Easter V 2025

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth, and the meditations of our hearts, be alway acceptable unto Thee, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

From the Gospel: “At that day ye shall ask in my name: and I say not unto you, that I will pray the Father for you: For the Father himself loveth you, because ye have loved me, and have believed that I came out from God.” (John 16:26-27)

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

Today is the fifth Sunday after Easter.

It is also the beginning of the little season of Rogationtide, which consists of today and the three coming weekdays until the Ascension.

Rogationtide takes its name from the Latin word meaning “to ask.”

In this little season, we ask God’s blessings, especially for the upcoming growing season.

In England, during Rogationtide, it was the custom to “beat the bounds,” to hold a procession around the parish, blessing each farm along the way.

In the normal way of things, such processions were often accompanied by some frivolity and, dare I say it, no little consumption of adult beverages along the way, as each farmer brought out a wee dram to share with those in the procession.

Rogationtide, along with Ascensiontide, the Ember Days, and the Trinity Season are amongst the sad losses suffered by Christian calendar in adoption, in many places, of the new common lectionary.

I would be the first to admit that Rogationtide could appear a bit quaint to modern eyes.

The truest words are often spoken by children.

When asked where milk comes from, one little girl looked at her questioner quizzically and said, “from Ingles.”

Her answer, while not the one her questioner wanted, does reveal a lot about how we really think.

For those of us who live in cities and have had little or no experience of farming, for all practical purposes we really do think milk comes from the grocery store.

We almost never think about the dairies, the dairymen, the cows, or the grass the cows eat, or the rains and the sun which make the grass grow.

Why should we? We go to the store, buy the milk, and that’s that.

The reality is that we, in the West, enjoy unprecedented food security.

A drought for us might mean no wonderful local corn, but plenty would come in from the Midwest; a bad frost might mean no local apples, but plenty would come in from Washington State.

The prices we pay might be a little higher and the quality not so good, but we would still have plenty to go around.

For most of human history, and indeed in many parts of the world today, this is not the case.

Local droughts and floods mean want, even starvation.

In the 14th century, the beginning of the “Little Ice Age” led to many years of abnormally low crop yields, high prices for food, widespread hunger, and ultimately, to people so weakened by hunger they became easy prey to the Black Death, which killed 60% of Europe’s population.

We can well imagine that in those days, and indeed in many parts of the world today which do not enjoy the food security we have, Rogationtide would not appear quaint at all.

Asking God’s blessings on the farms and the farmers would be a serious concern.

In point of fact, the Rogation days themselves are a carryover from earlier pagan festivals.

Throughout human history, agriculture has been one of the primary concerns of religion.

For us today, in the West, of course, not so much.

But perhaps we ought to rethink this.

If we think through the prayer which Our Lord taught us, we notice one of its main petitions is “give us this day our daily bread.”

Of course, “our daily bread” symbolizes all of those things requisite to sustaining our earthly lives.

God certainly was mindful of this when He provided the manna in the wilderness.

It is no accident our Lord’s hometown was Bethlehem, the house of bread.

Our Lord doubtless had this in mind when he chose the consecrated bread to convey his gift of himself to us.

It is certainly reasonable to consider our blessing of the fields, by extension, as asking God for all things necessary for our lives.

Taking this another way, in so far as we are concerned with our fellow men, blessing of our fields can also, by extension, become a blessing on all fields, especially those which provide food for the poor of the world.

This leaves us with the question of why we are to ask God for things in the first place.

After all, some may ask, “God already knows what we need, why waste His time with our asking for them?”

Other sniff at asking prayers as not being sufficiently “elevated” or “spiritual.”

There are, according to one scheme, four kinds of prayer, summed up by the acronym, ACTS: A C T S, adoration, confession, thanksgiving, and supplication.

Adoration is praise of God in Himself, without any reference to what He has or may do for us.

Confession is just what its name suggests, admitting to God our failings and asking for forgiveness.

Thanksgiving is, of course, thanking God for what He has done for us and for others in the past.

Supplication is asking God to do things for us and for others in the future.

Sometimes supplication is further subdivided by calling prayers for the benefit of others “intercessions,” reserving “supplication” for prayers for ourselves.

Some commentators rank these different forms of prayer.

Adoration is considered by them the highest form of prayer since it is pure praise of God without respect to ourselves.

Supplication, especially prayers for our own needs, is considered by them to be the lowest.

All of that sounds very sophisticated, but it is pure bunk.

All forms of prayer are precious to God and each has its place in our relationship with Him.

The humble asking prayer is valued just as much as the most elevated hymn of praise; indeed, it is often the most honest.

Scripture repeatedly enjoins us to pray for our needs and those of others.

Summarizing those injunctions, the prayer for the whole state of Christ’s Church begins, “Almighty and everliving God, who by thy holy Apostle hast taught us to make prayers, and supplications.”

I would argue that the humble prayer of supplication is the base upon which all true prayer rests.

When we ask, we acknowledge our dependence on God.

When we ask, and subsequently receive, this makes us grateful; our prayers of thanksgiving are spontaneous.

By the same token, when we feel real gratitude, we come to truly regret our sins against such a loving and kind God.

When we confess our sins and are restored to communion with God, we quite naturally come to praise Him for His love, His mercy, and His power.

Given all this, the question is not “why are we to ask God for things,” but rather, “why would we not?”

Why would we ever hesitate for even a second to ask Him for what we need?

Here I must tell a terrible story on myself.

Rebecca, Nicholas, and I were travelling in New Mexico.

One morning Nicholas awoke feeling badly.

We ascertained that he seemed to be running a fever.

We quickly took him to a doc in a box where he was diagnosed with Strep throat.

They gave him some antibiotics, and we were on our way; in a few days he was fine.

All of that was just as it should have been, it was only when we got back to the motel room that I became painfully aware of what I had not done.

I had not prayed.

Given what I do for a living, that may seem incredible, but it is nevertheless true.

After much reflection, I suspect the reason we resist praying for our needs, or, as in my case, “forget to pray,” forgetting being a passive aggressive way of resisting, is to preserve the illusion of self-sufficiency.

If I ask God for something, it is an admission of my dependency; I admit that I am not sufficient, of myself, to supply my own needs.

To put it another way, for most of us, having to ask for things humbles us; it hurts our pride.

We quote the proverb, which is NOT biblical, “God helps those who help themselves.”

All of this is precisely why God commands us to ask.

He wants us to ask to break down our illusion of self-sufficiency, to humble our pride, to show us that we cannot always “help ourselves.”

Saint James tells us, “Ye have not, because ye ask not.”

Actually, sometimes the only way He can get us to humbly ask is to bring us to the end of our resources, to the point where we have to face the fact we need His help and finally become willing to ask.

Perhaps this is a part of what our Lord meant when He said, “Verily I say unto you, except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 18:3)

Little children have no reluctance to ask for what they need; they know and accept they are not self-sufficient.

In closing, I leave you with one of the commandments and promises Our Lord gives us in the Last Discourse:

“Hitherto have ye asked nothing in my name: ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full.” (John 16:24) Amen.

And now we ascribe, as is most justly due, unto Thee, O Lord, all might, majesty, power, and dominion, both now and forever. Amen.

He that soweth little shall reap little; and he that soweth plenteously shall reap plenteously. Let every man do according as he is disposed in his heart, not grudgingly, or of necessity; for God loveth a cheerful giver. 2 Cor. ix. 6, 7.