Food comes from the supermarket, right? Even if you know better, urban and even modern rural dwellers seldom think further back along the supply chain to the connection food has to the earth, to dirt, to climate, to human effort necessarily done in cooperation with nature. “We plow the fields and scatter the good seed on the ground” states the Rogation hymn. It would be a lie for almost all of us.
In the sweep of history, this detachment from the earth and nature is a new phenomenon. My father-in-law, for instance, farmed for most of his life plowing with a team of horses, with a barnyard full of cows, chickens, pigs and such and growing a mixture of crops to feed his family and have some extra to sell for income. There were no computers and the few machines did not have motors.
What are the consequences of such a drastic sociological and economic change? There is certainly nostalgia for what was in many ways a better life despite the lack of indoor plumbing or electricity. It has also meant a transition from most Americans living in rural communities to a large majority now resident in a city or suburbia, with the loss of a very personal lifestyle, a cooperative spirit and a close association with nature and the earth. It has been replaced by a consumer spirit, focused on the needs of self, with the crowds of people around us impersonally pigeon-holed into categories: “the poor,” “the homeless,” “the affluent,” “the immigrants,” “the people of whatever color,” and such, rather than knowing individuals personally in a small community. It also means being sealed off from nature and the earth. The dependence on the earth for food, ultimately life itself, is muted. Local drought, weather extremes, crop failure means nothing, because the supermarket will import what you consume from far-away places. All of this has changed who we are, how we view life and our ability to grasp the realities of the earth which we are mandated to manage, steward, wisely.
It also impacts our ability to grasp the Scriptures, especially the Gospels. As the Gospels convey the good news of the Savior, they do so in terms that made immediate sense to their hearers and readers, both Jesus’ contemporaries in Palestine and to centuries of people since who lived more or less the same lifestyle in rural communities or small cities. Sheep and goats, shepherds herding sheep, the latter following his voice and not a stranger’s, a hen spreading her wing over her young, sowing seeds, fields with the problem of weeds among the wheat, water drawn from community wells, managing vineyards, pruning fruit trees, foxes and birds having homes, old and new wine, and what happens if you put the new wine in old wineskins, crews needed for harvest, pulling your donkey from out of a pit, the lesson of the mustard seed, the impact of yeast in bread: all these images and more would be immediately understood by Jesus’ hearers and by others for centuries after. There are no doubt places in the world where these images are still relevant. But our context is different, the rural images become a barrier which must be carefully explained to make any sense, rather than self-evident examples, helpful in enabling understanding of the basic message.
In view of all this, it is not surprising that the celebration of Rogation Sunday among us is not regarded as particularly special. Traditionally, this was the day for the “Beating of the Bounds,” a procession through the parish, blessing the fields as Spring planting concluded. But along with rural life, the village parish church itself is rare. Our congregations are composed of people who come from miles away, living in communities with people of many denominations and other religions. The “fields” to be blessed are mostly small gardens. They are worth blessing, too, but it isn’t the same. If your garden fails, famine will not descend on you, you will just miss out on some tasty veggies. No existential crisis is at stake.
Should we then acknowledge that the connection of Rogation Sunday to the land is no longer relevant in modern parishes? Yet, the need for Christians to bless the earth is greater than ever. In the current disconnect that we have with the earth, we are losing far more than a quaint rural lifestyle. As Pope Francis warned in “Laudato Si,” the earth “now cries out to us because of the harm we have inflicted on her by our irresponsible use and abuse of the goods with which God has endowed her. We have come to see ourselves as her lords and masters, entitled to plunder her at will, […] reflected in the symptoms of sickness evident in the soil, in the water, in the air, and in all forms of life” (point 2).
The contemporary relevance causing this sickness is brought home by a recent image in the news of an Israeli soldier in the invasion of Lebanon destroying a life-sized roadside crucifix with an axe. Reacting to the image, the human response is anger, and a tendency to pigeonhole the man, according to our preferred prejudice, as an Israeli, as a soldier, as an invader. Instead, see in him the image of Adam, universal man, confronted by the symbol of the God who loves us, even to the sacrificial and suffering love of the Cross. Adam responds to that love with rebellion, disturbed rage, the sickness of sinful man angry that God continues to love him, compelled to destroy even the symbol of such love. Widen the background of the image and you can see the little Christian village where traditional agricultural life still does continue, set in the bucolic beauty of rural Lebanon, which reflects God’s love in yet another form. As the axe cuts into the natural wood of the crucifix, Christ is once again wounded by the rage of man rejecting his love. Man deals with the gift of a beautiful planet by destruction and exploitation, “conquering” the gift as the man “conquers” the crucifix. As Pope Francis points out, the dysfunction of fallen man is inflicted on the earth until it, too, has “the symptoms of sickness evident in the soil, in the water, in the air, and in all forms of life.” “And there is no health in us” adds the Prayerbook.
Rogation Sunday and Earth Day are quite close to each other in the calendar. They both stand at a time of year when new life awakens, is reborn, as winter recedes and nature renews itself. So far, however, the connection between Rogation and Earth Day has not been much recognized. Rogation is a day to bless the earth, Earth Day a day to apply the practical details of that blessing in healing the earth’s sickness caused by man’s lack of stewardship, replacing the wise nurture of our planet with a selfish abuse of it.
Rogation Sunday has therefore not become archaic or irrelevant at all. Modern life has torn many away from a close connection to the earth. But the gift of the earth in all its love is still necessary to sustain our life itself, and our mandate to be good stewards of the earth remains. Christian leadership is needed more than ever in the struggle to heal the earth’s wounds caused by human failure to nurture what we have been given.
Remember that you need not own a field in order to bless it. This is still a special day to bless the earth, its creatures and its Creator.