When Augustine and his companions arrived from Rome on the south coast of England in 597, he was welcomed by the pagan king of Kent, who had married a Frankish Christian princess. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church says that Augustine was sent “to refound the Church in England.”[1] But, as historian Diarmaid MacCulloch writes, the church was already there. When Augustine reached Canterbury, Canterbury already had a bishop who ministered to the Frankish colony.[2]

The week before last, Father Jay Smith and I were in the sacristy. He remarked that he would be preaching on the first half of a gospel passage, Peter’s recognition that Jesus was the Christ, last Sunday’s gospel, and that I would be preaching on the rest of the story today. Jay asked, “Why did they do that?” I replied, “So Roman Catholics could hear sermons on the papacy for two Sundays, not just one.” Today we hear Peter rebuked as Jesus had rebuked Satan when Satan tempted Jesus in the wilderness. But Jesus doesn’t just say to Peter, “Begone, Satan!”[1] He says, “If any [one] would come after me, let him [or her] deny himself or [herself] and take up his [or her] cross and follow me.”[2]

The 1949 General Convention of the Episcopal Church, meeting in San Francisco, approved the publication of a series of Prayer Book Studies. The first two were published in one thin paperback volume in 1950. The series concluded in 1989 with Prayer Book Studies 30: Supplemental Liturgical Texts.[1] Among the thirty, Prayer Book Studies IX: The Calendar is a favorite for a couple of reasons.[2] First, it kickstarted the process of the American Church rethinking the place of historical saints and martyrs. Second, unlike the studies of the calendar that were to follow, this one had four helpful appendices. Number 3 is unique in this series: “Notes on Certain Rejected Commemorations.

The Dream of Scipio is a novel by Ian Pears, an English novelist, art historian, and journalist.[1] Its central characters are three men and the relationship each had with a woman in a time of change: the collapse of the world in which they lived. The novel is set in what we call southern France, Provence, for first couple in the fifth-century of the Christian Era, for the second, the Middle Age, and for the third, the Second World War.

The First Letter of Paul to the Corinthians is among the seven letters for which there is an almost universal scholarly consensus that they come from Paul’s hand.[1] Our first reading today is the conclusion of the Second Letter of Paul to the Thessalonians. If the commemoration of Saint Barnabas on Monday and Louis, King of France yesterday, had not taken precedence, we would have heard all of this Second Letter at the daily Mass.

“Blessed are you, Simon Barjona, for flesh and blood did not reveal that to you but my father in heaven.”

Today I would like to struggle with you to try to make sense of what it means for us to see—sometimes to see clearly in moments of vision, clarity and insight; and sometimes to try to see, because that’s all we’re able to do, in moments of darkness, uncertainty; and confusion; and sometimes to see paradoxically, upside-down, foolishly, but nonetheless truly: God on the cross, life in the midst of death, dying and yet rising.

In the 1981 movie Chariots of Fire, Eric Liddell, a conservative Scottish Presbyterian, refused to run a race on a Sunday during the 1924 Olympics. Instead, he ran a race on a weekday that he was not expected to win and won.[1] It turns out that I have something of an Eric Liddell in my own family, not a runner, but an Anglican priest who became a congregationalist clergyman, a Puritan. He’s the only eleventh great-grandfather whose name, John Lothrop, that I know.

Today we commemorate two heroes of the Christian faith who died on this day August 20, one in the year 1153 and one in 1965. Bernard was born in 1090. He would become a Benedictine abbot who led a renewal of monasticism, from which the Order of Cistercians developed.[1] We also remember the life and witness of an Episcopal seminarian, Jonathan Myrick Daniels, who was born in on March 20, 1939, in Keene, New Hampshire, where he grew up. He is buried there in a grave that he shares with his parents with these words, “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”[2]

In Raymond Brown’s An Introduction to the New Testament, we learn that “Eighty percent of Mark’s [verses] are reproduced in [Matthew] and 65 percent in Luke.”[1] The relationship between Mark, Matthew, and Luke is known as the “Synoptic Problem.” We get the word from Greek. S-Y-N—not S-I-N—means “with” or “together.” “Optic” is from optikos—Greek for “eye.” When you put the three gospels next to each other, you can see that the relationship is written, not oral. How Matthew and Luke use Mark with their other sources allows readers to think about the individual perspective Matthew and Luke bring to their gospels.

In his commentary on Matthew, Ulrich Luz notes that the Greek word for man, even when plural, refers only to males in Matthew’s gospel. He writes that the evangelist “was hardly aware of the new position of women in the circle of Jesus or the reality that Jesus healed many women.”[1] Whenever possible, when I quote the Bible in writing or preaching, if the Hebrew or Greek is inclusive, I translate it that way.

Today is the anniversary of death for two influential Anglican Christians, Jeremy Taylor, a seventeenth-century bishop in the Church of Ireland, and Florence Nightingale, who needs no introduction. “She is,” in the words of Lesser Feasts and Fasts, “honored throughout the world as the founder of the modern profession of nursing.”[1] Bishop Taylor died in 1667, Nurse Nightingale, in 1910.

Today’s gospel will be heard at the Sunday Eucharist on Labor Day weekend. So instead, I’m going to say a few words about the historical setting of Ezekiel and his book.

This morning we have a nature miracle. There are many jokes about nature miracles. One of them is the tale of three clergy members going out fishing. The Episcopal priest, when they’re out on the water, says, I’ve forgotten my lunch and he jumps out of the boat and runs across the water to the shore, gets his lunch and runs back. A little while goes by and the Catholic priest says, I’ve left my tackle box in the trunk, and he jumps out of the boat, walks across the water to the shore, gets his tackle box and walks back across the water to the boat. The Baptist minister has taken all of this in. He’s new to town and is amazed. He hasn’t forgotten anything in the car, but not willing to be outdone, he says that he’s forgotten his lucky hat, he jumps out of the boat and promptly sinks to the bottom. The Catholic turns to the Episcopalian and says “I guess he didn’t know where the rocks are.”

During the first four or five weeks of the shutdown, from the middle of March until Easter Week, while we were live-streaming daily, neither Father Smith nor I wanted to preach without a text. With the pressure of daily live-streaming off, I’ve discovered that I like taking the time to do enough study to have something to put down on paper. So, for most commemorations like today’s, I have never written a homily.

The only thing I can remember about music in my grandparents’ Roman Catholic Church is, at some point while visiting them and going to Mass with my grandmother, I found “A mighty fortress is our God” in a missalette. I confess I wish I had kept a copy. No credit was given to Martin Luther. Instead, it credited a cardinal with the arrangement.

Matthew’s version of the Lord’s Prayer, not Luke’s shorter version, becomes the universal prayer of Christians. Early this morning, I noticed that Matthew’s version of the Lord’s Prayer is the gospel lesson for Mass on Tuesday in the First Week of Lent and on Thursday of the week following the Sunday closest to June 15—but never on a Sunday.

The life and witness of Ignatius of Loyola, a Roman Catholic priest and founder of the Society of Jesus, is an optional commemoration in the Episcopal Church. He died on today’s date in the year 1556. Yet today’s date has not always belonged to him. Before the 1994 revision of Lesser Feasts and Fasts, today was the feast of Joseph of Arimathea.[1] When today’s commemoration was added to our calendar in 1994, Joseph of Arimathea was moved to the next free date, August 1. I confess, with respect, I would not have voted to make that change.

William Wilberforce was born on August 24, 1759. He died on July 29, 1833, at the age of 73. He was from a prosperous trading family in Hull, after London, the second seaport of the English east coast. He grew up in a family where, not unusual for the time and place, many died in childbirth and younger than older. His father died when he was nine, two of his sisters in childhood. His sister Sarah would predecease him in 1816. He was the only male in his generation of the larger family, and it made him a wealthy man.

Some years ago, I was invited to speak at Trinity-by-the-Cove Church in Naples, Florida, on the history of the four American Prayer Books. I already had commentaries on the 1928 book and the 1979 book. I bought copies of Marion Hatchett’s The Making of the First American Book of Common Prayer[1] and Lesley Northup’s The 1892 Book of Common Prayer.[2] I knew the name of William Reed Huntington that he had been rector of Grace Church, Broadway, here in the city. Building on the work of another rector in New York, William Augustus Muhlenberg. William Muhlenberg was the founding rector of the Church of the Holy Communion. He died in 1877.

Today’s gospel lesson is the conclusion of Jesus’ Sermon in Parables.[1] He has been teaching from a boat to crowds gathered by the sea. After telling the parable of the wheat and the weeds—the end of last week’s lesson, Jesus goes ashore and into a house. His disciples follow him and ask him to explain the parable of the weeds and wheat. The problem at this point in the narrative is that some believe and persist in their belief, and others do not believe and continue in their unbelief. This is the Jewish Christian community's situation for which the evangelist history came to call Matthew writes.