Adolph Adam was a German scholar. He died in 2005.[1] For many years he was professor of practical theology, liturgy, and homiletics at the University of Mainz.[2] I’ve had a copy of his book, The Liturgical Year: its history & its meaning after the reform of the liturgy[3] since it came out in 1981, while I was in seminary. This morning I got it out to remind myself about the tradition of remembering the Virgin Mary on Saturdays when there were no other celebrations. But first I looked up, may I say, a snarky, disrespectful reference about the color of vestments for these Saturday celebrations here at Saint Mary’s. It’s in Newbury Halsted Frost Read’s 1931 book, The Story of St. Mary’s. Frost became a member of the board of trustees in 1929. When he died in February 1950, he was secretary and treasurer of Saint Mary’s.

Sometimes what is omitted by the church’s lectionaries is interesting. Among the passages not appointed to be read from Paul’s second earliest letter, Galatians, are the verses that follow Paul’s words, “For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise.”[1]

The first section—four chapters—of Paul Bradshaw and Maxwell Johnson’s book, The Origins of Feasts, Fasts and Seasons in Early Christianity,[1] is called “Sabbath and Sunday.” They begin by pointing out that it is all too easy to presume that the only three possible references to a weekly assembly on Sunday may well not have been on Sunday. If you are a Jewish Christian in Galatia in the year 54 or 55—the years most scholars now assign to its writing[2]—the first day of the week starts when night falls on Saturday.

The book of Job is not a short book in the Hebrew Bible. In The Jerome Bible Commentary, the late Jesuit scholar Robert MacKenzie, wrote, “The greater part of [Job] is in poetic form; in fact, it is the longest ancient [Hebrew] poem that has survived (perhaps that was ever composed).[1] Its subject is the suffering of a person who is morally and religiously faithful. “Theodicy,” from the Greek words for God and justice, is often the term name given to this discussion, a discussion that has occupied philosophy and theology since ancient times and across different faith traditions.[2]

Sometime in the year 496, the metropolitan bishop of Rheims, Remigius, in what is now France, baptized Clovis, the king of the Germanic tribe of the Franks and 3,000 of his soldiers. The Christian world was living through the struggle with Arianism, a doctrine that maintained that God the Son was subordinate to God the Father. The Council of Chalcedon in 451 defined how to speak faithfully about the “Union of the Divine and Human Natures in the Person of Christ.”[1] It isn’t the only way to speak about God. Our words can’t limit in any way the power of God.

I’ve started another non-fiction book by the British writer Andrew Wilson, London: A History.[1] I was surprised by his assertion that it was in the reign of the first Queen that torture was first used in England.” Clearly wrong. It was easy to find that the terrible rack was introduced around the year 1420 by the-then duke of Exeter.[2] That said, I like reading Wilson’s take on things.

The 1967 General Convention, the Episcopal Church’s governing body, authorized a “Plan for the Revision of the Book of Common Prayer.”[1] There were 14 drafting committees. One committee was charged with the revision of what it called “Pastoral Offices.” These included Marriage, Reconciliation, Ministration to the Sick, and the Burial of the Dead. It published its work in 1970, Prayer Book Studies 24.[2] This was not the first work on these rites. In 1959, Prayer Book Studies XIII described its work on the Burial Office this way, “It attempts to provide appropriately for the departed, the bereaved, and for the total congregation.”[3] In 1967, the Standing Liturgical Commission quoted these words as guidance for the new committee’s work.[4]

On Thursday, I decided to ride my bike down to Chelsea to run some errands. As I left the apartment, I was reminded to be careful and not to come back all bent out of shape because I’d encountered taxi drivers parking in the bike lane or pedestrians crossing the street against the light. I promised I would do my best.

Today we commemorate the lives and witness of Sergius, an esteemed Russian Orthodox abbot who died on this day in 1392, and Lancelot Andrewes, who died in 1626, and who was among the ablest and most influential of English theologians and preachers in his lifetime. Andrewes was a leading translator of the King James Version of the Bible. He served in important positions, among them dean of Westminster Abbey and later bishop of Westminster. T.S. Elliot famously adapted the beginning of Andrewes’ sermon on the Visit of the Magi for his poem, “The Journey of the Magi.” These are Andrewes’ words from 1622:

Ecclesiastes is one of the very few wisdom books in the Hebrew Bible. The others are Job, Proverbs, and the Song of Songs. There are also a few examples among the psalms.[1] For us, the name of this book, “Ecclesiastes,” is a Latin form of the Greek translation of the Hebrew word used to name the author, Qoheleth.[2] The Hebrew root means assembly or congregation.

As I started to work on today’s gospel lesson, I found myself thinking about the parables in Luke of the lost and the found—the sheep, the coin, and two lost sons.[1] One found his way back to his father’s table. Luke’s Jesus leaves the story with the son who never left hearing these words from his father, who has left the banquet to invite his son inside, “Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. It was fitting to make merry and be glad, for this your brother was dead, and is alive; he was lost, and is found.” I hope this son found his way to his father’s table.

Things were messy for the church in England when Pope Vitalian chose a monk, born in Saint Paul’s birthplace of Tarsus, to be the sixth archbishop of Canterbury. I wasn’t sure what I would discover this morning when I started work on my homily. But I’m glad it’s my turn to be standing here today.

The only reliable source we have for Saint Ninian’s life is the Ecclesiastical History of the English People, written about the year 731 by the Venerable Bede, an extraordinary scholar-monk. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church says that he was a careful writer. He named his sources and made an effort to separate fact from “hearsay and tradition”[1]—with respect, I would say fact from fiction.

During Holy Week this year, I came across an explanation why the sign of the cross was not used by early Christians to symbolize their faith. They made use of lambs, a shepherd with a sheep on his shoulders, and often a fish. The Greek letters ΙΧΘΥΣ—iota, chi, theta, upsilon, and sigma—signifying the phrase “Jesus Christ Son of God Savior,” were associated sometimes with a simple drawing of a fish. There is an early third-century funeral monument in the Roman National Museum in Rome with two fish and the words in Greek, “fish of the living.”[1] Christians did not begin to use the cross as a symbol until after Constantine ended crucifixion in the Roman Empire. The gruesome cruelty of crucifixion needed to pass out of living memory for the cross to become more than a sign, not of suffering, but triumph.[2]

On November 9, 1989, East Germans learned that they were free to cross the country’s borders, and they did. And so, to our great surprise, the Cold War came, bit by bit, to an end. A few years after that, this thing called the World Wide Web emerged from the laboratories of the scientists and engineers and began to change things. Walls were coming down. Borders remained, but it seemed as if some of those borders might become more permeable. Many believed that the Internet would promote open, rational discussion across boundaries, free from the oversight of bureaucrats or tyrants, enabling democracy and promoting reconciliation.

John Henry Hobart was among the Episcopal Church’s great leaders in the first decades of the nineteenth century. On September 14, 1775, he was born in Philadelphia and educated at the University of Pennsylvania and Princeton. William White, bishop of Pennsylvania, ordained him deacon in 1798 and priest in 1801. Yet a year earlier, in 1800, he became an assistant minister at Trinity Church Wall Street, where the rector was the second bishop of New York, Samuel Provoost.

My friends Jill and Michael Basden were in touch with me this morning. Michael is the retired rector of Trinity-by-the Cove Church in Naples, Florida. In 2001, after dropping off their son for school in Massachusetts, they arrived at the rectory on Sunday evening, September 9. I met Jill and Michael when our paths crossed for a year at Nashotah House Seminary. We were both rectors in the diocese of Northern Indiana when I was called to Saint Mary’s and, a few months later, he was called to Trinity-by-the-Cove.

Because of the COVID-19 epidemic, Father Smith was not able to be present, in person, for the Holy Eucharist at the Convent in Mendham, New Jersey on September 8, 2020. His address was read for him and in his name by Sister Monica Clare, C.S.J.B., Sister Superior of the Community of Saint John Baptist.

My dear Sister Laura Katharine, Sister Monica Clare, Sister Deborah Francis, and all the Sisters of the Community of Saint John Baptist, greetings from the Church of Saint Mary the Virgin, Times Square:

I was very much looking forward to being there to celebrate this great day with Sister Laura Katharine and all of you. Though this was not to be, still, I hope you know that I am with you in spirit. Today at Mass at Saint Mary’s, I celebrated the Holy Eucharist for Sister Laura Katharine’s intentions, and we prayed for her and for all of you, giving thanks for Sister’s ministry here at Saint Mary’s and for the ministry of the Community of Saint John Baptist.

Luke the evangelist reorders the sequence of events that he takes from Mark at the beginning of his gospel. In Mark, after Jesus’ baptism and temptation and the arrest of John, Jesus goes to Galilee and preaches “the gospel of God.”[1] By the Sea of Galilee, he sees brothers Simon and Andrew. Mark writes, “And Jesus said to them, ‘Follow me and I will make you become fishes of men and women.’ And immediately they left their nets and followed him.”[2] After also calling brothers James and John to follow him, Jesus and his disciples go to Capernaum. They enter the synagogue There Jesus performs his first act of power: casting out an unclean spirit. He goes from the synagogue to Simon’s house and heals first Simon’s mother-in-law. Then those who were sick or possessed by demons go to Simon’s house and are made whole.[3]