Acts 17:22-31,

1 Peter 3:13-end

John 14:15-21

In the name of the One in whom we live and move and have our being, The Father, Son and Holy Spirit Amen

We have heard much of borders in recent times. Of invasion, of crisis, of taking back control. The catastrophe that has reared its head in recent times of mass migration has been hugely controversial. The language often inflammatory and dehumanising and catastrophically lacks love.

In late 2022, the British Home Secretary Suella Braverman said "Some 40,000 people have arrived on the south coast this year alone. Many of them facilitated by criminal gangs, some of them actual members of criminal gangs. So, let's stop pretending that they are all refugees in distress."

This language of imminent disaster perpetuates this inherent fear of the other. Fear that the one who washes our car or who we sit next to on the bus, or lives within our safe community is dangerous, and one to be feared. To imagine that the majority of these people fleeing family and livelihoods and have come to destroy our loving communities is not the love that Christ called his disciples to emulate.

In John’s Gospel, Jesus says to his bewildered disciples, knowing that he is soon to be leaving them to return to the Father, ‘If you love me, you will keep my commandments.’ And again ‘they who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me.’

Love and obedience. According to Jesus, the two are inseparable.

I suppose one ought to ask then ‘what commandments?’ What has Jesus explicitly asked of those who follow him? Well in the preceding chapter, John gives us the answer: ‘A new command I give you,’ Jesus says ‘Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.’

Love then is the marker of the Christian life. To reflect the love we have been shown.

A love that breaks down boundaries and borders of our safe and ordered lives. To take ourselves beyond the sacred spaces to the earth and dirt. To take love that knows no bounds and to get our hands dirty in showing that love to others.

To find, show and share the love of God like getting soil stuck underneath our fingernails.

The work of God’s redemption and cultivation is ours to do.

This Sunday we mark as Rogation Sunday, from the Latin root ‘Rogare’, meaning ‘to ask.’ A tradition that originated in France in AD 470 where there had been threats of war and disaster. Their Archbishop at the time proclaimed a fast and ordered that prayers be said as the population processed around their fields, asking as they went for God’s protection and blessing on the crops that were just beginning to sprout.

The poet George Herbert interpreted the procession as means of asking for God’s blessing on land, preserving the boundaries of fields, encouraging fellowship between neighbours with reconciling differences, encouraging charitable giving to the poor and to walk in love. To walk in love.

Rogationtide, and the ‘beating of the bounds’, as some of us will partake in after this service says ‘This place matters to us, Lord. This soil, this earth, this sea, the people of this parish, their flourishing, their stories, their scars. Everything in this parish, (and beyond it) in this space matters to us, God, because it matters to you.’

However, I am rather uncomfortable about the language of Herbert as ‘preservation of boundaries’. I think rather than the marking our territory, of preserving impenetrable and invisible borders we cultivate a place where we are saying ‘come in’… here is a space where you can belong, where you can heal, where you can love and be loved.

The work of walking in love, of finding the dirt beneath our fingernails is asking heaven to come to earth. As we pray week in and week out, Thy Kingdom Come, we petition God for God’s goodness within our communities and within ourselves. Asking God for that New Jerusalem where all things will be reconciled and redeemed.

Thanking God for the signs of new life, the sprouts of hope, the sprigs of joy. In this walking, and praying, we discover our interconnectedness to one another. We find that we experience love in the plural, love that is practiced within community.

But this love is not one in which we are left to our own devices. As Jesus comforts his disciples with his imminent departure saying ‘I will not leave you as orphans.’ I’m not leaving you as waifs and strays to navigate this love on your own. This desolation will be temporary. The Spirit of Truth will be gifted to them, to us. It is the spirit of God who calls us to love and be loved. Enabling us to do the work of breaking down boundaries and borders, of advocacy, consolation, encouragement, peace-making. Work that only the Godhead can achieve.

And so this messy, muddy work of love continues with us.

Love that is vulnerable-making, that takes trust and patience, love that takes time, love that supports the poor and needy, that chooses self-giving over self-serving. Love that is transformative. empowered by the Spirit of truth.

Love that supports others beyond our boundaries and borders, and at the start of Christian Aid Week, I encourage you to think about loving others in places beyond our own communities.

If you are not to be joining the beating of the bounds today, I encourage you to think about what your practical outworking of love might look like. To ask God, dangerously perhaps, for the depth of compassion for the other that is revolutionary. To hunger for justice, to thirst for mercy to walk humbly with God, and to find the earthiness of love beneath our fingernails.  

To ask God, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, to cultivate in us love that goes beyond boundaries and borders. Asking God to prepare and prune us for love.

Amen