Seek First the Kingdom: Wednesday of Rogationtide 2026 (Luke 12:22-31)

Rogation Day III, Year A, 2026, Wednesday of Rogationtide

Luke 12:22–31, Psalm 65, Deuteronomy 8:7–18, Colossians 1:15–20

Grace, mercy, and peace be with you on this third and final day of Rogationtide.

The BCP 2019 appoints specific readings for Rogation Days I and II. For this final day of Rogationtide, the following readings from the authorized BCP 2019 lectionary have been chosen to complete the three-day arc: Psalm 65, Deuteronomy 8:7–18, Colossians 1:15–20, and Luke 12:22–31.

These three Rogation Days form a single arc. Monday: creaturely dependence — the seed grows and we know not how. Tuesday: faithful stewardship — where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. Today the Lord answers the anxiety this dependence and responsibility can awaken.

We have spent two days praying through the logic of creaturely dependence. Monday: the seed grows and we know not how. The growth is in God’s hands, not ours. Tuesday: given that all we receive comes from his hand, what are we doing with it? Where is our treasure? Today, the third and final Rogation Day, the Lord answers the anxiety that those two days can produce. What if I acknowledge my dependence and it still goes wrong? What if I examine my heart and find my treasure in the wrong place and do not know how to move it? What if the barn is empty and the harvest is uncertain and I do not know what to do? Jesus says: consider the ravens. Consider the lilies. Your Father knows.

“Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them.” (Luke 12:24, ESV) The raven in this verse does not know how the food appears. It has no barn, no storehouse, no accumulation of provision against uncertain days. It cannot manufacture what it needs. And yet God feeds it. Not occasionally. Not when conditions are favorable. God feeds it. The present tense is the point: this is not a claim about what God did once for the ravens of the first week of creation. It is a claim about what God is doing now, today, every day, for creatures that cannot ask and do not pray and have nothing to offer in return.

The argument Jesus makes is from the lesser to the greater. The ravens matter less than you do. If God feeds the ravens, how much more will he care for those made in his image, those for whom his Son has died, those who bear his name and seek his Kingdom? The anxiety Jesus is addressing is not foolishness. It is the natural response of creatures who know their vulnerability and cannot see the hand that sustains them. Jesus does not dismiss the anxiety. He redirects it: your Father knows that you need these things. The Father is not unaware. The Father is not indifferent. The Father knows.

He makes the same argument with the lilies. “Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.” (Luke 12:27, ESV) Solomon in all his glory is no match for a lily in a field. The glory that God lavishes on the grass that will be burned in the oven tomorrow surpasses the greatest human achievement in beauty and provision. If God clothes the grass this extravagantly — the temporary, expendable grass — how will he clothe those who are not expendable? The address that follows is gentle and honest: “O you of little faith.” (Luke 12:28, ESV) Not: you of no faith. Not: you of corrupt faith. Little faith. The faith that knows the right answer in principle but cannot feel it in practice, that acknowledges God’s care for ravens and lilies and then lies awake at night wondering if it extends to us. Jesus names it accurately and then speaks directly to it.

Deuteronomy 8 comes at this from a different angle. Moses is speaking to Israel on the threshold of a good land. He describes what they are about to receive: “a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and honey, a land in which you will eat bread without scarcity, in which you will lack nothing.” (Deuteronomy 8:8–9, ESV) And then immediately the warning: “Beware lest you forget the Lord your God.” (Deuteronomy 8:11, ESV) The danger Moses is describing is not poverty. The danger is prosperity. The danger is that the barn fills up and the hand that filled it is forgotten, that the abundance becomes so familiar it stops feeling like a gift, that the people begin to say in their hearts: “My power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth.” (Deuteronomy 8:17, ESV) This is why the Rogation Days are placed before Ascension rather than at harvest: it is easier to ask when the barn is empty than to give thanks when it is full. Three days before the Lord ascends to the Father’s right hand, the Church is invited to orient its heart correctly before the abundance of summer arrives.

Colossians 1:15–20 is the deepest answer to everything the Rogation Days have been asking. Paul writes that the Son “is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible.” (Colossians 1:15–16, ESV) The one in whose image we were made, who took on our creaturely flesh, who rose from the dead three Sundays ago — all things were created by him and for him. And then comes the verse that holds the entire Rogationtide together: “He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” (Colossians 1:17, ESV) The seed that grows on Monday: held together in Christ. The treasure we are asked to examine on Tuesday: given by Christ and meant for Christ. The ravens that are fed and the lilies that are clothed on Wednesday: held together in Christ. The creation that groans for redemption: held together in Christ, who is also its firstborn from the dead and the one through whom all things will be reconciled.

Psalm 65 is the harvest psalm the Church has prayed at Rogation for centuries. Verse 9: “You visit the earth and water it; you greatly enrich it; the river of God is full of water; you provide their grain, for so you have prepared it.” (Psalm 65:9, ESV) God visits the earth. That phrase carries weight in the Easter season, three days before Ascension. The God who visited the earth in the Incarnation — who took on flesh and walked among us, who died and rose and walked among his disciples for forty days — is the same God who visits the earth with rain and enriches it. The Incarnation is not separate from the creational provision Rogation celebrates. It is the fullest form of it. The same God who sends rain on the just and the unjust sent his Son into the world. The same Lord who prepares grain for his creatures prepared a body for his Son. Rogation and Easter belong together.

Tomorrow Christ ascends. The disciples will watch him go and the angels will ask: why do you stand here looking into heaven? The answer, the Rogation Days suggest, is that the one who is ascending is the one in whom all things hold together — the one who feeds the ravens and clothes the lilies and crowns the year with bounty. When he ascends he does not withdraw from the creation. He fills it. He ascends that he might fill all things. The Rogation Days are the Church’s preparation for that filling — the three days of prayer that orient the heart correctly before the feast of the Ascension makes the claim that Colossians 1:17 presses upon us: in him all things hold together, including the harvests of the land and the seas we have been asking for.

The Rogation Days end not with a request but a recognition. The one for whom we are asking is the one who holds all things together. The Father who knows our needs is the Father of the one in whom all things were made. The one who is ascending tomorrow is the one who crowns the year with bounty and visits the earth with rain. We do not lose his care when we lose his visible presence. He ascends that he might fill all things — fill the earth with his sustaining power, fill his Church with his Spirit, fill our barns and our tables and our daily bread with the mercy of the one who made us and redeemed us and will not leave us without provision.

The word that closes the three days of asking is the same word that will close the Easter season tomorrow at Ascension: seek his Kingdom. Lay up treasure there. Trust the one who feeds the ravens and clothes the lilies and has called you his own. He knows. He holds. He will provide. The Rogation Days are over. The asking is complete. The harvest is in his hands, and his hands have never failed.

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