations that God has previously given to the people.

25-28: These verses are going to use the curses of Leviticus chapter 26 as an counter weight for the blessings Ezekiel will declare.

Verse 25: Covenant of Peace: God has thus far related to his people with Covenants or agreements sealed by the cutting or sacrifice of an animal. Also remember that Covenants have both blessings for obedience and curses for disobedience

So God is pointing them back to the previously covenantal structure. And the first covenant blessing will be security from wild animals or the natural perils of the land.

This is up against the Covenant curses promised in Lev 26 is the people are disobedient. Consider Lev 26:22 [[22] And I will let loose the wild beasts against you, which shall bereave you of your children and destroy your livestock and make you few in number, so that your roads shall be deserted. (ESV)]

Verse 26: Then there is a promise of rain. Rain made the land full and the vegetation rich. It was a sign of God’s favor. Lev 26 does not have a direct counter curse but consider verse [16] then I will do this to you: I will visit you with panic, with wasting disease and fever that consume the eyes and make the heart ache. And you shall sow your seed in vain, for your enemies shall eat it. (ESV)

A person wasting away like land wasting from lake of moisture.

Verse 27: The work they put into the land will pay off with a good harvest. There is a promise of vocational security, the work shall not be in vain, against the curse of Lev 26:[20] And your strength shall be spent in vain, for your land shall not yield its increase, and the trees of the land shall not yield their fruit. (ESV)

Verse 28: There is a promise that they shall have political stability. Outside nations shall no longer threaten there boarders and systems.

Consider Lev 26[32] And I myself will devastate the land, so that your enemies who settle in it shall be appalled at it. [33] And I will scatter you among the nations, and I will unsheathe the sword after you, and your land shall be a desolation, and your cities shall be a waste. (ESV)

These promises are made to a people who have just experienced all of these tragedies and are now living outside the promise land. But God will reverse the Lev 26.

30-31: Good vs. Bad Shepherd

I am going to skip verse 29 and dive right into 30-31 where God promises them both proximity and to be a good shepherd

Proximity verse 31: Earlier in the book of Ez God’s divorces the people and his presence leaves the temple. The covenant with Moses is that he would be their God and they would be his people but they had been so disobedient as to loose that. But the situation is not hopeless.

And they would no longer suffer under the yoke of wicked immoral kings. God will be the king who is to them the Good Shephard…where do we see that in the Gospels the God among us as the good Shepard

Main Point: We should pray for God’s protection and good order on this side of Heaven knowing it will be fulfilled at the end of all things.

Rogation Day

Today is Rogation Sunday. The Bulletin today gives us a quick explanation for the day: The Gospel lesson containing our Lord’s instruction and assurance concerning “asking” has given this Sunday its name:The three days following have been, since early times, known as the Rogation Days. Upon them the faithful would meet in the churches, and after psalms and prayers, proceed in solemn procession out into the fields, chanting their litanies. Arriving there, prayers would be offered for the growth of the fruits of the earth, the husbandman, the tiller of the ground, etc. The probable origin of this custom arose from the desire to ask God’s blessing upon the rising plants at the time of the spring awakening. The association of this with this Sunday and its Gospel lesson giving our Lord’s instruction to ask in His name, is most natural. The procession to the fields is usually traced back to Mamertus, Bishop of Vienna in 452, who because of pestilence and famine made this Sunday and the following days the occasion for solemn petitions in the surrounding country.

Security our text today reminds us of Israels need for security from natural, environmental, vocational and political peril.

Natural Peril: I do not imagine anyone in here is afraid of being devoured by wild beasts…but we just found out our neighbor has weeks to live because of a bad diagnosis. We are reminded in my house of the perils of the natural world. And try as we might and as exciting as the breakthroughs of modern medicine are, we can only keep death at bay but eventually we will all succumb.

Environmental Peril:The text here talks about rain in the midst of drought…that the environment is completely our of our control. In our day, Recent tornadoes on the heals of wild fires on the heals of the megadrough remind us that we are mindful often of the environmental perils we face. We have amazing technology in the agricultural world and houses are more and more resistant to weather. And yet the billions spent on disaster relief only get more and more.

Vocational Peril: In the time of Ezekiel most people farmed…to talk about farming was to talk about vocation. We are not as agricultural but we still think long and hard about vocation. We invest missions of dollars as a country into workforce development. More and more of our work is getting easier with automation, and still our economy is 3 million workers shy of needed workers, and that is before you explore issues of quiet quitting, pay disparity, wage theft and other such issues.

Political Peril: Our politics and our place in the world is much more stable than that of Ancient Israel. yet we have so much of ourselves wrapped up in politics, we know that it has become so divisive and yet, there is no end in sight. And at the same time the political situations around the world continue to deteriorate and drop external issues right across our boarders and into our laps.

Like Israel we need God’s help in these things. Rogation day is a reminder for us to pray, for like them we are totally dependent on God’s mercy. And praise Him that he is a Good shepherd who looks to his sheep. Because we see what happened to Israel, and there are times like Israel we live with covenant unfaithfulness. But God is merciful. infact out own communion rite states: But thou art the same Lord, whose property is always to have mercy: We need to pray to the God who is merciful to care for us, our natural perils, our environmental perils, our vocational perils, our political perils.

The Good Shepherd: He has promised to be the good shepherd. The one who lays down his life for the sheep. And let us remember what kind of death he had. The shepherd, for the disobedience of the sheep goes to the cross. Suffers and dies so that the sheep could have the shepherds reward.

Main Point: We should pray for God’s protection and good order on this side of Heaven knowing it will be fulfilled at the end of all things.

I want to finish today by pointing our gaze to heaven. The prophets expand on this theme for us of a New Heavens, New Earth and New Jerusalem. And we see that Heaven in the book of Revelation also uses the theme. We live on earth where there are wild beasts, that can destroy us. But There is a place where the lion lays down with the lamb. We live in a place where we experience sickness, but heaven has no sickness and when heaven walks among us in the person of Christ he heals there disease. We live in a place where vocation is broken, people work not to express the image of God but to satiate the lust for power and greed,

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