Jameswoodward’s Weblog

The sign-giving does not aim to take us back to the first century; the eucharist is not a time machine.

Rather, it catches us into the stream of God’s continuing and liberating activity. It goes without saying that only the signs, rather than the symbols, can do this. The signs speak of a God who is humiliated, cursed and spat upon.

They take us into the heart of the darkness of the gospel, the folly which is wisdom and the wisdom which is folly, the weakness which is strength and the strength which is weakness. No symbol rooted in the order of creation could do this.

The symbols speak to us of God’s love but do not lead us into the mystery of redemption. They are ambiguous about the threat to creation by death, disease, wickedness.

The signs take us to the heart of that darkness and illuminate it with the light of redemption.

The Sign of Love, Reflections on the Eucharist

Timothy Gorringe, SPCK

Page 15

 This Sunday was originally so called because of the words in the Prayer Book gospel for the day: “Whatever you ask the Father in my name, he will give to you”.

(The Latin is ‘Rogare’ – to ask.) In the strictly biblical context, the chief thing to ask for is the spirit of God to enable us to be true children of God. By the 17th century, the old Roman festival of ‘Terminalia”, or “boundaries”, had been adapted by the church and served a practical purpose. In days before Ordnance Survey maps, there were not always clear lines of demarcation between the parishes, especially where there were open field systems. During the procession, boys were bumped on prominent marks and boundary stones, or rolled in briars and ditches, or thrown in the pond to ensure they never forgot the boundaries.

The Victorians made it more civilised by beating objects rather than people, in the context of a service and procession. In the Western Church, processions to bless the crops and to include “beating the bounds”, developed from the o1d Roman rites of “Robigalia” (“robigo”: Latin for “rust” or “mould”), when prayers would be offered to the deity for crops to be spared from mildew.

These rogation themes of blessing the fields and beating the bounds were commended in the 1630s by the poet George Herbert, that epitome of English country parsons. He said that processions should be encouraged for four reasons:

 1 A Blessing of God for the fruits of the field.

 2 Justice in the preservation of bounds.

3 Charity in loving, walking and neighbourly accompanying one another with reconciling of differences at the time if there be any.

4 Mercie, in relieving the poor by a liberal distribution of largesse, which at the time is or ought to be used.

Today the emphasis has shifted. A blessing on growing crops in fields and gardens, and on young lambs and calves remain. In the agricultural cycle, the main themes are seed sowing and the tending of the young plants and animals. This does not pre-suppose that all sowing takes place around Rogation. Sowing is done all the year round, as is the birth and rearing of the young, but it is convenient to fix on one particular festival as the time to remember these before God in a public way. Rogation takes place in the springtime, when there is a renewing of the earth. In this country, it follows Easter, the season of resurrection. Renewal and resurrection therefore are also underlying themes of this occasion. Contemporary concerns will include:-

1 The enjoyment by all of, and access to, the countryside.onservation of species not directly offering economic profit to the owner or occupier of the land where they flourish.

2 The ecological insight of the inter-relatedness of the created order.

 3 Reflection upon human-kind’s relationship to the natural order. What does it mean to “have dominion” under God over the fish in the sea, the birds of the air, the cattle, the wild animals, and the reptiles, the plants bearing seed, the trees bearing fruit, the green plants? Are the words ‘stewards’ or ‘managers’ appropriate to describe this role?

 4 The relief of the poor. Rogation Sunday often precedes Christian Aid week. The Christian ‘virtues associated with Rogation are hope and justice – and as George Herbert reminds us – there is always room for charity.

May He that provided the seed for sowing, the hand for doing, the mind for thinking, and the heart for

loving, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, bless you and preserve you all the days of your life.

^{John chapter 16 and verse28} I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world: again, I leave the world, and go to the Father.  

A man arrives at the gates of heaven. St. Peter asks, “Religion?”
The man says, “Methodist.”
St. Peter looks down his list, and says, “Go to room 24, but be
very quiet as you pass room 8.”
Another man arrives at the gates of heaven. “Religion?”
“Baptist.”
“Go to room 18, but be very quiet as you pass room 8.”
A third man arrives at the gates. “Religion?”
“Jewish.” “Go to room 11, but be very quiet as you pass room 8.”
The man says, “I can understand there being different rooms for
different religions, but why must I be quiet when I pass room 8?”
St. Peter tells him,
“Well the Anglicans are in room 8, and they think they’re the only ones here.

Where is home for you? How would you define your home? What makes it home? Familiar landscape, a quality of life, or the pres­ence of particular people?

Some people who engage this journey we call Christianity discover that home is found on the road, whether literally the restless travel that occupies some of us, or the hodos, or path, that is the Way of following the one we call the Christ. The home we ultimately seek is found in relation­ship with Creator, with Redeemer, with Spirit. When Augustine says “our hearts are restless until they find their rest in thee, O Lord,” he means that our natural home is in God.

The great journey stories of the Hebrew Bible begin with leaving our home in Eden, they tell of wandering for a very long time in search of a new home in the land of promise, and they tell later of returning home from exile.  Jesus’ inauguration and incarnation of the heavenly banquet is about a home that does not depend on place, but on commu­nity gathered in the conscious presence of God.

There’s a wonderful Hebrew word for that vision and work—shalom. It doesn’t just mean the sort of peace that comes when we’re no longer at war. It’s that rich and multihued vision of a world where no one goes hun­gry because everyone is invited to a seat at the groaning board, it’s a vision of a world where no one is sick or in prison because all sorts of disease have been healed, it’s a vision of a world where every human being has the capacity to use every good gift that God has given, it is a vision of a world where no one enjoys abundance at the expense of another, it’s a vision of a world where all enjoy Sabbath rest in the conscious presence of God. Shalom means that all human beings live together as siblings, at peace with one another and with God, and in right relationship with all of the rest of creation.  To say “shalom” is to know our own place and to invite and affirm the place of all of the rest of creation, once more at home in God.

This church has said that our larger vision will be framed and shaped in the coming years by our vision of shalom —a world where the hungry are fed, the ill are healed, the young educated, women and men treated equally, and where all have access to clean water, and adequate sanitation, basic health care, and the promise of development that does not endanger the rest of creation. That vision of abundant life is achievable in our own day, but only with the passionate commitment of each and every one of us. It is God s vision of homecoming for all humanity.

Augustine said that as Christians, we are prisoners of hope—a ridicu­lously assertive hope, a hope that unflinchingly hangs onto the possibilities of life. ‘I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world: again, I leave the world, and go to the Father.’  Jesus has come from the father asking us, inviting us to live for the common good, within the truth of God’s transforming love. Now he goes to the Father, carrying all the ambiguity of humankind to that centre where all the bits and pieces fall into their rightful place and become part of the greater harmony.

What a fascinating time and here are some images that sum up what we are all immersed in:

I wrote a poem on the mist
And a woman asked me what I meant by it.
I had thought till then only of the beauty of the mist,
how pearl and gray of it mix and reel,
And change the drab shanties with lighted lamps at evening
into points of mystery quivering with color.

I answered:
The whole world was mist once long ago and some day
it will all go back to mist,
Our skulls and lungs are more water than bone and tissue
And all poets love dust and mist because all the last answers
Go running back to dust and mist.

Carl Sandburg, Last answers

I do not think that the real problem is with time itself, but with the paucity of our imaginations.

God’s time-scale is, like God, unimaginably enormous; the mind falters in the face of it, poised on a ghastly chasm of emptiness. It is easier to write off time than to accept the vast vacuity of its expanses.

There have not yet been a million days since Pentecost and the founding of the Church. ‘We’re such a young Church’, a priest said to me recently when I was complaining about some grossly offensive attempt at Christian articulation, ‘a baby Church. You find the early sentences of young children funny and sweet, why can’t you be patient?’

Sara Maitland

St George’s Windsor has a rich and varied history.

Foundation of the College of St George

On 6th August 1348 Edward III founded two new colleges, symbols of his devotion and generosity to the church. These institutions, which were essentially communities of priests, were charged with celebrating divine service within the two political nerve centres of his realm.

The first of these was the College of St Stephen at Westminster Palace, the home of royal administration and justice. And the second was the College of St George at Windsor Castle, the seat of his authority in England’s greatest royal castle.

Both colleges were constituted with a Dean and twelve secular priests, called canons, a numerical evocation of the number of Christ and his apostles. The Dean and each canon were also provided with a deputy, a vicar choral, who was responsible for singing services. Added to this group of twenty-six canons and vicars both colleges were also served by four clerks (professional singers), and six boy choristers besides a virger and two bell ringers. This composition directly compared to that of the Sainte Chapelle, the celebrated palace chapel of the French kings in Paris.
In each case Edward III’s new colleges were founded in relation to existing chapels. At Westminster this was the chapel of St Stephen, a vastly elaborate building directly modelled on the Sainte Chapelle in Paris. But at Windsor the college was attached to the Chapel of St Edward the Confessor. This building, constructed by Henry III in the early 13th century, now underwent a radical overhaul and was rededicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary, St George, England’s patron saint, to whom the king had personal devotion, and St Edward the Confessor.

The rededication of the chapel to include the soldier saint George is to be explained in terms of the king’s particular circumstances. At this time Edward III was actively pressing his title to the French throne and had recently demonstrated his remarkable military capabilities against the French at the Battle of Crécy. St George was not only an appropriate patron saint for the successful prosecution of his political ambitions in France but also for the values of knightly virtue that the king so admired. And it was in reaffirmation of Edward III’s interest in these that he associated a group of knights with the college, the Order of the Garter. There were twenty-five Knights of the Garter with the king at their head, a number intended to mirror that of the Dean, canons and vicars of the college. Moreover, just as each canon of the college had a deputy, so each knight was to have his. A so-called Poor Knight who was intended to stand in as a deputy for daily religious observance.
The two colleges founded by Edward III were amongst the most important and prestigious in medieval England but their subsequent histories have been very different. The combined circumstances of the Reformation and the abandonment of Westminster as a royal palace led to the dissolution of St Stephen’s in 1548. Its chapel survived, however, and served as the House of Commons until it was largely destroyed in the fire of 1834. But the Royal College of St George at Windsor continues to serve as home for the sovereign’s principal order of chivalry, the Order of the Garter.

The self at any given moment is a made self — it is not a solid independent machine for deciding and acting efficiently or rationally in response to stimuli, but is itself a process, fluid and elusive, whose present range of possible responses is part of a developing story. The self is — one might say — what the past is doing now. It is continuity and so it is necessarily memory – continuity seen as the shape of a unique story, my story, which I own, acknowledge as mine. To be a self is to own such a story; to act as a self is to act out of the awareness of this resource of a particular past.   

Rowan Williams  Resurrection P89