Faith in Action: The Fifth Sunday after Easter Commonly Called Rogation Sunday (May 14, 2023) - Fr. Wesley Walker

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be alway acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, our Strength and our Redeemer. Amen.

In addition to the Fifth Sunday after Easter which is commonly called Rogation Sunday, today is of course Mother’s Day. And we want to honor mothers, both biological and otherwise, for all they do and sacrifice. Traditionally, on Mother’s Day, families honor their mothers by doing something for them. Maybe we make them a card, write them a nice note, give them a phone call, take them out for a nice dinner, and give them presents. But would it be appropriate simply to say, “Hey happy mother’s day?” Probably not. The point here is that actions speak louder than words. Those of us with children know the difference between hearing/speaking and doing. We might tell the boys “Hey, go clean up the mess you made” and, too often, we hear “Okay.” But then nothing happens. What’s the point of them hearing us but not doing anything about it or giving us empty words? Perhaps you’re familiar with the parable Jesus tells in Matthew 21 where a father instructs his two sons to go work in the vineyard. The first son says “I won’t do it,” but later goes to the vineyard to work. Meanwhile, the second son responds to the instructions enthusiastically, promising he will go to the vineyard, but he never does. Which of the sons, Jesus asks us, did the will of his father? And, of course, the answer is the first son who, despite initially refusing, ends up doing what was asked of him.

Our propers today, especially those from Ezekiel and James, demonstrate a fairly basic but nevertheless extremely important point: faith is not purely passive, faith is not a purely mental act by which we assent to certain propositional truths. Faith is primarily defined and identified by a complete trust in God that gives him allegiance with our whole being. This naturally builds off what Matt told us last week. He reminded us of the importance of listening to God through Scripture, liturgy and sacrament, and the great Communion of Saints. In last week’s reading, St. James told us to receive the engrafted word that’s able to save our souls. When you graft a branch onto a tree, what happens? The branch and the tree eventually become so united that they share in a common life, that the health of the branch is determined by the health of the tree and vice-versa. So what this means is that if we receive the engrafted Word that Matt was speaking about last week, which is Jesus Christ, he becomes part of us and we become part of him. And so any faith we have must be expressed not only in our opinions and convictions, but ultimately in what we do, by action.

Our Old Testament reading this morning is from the book of Ezekiel the prophet. And Ezekiel is preoccupied with a covenant God is going to make with his people, “a covenant of peace.” Now, we have to say a word about covenant because I don’t think we fully appreciate the term. For modern Americans, we think in terms of contracts, agreements between two parties that can be severed when it’s no longer working for one of the parties. Perhaps this comes with a financial punishment, but inherent in the idea of a contract is that we can “get out of it.” There’s usually an “escape clause.”

Covenants might be similar but they were taken much more seriously. For example, in Genesis 15, when God makes his covenant with Abraham, it’s a solemn ceremony where they would take a few pairs of birds, cut them in half, and the two parties would walk between them. Based on this custom, it was often said you “cut a covenant.” And the symbolism is that the two parties are saying: “If I break this covenant, may what happened to these animals happen to me.” Covenants are serious deals. A covenant has two parts: promise and obligation. Ezekiel details the series of promises that would accompany this covenant of peace he anticipates: safety, flourishing land and fruitful yields from the trees, and deliverance from oppression so that they will be “no more consumed with hunger in the land, neither bear the shame of the heathen any more.” These actions towards the people will serve as a perpetual reminder that “the house of Israel are my people. And ye my flock, the flock of my pasture, are men, and I am your God.” This verse has some resonance with the Venite which is said at Morning Prayer. Still, wrapped up in this promise is an obligation. To be the flock or sheep of God requires what? Obedience! it means following the shepherd.

This leads us to the exhortation from James in today’s epistle: “Be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only.” We cannot be a people who merely hear the Gospel; instead, we must be a people who do the Gospel. To illustrate James offers us a portrait of a man who sees his face in a mirror and then walks away, instantly forgetting what he looks like. If you look at yourself only to forget, it is true futility. What was the point of looking in the first case? It is futile to be a hearer instead of a doer. You can listen to all the sermons you want, read all the devotional books you want, come to church as much as you can, and still not put your faith into practice. In that case, why come to church at all or put in the work to read and listen if it’s not going to put into practice? Even more profoundly, if you have been baptized, you are a Christian who has been regenerated by the Holy Ghost and raised to a new life. But by failing to put that faith into practice, you’re not just ignoring baptism, you’re explicitly rejecting it. The hearer stands for those who do not allow themselves to be changed by the grace that is given to them. They are one of the bad soils in the parable of the sower. In response to their cognitive dissonance, they either rationalize or bury their heads in the sand by ignoring their glaring inconsistency.

To encourage us towards the good, James gives us the portrait of a Doer: “But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed.” For James, this works itself out on a practical level in two ways: if you are truly practicing religion, it means caring for others, particularly those on the margins because when the world treats some as disposable, the Christian insists on their inherent dignity and acts accordingly. Paired with that, the true practice of religion involves remaining unspotted from the world, not allowing external forces to distract us away from our calling to holiness.

Today is Rogation Sunday. Rogation comes from the Latin word rogare which means “to ask.” Typically, this is a day when intercession is made for the earth and crops in the form of litanies. For us, it’s an opportunity to ask God for his Word to be further ingrafted into us and we into him. It’s that holy inspiration the Collect mentions, that we may think those things that are good and by thy merciful guiding may perform the same. Our goal is to be unified in our desire and action; to have that Word ingrafted in us that is able to save our souls.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.