Seek His Kingdom: Wednesday of Rogationtide (Luke 12:22-31)

May 13, 2026, Rogation Day III, Wednesday of Rogationtide, Season of Easter

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, Psalm 65, Deuteronomy 8:7–18, Colossians 1:15–20, and Luke 12:22–31 have been chosen to complete the three-day arc.

These three Rogation Days form a single movement. 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 that dependence and responsibility can awaken. What if I acknowledge my dependence and things still go 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, the harvest uncertain, and I do not know what to do? Jesus says: consider the ravens. Consider the lilies. Your Father knows.

Jesus begins in verse 22: “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat, nor about your body, what you will put on. For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing.” (Luke 12:22–23, ESV) The word therefore matters. Jesus has just told the parable of the rich fool, the man whose answer to abundance was to tear down his barns and build larger ones so that he could secure his future for himself. Then Jesus turns to his disciples and says, “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious.” The man in the parable tried to make stored abundance carry the weight of his security. Jesus now teaches his disciples another way to live.

Verse 24 says, “Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them.” (Luke 12:24, ESV) The contrast with the rich fool is striking. He cannot imagine security without larger barns. The raven has no barn at all. It has no accumulated provision against uncertain days. It cannot manufacture what it needs. And yet Jesus directs our attention to the ordinary providence of God by which even the creatures of the field and sky receive their life and sustenance.

Jesus is not promising that no creature will ever hunger or that the fallen world will never know scarcity. The Scriptures know famine, suffering, and death too well for that. His point is that creation is not abandoned to itself. The creatures we scarcely notice remain within the Father’s providential care, and Jesus reasons from the lesser to the greater: “Of how much more value are you than the birds!” (Luke 12:24, ESV)

If God cares for the ravens, how much more can his children entrust themselves to him? The anxiety Jesus addresses is not imaginary. It is the natural fear of creatures who know their vulnerability and cannot see tomorrow. Jesus does not answer by pretending that tomorrow contains no trouble. He redirects our attention to the Father.

Jesus makes the same argument with the lilies. Verse 27 says, “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 the beauty God gives to a flower in a field. What human beings labor to produce in splendor, God gives freely to the grass.

Then in verse 28 Jesus asks, “If God so clothes the grass, which is alive in the field today, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will he clothe you, O you of little faith!” (Luke 12:28, ESV) The address is gentle and exact. Not no faith. Little faith. Faith that knows the right answer in principle but struggles to rest in it when the future becomes uncertain. Faith that can acknowledge God’s care for ravens and lilies and then lie awake at night wondering whether his care extends to us. Jesus names that little faith without crushing it and then points it back to the Father who knows.

Then in verses 29 and 30 Jesus brings the command home: “Do not seek what you are to eat and what you are to drink, nor be worried.” (Luke 12:29, ESV) He does not deny that food and drink are real needs. Instead, he says, “Your Father knows that you need them.” (Luke 12:30, ESV) The Father is not unaware. The Father is not indifferent. The Father knows.

Deuteronomy 8 approaches the same question from the opposite direction. Moses is speaking to Israel not when the barn is empty, but when they are about to enter a land of abundance. 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 almost immediately comes the warning: “Take care lest you forget the LORD your God.” (Deuteronomy 8:11, ESV) The danger Moses describes is not only the danger of scarcity. It is the danger of prosperity. The barn fills, the table is abundant, the houses are good, and the hand that gave those things is gradually forgotten. The gift becomes so familiar that it stops feeling like a gift.

Moses tells Israel exactly what they will be tempted to say: “My power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth.” (Deuteronomy 8:17, ESV) That is the opposite of Rogation. Rogation says: we ask because we receive. Deuteronomy warns of the moment when receiving has gone on long enough that we begin imagining we produced the whole thing ourselves.

This completes something important in the three-day arc. Monday taught us not to imagine that we are the source of growth. Tuesday taught us not to make the gifts into our treasure. Today teaches us that neither scarcity nor abundance should make us forget the giver. When the field looks uncertain, the temptation is anxiety. When the field is overflowing, the temptation is self-sufficiency. Both are answered by remembering the Father.

Colossians 1 takes us deeper still. Paul writes of the Son: “He 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)Paul is not saying that the Son is the first creature God made. Firstborn here speaks of his supremacy and preeminence over creation. Paul immediately explains why: “by him all things were created.” (Colossians 1:16, ESV) The one through whom all created things came to be cannot himself belong to the class of created things.

The Christ who took our flesh, died for our sins, and rose bodily from the grave is not merely one creature among the rest. All things were made through him and for him. Then comes the verse that gathers much of Rogationtide into a single confession: “And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” (Colossians 1:17, ESV) The seed that grows while the farmer sleeps exists within a creation held together in Christ. The treasure we examined yesterday belongs finally to Christ, because all things were created through him and for him. The ravens that feed and the lilies that grow belong to a world sustained by the Son. The creation that groans for redemption is the creation whose Lord has already entered death and risen as “the firstborn from the dead.” (Colossians 1:18, ESV)

And Paul does not stop with creation. He moves to reconciliation: through Christ God purposes “to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.” (Colossians 1:20, ESV) Rogation prayer therefore belongs inside the larger story of redemption. We are not merely asking the Creator to keep the machinery of the present world running. We are praying to the God through whom all things were made and who has purposed in Christ to bring his creation under the reconciling peace accomplished through the blood of the cross.

Psalm 65 gives that providence the language of praise. “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) The psalm looks at rainfall, furrows, grain, pasture, and flock and refuses to see them as spiritually empty facts. The earth is watered because God visits it in his providential care. The valleys are covered with grain, and the psalm says that they “shout and sing together for joy.” (Psalm 65:13, ESV)

There is something especially fitting about hearing that in the Season of Easter. The God who has always visited and sustained his creation has done something greater than sending rain upon the earth. The eternal Son entered the creation he made. He took flesh, walked among us, suffered, died, and rose again. The Incarnation and resurrection do not replace God’s ordinary providence, but they reveal how deeply the Creator has committed himself to the world he made and to the redemption of his people within it.

Tomorrow we celebrate the Ascension of that risen Christ. The disciples will see him taken from their sight, but his Ascension is not an abandonment of creation. It is his enthronement as the crucified and risen Lord. The one who ascends is the one of whom Paul says, “in him all things hold together.” The hands lifted in blessing as he departs are the hands of the One through whom all things were made, the hands that were pierced for our redemption, and the hands into which the Church continues to entrust itself.

That gives the Rogation Days their fitting place before Ascension. For three days we have confessed our dependence upon God for the life of the earth and the work of our hands. Now we come to the feast on which the risen Christ takes his place at the Father’s right hand. We do not lose his care because we lose his visible presence. The Lord who ascends is not less Lord of the field, the workshop, the household, the Church, or the whole creation because he is no longer seen by the disciples’ eyes. He reigns over all.

There is another important connection here. Jesus does not conclude his teaching about ravens and lilies merely by telling us to stop worrying. He gives us something positive to seek. In verse 31 he says, “Instead, seek his kingdom, and these things will be added to you.” (Luke 12:31, ESV) That is the answer to anxiety. Jesus does not simply remove one object of attention. He gives us another. Seek his Kingdom.

One of the Prayer Book’s prayers for rain rests on the same Gospel promise, asking the Father to provide what is necessary for those who seek his Kingdom and righteousness and to send what the earth needs. That is the posture Rogationtide teaches us. We ask for what is necessary, but we do not make necessity our god. We seek the Kingdom because the Father already knows what his children need.

That also completes yesterday’s Gospel. Yesterday Jesus told us, “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”Today he tells us where the heart should be directed: seek his Kingdom. The cure for a heart divided between God and possessions is not indifference to the needs of the body. Jesus has just acknowledged those needs. The cure is rightly ordered love. The Father knows what we need, so we are free to seek what matters most.

This does not mean Christian trust is a guarantee that our lives will always be materially comfortable. Paul knew hunger. The apostles knew persecution. Christians across the centuries have prayed for daily bread in times when bread was painfully scarce. The promise is deeper than uninterrupted prosperity. It is that our lives remain in the Father’s hands, that he knows what we need, that nothing in creation falls outside the lordship of Christ, and that even the creation now groaning in corruption is moving toward the redemption God has promised.

The anxiety Jesus addresses tempts us to believe that because we cannot see the provision, we must somehow become our own providence. Faith answers that because we are not God, we may do faithfully what is ours to do and entrust what is not ours to the Father. Trust does not mean that we know what tomorrow holds. It means that we know whose hands hold us when tomorrow arrives.

The three Rogation Days now come to their conclusion. Monday taught us creaturely dependence: the seed grows, and we know not how. Tuesday taught us faithful stewardship: the gifts are good, but the giver is better. Today teaches us creaturely trust: your Father knows what you need. Dependence, stewardship, trust. We receive from God, we use faithfully what God gives, and we entrust ourselves again to the God from whom every good gift comes.

So on this final Rogation Day, we can ask without fear and receive without clutching. We can work without pretending that we control the growth. We can enjoy abundance without imagining that our own power produced it. We can face uncertainty without believing that uncertainty means abandonment. And we can seek his Kingdom because the Father who calls us to seek it already knows the needs we carry with us.

Tomorrow Christ ascends, and the Church will confess that the crucified and risen Jesus reigns. Today, before that feast, we look once more at the field, the raven, the lily, the grain, the work of our hands, and the needs of our lives, and we place them under his lordship. The seed grows. The treasure belongs to God. The Father knows. The asking of Rogationtide now gives way to trust, because the harvest is in his hands, and so are we.

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