Beating the Bounds

6th Sunday of Easter

 Video of Sunday, May 17 service

Were we still using the 1928 Book of Common Prayer, you would all know that this sixth Sunday of Easter, the Sunday just before Ascension Day, was known as ‘Rogation Sunday’.  The word ‘rogation’ coming from the Latin rogare meaning to pray. A day when throughout the Middle Ages, each English parish priest would lead his congregation in a procession around the fields on the boundaries of his parish, reciting psalms and a litany: a procession that was known as ‘beating the bounds’.

The origin of Rogation Days, and there were originally three, lies in a part of what is now France, in the fifth century.  Vienne was struggling with impending disaster:  there was plague, extreme weather, potentially ruined crops, threatening action of enemies, and Bishop Mamertus needed to do something.  He introduced these days of fasting and prayer, and is reported to have said:

 "We shall pray to God that He will turn away the plagues from us, and preserve us from all ill, from hail and drought, fire and pestilence, and from the fury of our enemies; to give us favorable seasons, that our land may be fertile, good weather and good health, and that we may have peace and tranquility, and obtain pardon for our sins." 

Apparently these prayers and actions were so successful that the calamities ceased, but the tradition of praying and processing continued – just in case.

I couldn’t help noticing that Bishop Mamertus’ prayer was really quite appropriate for us: things being as they are.

Back in March, which seems so long ago, my husband Paul and I had started to muse about adopting a dog.  Through the last year both twenty-year-old cats, and the two slightly younger dogs had died, and we were definitely feeling like empty nesters.

The day before the shelter in place began, we flew off to meet young Poppy:  an energetic, extremely loving three-year-old who has been filling our lives ever since. A number of you will have already met her in various Zoom conversations as she’s curiously and erroneously convinced that she’s a lap dog.

Poppy and I have been ‘beating the bounds’ from our Glen Park home: delighting in surging up the many large hills that surround us. We’ve been finding a number of challenging staircase walks up Diamond Heights, beautiful traffic free lanes winding between houses, shrubs exploding with fragrant blossoms, the wild Glen Park Canyon, Bernal Heights, birds soaring and singing all around us, and once even a group of goats nibbling down vegetation.

Having to leave my Zoom-ing chair to go regularly walking has been such a gift.  Left to my own devices, I would not have been nearly so diligent.  What a privilege to live in this extraordinary area where it is so easy to feel so close to God in all of creation:  ‘the God in whom we live, and move, and have our being.’

 And what a splendid companion Poppy has been.  While being perfectly capable of managing on our own, companions are important in our lives.  We have all been developing new ways to be in virtual touch with others: both simple and electronic.  We, as I’m sure you have, have become much chattier with our backyard neighbors:  we talk, we talk about children, dogs and even chickens that some of us have, we have concerts, we sing along with Tony Bennett.

In today’s gospel, we hear again from Jesus on that last night before he was arrested.  We know this section of John’s Gospel as the ‘Farewell Discourses’.  Jesus knows what will happen to him, and he knows how hard it is going to be for his disciples.  He is offering them comforting words: knowing they won’t understand them now, but hoping that they will be able to remember them in the days to come.

Jesus tells them:

Jesus said, ”If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you.

Jesus is promising that even though he will no longer be able to be with them, God will give them an Advocate: a companion, a supporter who will be with them forever.   The disciples would be in great need of just such loving presence. And, I believe we are in just such need.

This is no time to be alone, and even though none of us actually is, it can be easy to think oneself so. Apart from our bubble of immediate connections, we have all been extraordinarily isolated from our communities of support and it’s easy to feel abandoned.  These are times of vulnerability and fear.   And it is exactly in these times that we need to remember that each one of us is a loved child of God, a loved child to whom God promises to always accompany and always walk with.

And as we have seen, in so many beautiful examples, each one of us can embody God’s loving presence for each other.  We are doing it right now.  We can feel each other’s caring presence.  Wherever you are listening or watching, we are together.  At coffee hour, you can see and chat with each other.  We are the body of Christ, filled with the Holy Spirit.

We live out God’s loving presence in the many caring acts in our neighborhoods:  making telephone calls, writing an email or a card, shopping, driving for each other.  By wearing our masks, as irritating as they can be, we are signaling our care for the well-being of others.  By maintaining our physical distance, we not only protect ourselves but also others.   These are acts of love.

And, with some shocking exceptions, so much of this same kind of loving, supportive behavior is happening all over the world.

I, and I know you too, want these days of vigilance and fear to come to an end.  And we pray that they do, or at least ease to significant degree.  But I do see in them an invitation.  An invitation, when we are limited to the degree we can experience companionship in the flesh, to know more deeply the presence and truth of the living God in all things, seen and unseen. God, the Creator, God, the Incarnate Word, and God the Holy Spirit, the Advocate, the Comforter.

To close in the words of this morning’s collect:

Trinity of love, inviting us to abide in you:

may we follow the Spirit of truth through desert wild and city street,

rutted field and snowbound height, battleground and market square,

 that your demanding love might speak to the heart of the manifold world;

through Jesus Christ, our Brother.     Amen