Bound by Common Prayer

I think today is the 36^th day in the Great Fifty Days of Easter. It is definitely the Sixth Sunday of Easter and in our worship this morning we carry on our joyful celebration of Jesus resurrection and the new life that it brings to us. As our ongoing celebration of Easter continues we will celebrate the Feast of the Ascension on Thursday, forty days after Easter.

Ascension Day reminds me that these days this week also have another identity in the church calendar. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of this week are the Rogation Days. And today, this Sunday has in the past been known as Rogation Sunday. The Rogation Days have a rich, multi-faceted history in the church, but they are primarily linked to the time of the spring planting. Historically, the main feature of the church’s life on the Rogation Days was a great, formal outdoor procession. During the course of these processions prayers were said responsively as the people marched about.

The Rogation processions grew out of the general need in the earliest centuries of the Christian church for the Church to establish and identify itself as distinct from other faiths. In this morning’s reading from Acts, Paul specifically contrasts Christian faith and practice from the pagan worship that then prevailed in Athens.

I gather that one common feature of pagan worship were spring processions that honored the god Robigo, who was thought to protect the crops from mildew after the spring planting. Therefore, the Christians developed a Christian alternative, presumably so that those for whom a spring procession was an essential part of their personal faith and practice, would have a Christian option.

But the church’s spring processions have traditionally been much broader in scope that just seeking redress from mildew. The prayers and intercession of the church, said in procession, have claimed God’s presence in all aspects of creation and human life, and have sought God’s blessing and intercession on virtually every sphere of human concern. Our own comprehensive Great Litany evolved out of this tradition.

Prayers and hopes for the crops planted in spring remained one important part of Rogation celebrations and processions. So those of us who live in the vast farmland of the Midwest would do well to pause and remember the Rogations Days. But it’s also important to recognize that from the earliest centuries, these processions were also means of forming identity and community. Parades have often filled that function. Forming a community and that community’s identity. An occasion to come together as a community and establish and proclaim the community’s particular identity.

In her royal injunctions to the young Church of England Queen Elizabeth (the First) ordered the continuance of the rogation tide processions that the Church of England had inherited from medieval Roman Catholicism. A spring procession of prayer, then, has been a part of our Anglican heritage from the earliest days of the English Reformation. These early English processions included general intercessions and prayers for the crops, but they also developed another interesting custom related to this function of developing community identity—the beating of the bounds. Some English (and, I think, American) parishes continue the tradition to this day. The beating of the bounds.

The beating of the bounds of the parish. Bounds are boundaries. Originally in England a parish was a geographic entity. The boundaries of a parish could be drawn on a map. Anyone living within the geographic boundaries belonged to that parish. Yet the early maps were sketchy, GPS had not yet been invented, and the location of fences, signs or landmarks was haphazard. So to make sure that the common people knew and remembered the location of the parish boundaries, they walked those boundaries in procession in Rogationtide. Priest and people, young and old, led by the cross, marched in solemn procession along the boundaries of their parish. To show the location of the boundaries, they beat them with willow rods. (Today, I suppose, we would mark them with day glow spray paint.)

And there is one more interesting piece of this tradition. Every time they came to a significant landmark or corner in the boundary, they would symbolically beat a choirboy with the willow rods—beating the boundaries of the parish into his awareness so he would not forget who he was, so he would remember what identified his parish community. Beating a child, even gently and symbolically, is a symbol we would probably shy away from these days (although I was symbolically slapped by the Bishop when I was confirmed.) Nonetheless, the ritual was on the right track in many ways. The parishioners saw in the young the continuance of the parish community and they took seriously their responsibility to pass on to their children the nature of their parish identity. For them, it was the geographic boundaries that defined the parish. To walk and mark those boundaries was to say: "This is who we are. We are the people of this particular parish, defined by these boundaries." Through the ritual beating of the bounds the people sought to ensure that all, young and old, would know and never forget who they were.

How do we know who we are? What is it that defines us as a parish? Geography, lines on a map, are no longer the primary means of identifying us as a particular parish community. Geography is not what we have in common. It would be impossible and meaningless to try to mark the boundaries of St John’s on a map or on the ground. So what gives us our identity? What should we "beat" or instill into the minds of the young so that they may know who they are?

Our most important identity, of course, is as Christians. People of the Good News, followers of Christ, members of the Body of Christ, united through Holy Communion with Christ. Our parish identity is meaningless if it is not a means of being and living our Christian identity.

But the more particular challenge that Rogation tide puts before us is about our parish identity. What is it that binds us as a parish community? Not better or worse than any other community of Christians, but what is it that we, in particular, have in common with one another?

There are several answers to that question. We are certainly bound by our concern and support of one another as individuals. We are bound by common bonds of caring and affection. We are also knit together by our own particular traditions and customs, from the Palm Sunday procession to the Cookie Walk. But the most important thing that binds us together as a parish community is prayer. Our common prayer. The prayers that we say together. We are a people who have chosen to seek and sustain our greater Christian calling by praying particular prayers, particular words over and over again. In many ways, the early geographic boundaries of parishes were arbitrary, but still defining. The particular words we pray may seem arbitrary. They are certainly not uniquely holy, but they are our words, the words that we have in common, all of us with one another. To be an Episcopalian is to be bound to one another by the Book of Common Prayer. To be a member of St. John’s is to use the Book of Common Prayer in this place with and on behalf of the other names and faces who worship here. This book, the Book of Common Prayer, is what we should be beating ourselves symbolically over the head with. Newcomers often ask me what they should do to become members of this parish. The most fundamental answer is: Pray with us. Join us here in Common Prayer. Praying Common Prayer is what establishes our identity as members of this particular community. Individual prayer is essential to the Christian life. But it is common, corporate prayer, said by us all, young and old, voices joined together that makes us a parish community.

And in that common prayer, said together, we learn and gain our identity as a people who:

Celebrate the cycle of the seasons, giving thanks in due course to God for all the gifts of love given to us from heaven, including the fruitful growth of spring, for the glory of Easter and the wonder of the Ascension.

In our Common Prayer we affirm that we are a people who share and celebrate God’s word given to us as we read that word in Holy Scripture. Every occasion for public worship offered in the Book of Common Prayer includes the reading and hearing of Holy Scripture.

In our Common Prayers, we also pray, as a people, for the church and for the world, seeking to overcome all boundaries that separate us from one another and from God.

And we are a people who affirm the Easter presence of the risen Christ. Our common prayers affirm that this is part of our identity. As we gathered today we said: "Alleluia. Christ is risen. Christ is risen, indeed. Alleluia." And we meet the risen Christ in the bread that we break together and the wine that we share at this table… praying that, in this holy meal we, and all people who partake of this Holy Communion, may be made one Body with Christ, that he may dwell in us and we in him. That is our identity. That is who we are.

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