Lesser Feasts and Fasts’ introduction to today’s feast begins with these words, “Peter and Paul, the two greatest leaders of the early Church . . . are commemorated together on June 29 in observance of the tradition of the Church that they both died as martyrs in Rome during the persecution under Nero, in 64.”[1] For many years I haven’t paid any real attention to the quotation on the same page from the document we know as the First Letter of Clement, written to the Church in Corinth—“usually dated from around [the year] 96 [of the Christian Era].”[2]

The first of five sermons Jesus gives in Matthew is the Sermon on the Mount. Today’s gospel lesson is the conclusion of the second, the Mission Sermon. It begins with these words, “And [Jesus] called to him his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal every disease and every infirmity.”[1] He named the twelve “apostles”—“messengers”—and charged them to take up his mission, “proclaim ‘that the kingdom of heaven has drawn near.’ ”[2] They are to heal as heals, to raise the dead as he raises the dead, to cleanse lepers as he cleanses lepers, and to cast out demons, as he casts out demons.

Yesterday’s gospel lesson were the last verses of the Sermon on the Mount. Matthew’s gospel continues with today’s lesson, Jesus coming down from the mountain, followed by the crowds and his disciples. His teaching has captured the hearts of those who have heard him. He now turns to another sign of his sovereign power, the power of heaven, that is, the power to heal. It begins with the most outcast of outcasts, a leper.

I can usually tell when I’ve read a passage in a commentary by the pencil marks I tend to make as I read. Last Thursday, when the appointed gospel from the Sermon on the Mount included the Lord’s Prayer, words by Professor Ulrich Luz about this prayer have been on mind. He wrote, “It is the openness of the Lord’s Prayer that is its real strength. Countless human beings have been able to find a home in the Lord’s Prayer for their own hopes and petitions and to enter into that home.”[1]

This morning I typed “Athaliah” into the religious academic periodical search engine, that being a seminary graduate gives me, just to see what might come up. I discovered that one significant unresolved question is who was Athaliah’s father. She is identified as the daughter of Omri, king of Israel,[1] the northern kingdom that refused to submit to Solomon’s son Rehoboam when Solomon died.[2] Athaliah is also identified as the daughter of Omri’s son and successor, Ahab[3]—the Ahab, whose wife was Jezebel. I think it’s fair to say that issue is unresolvable.[4]

When I was preparing my sermon for Corpus Christi, I came across two articles on ecumenism, that is, the restoration of unity among Christians, by Maxwell Johnson, professor of liturgy at Notre Dame and an ELCA pastor. One appeared in the journal Worship in 2006, the second in the journal Liturgical Ministry in 2011.[1] If I may, one subtext of Professor Johnson’s approach might be said to be words from John, “Jesus then said to the Jude'ans who had believed in him, ‘If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.’ ”[2]

When I was a student at Nashotah House, students and faculty were required to be in their assigned seats in the chapel for Morning Prayer, Mass, and Evensong from Solemn Evensong on Sunday through Evensong on Friday night. Saturdays were optional. Sunday mornings, most of us were elsewhere. After Sunday Evensong, Benediction was offered at the altar where the Sacrament was reserved for those who wished to stay for the service.

Yesterday, I introduced my thoughts about the appointed passage in the First Book of the Kings by telling the story that we didn’t hear this week because of the appointed commemorations. Today I want to do something of the same thing. On Monday, our gospel was the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount. It’s the longest of five sermons Jesus gives in Matthew. Except on days when we have commemorations, our gospel lessons will be from this sermon for most of the next two weeks.

This year, because of the commemorations for Ephrem of Edessa, Syria, on Wednesday, and the Feast of Saint Barnabas the Apostle yesterday, we did not hear the background story of today’s first lesson: the story of the contest at Mount Carmel between Elijah and the prophets of Baal.[1]

My uncle, Lawrence Matthews is eighty-seven years old now. He is a retired Baptist minister, his last years as an American Baptist. He and the congregation he served left the Southern Baptist Convention over the issue of the ordination of women. He’s been retired since, I think, 1997.

Today we commemorate Saint Columba, Abbot of Iona, who died in 597. Columba, or Colmcille, was a learned monk, a missionary, a fierce preacher, and a founder of monasteries. In the annals, he is remembered as a big man, powerfully built, with a “loud and melodious voice,” not bad things in a preacher. His family was not poor, and he got a good education, studied Latin and theology, became a monk, then a deacon, and finally a priest. He spent time in more than one Irish monastery and was imbued with the traditions of Celtic spirituality, mostly at the famous onastery of Clonard in Ireland’s northeast, where Columba was taught and guided by Saint Finian.

Today we commemorate the institution of the first Book of Common Prayer. It came into use on the feast of Pentecost, June 9, 1549. Edward VI was king. He was ten-years old. A regency council was in charge of his kingdom. Thomas Cranmer was archbishop of Canterbury. And it is largely to Thomas Cranmer, whose study and knowledge, along with his gifts as a translator, that we have a Prayer Book tradition that has stood the test of time. The history and theology of Anglicans is still defined by its Prayer Books.

I first came across the name of C. Kavin Rowe, a professor of New Testament at Duke Divinity School, in Paul Bradshaw and Maxwell Johnson’s book The Origins of Feasts, Fasts and Seasons in Early Christianity.[1] Rowe had published an article on the meaning, for the evangelist we know as Luke, of the Greek words kyrie, Lord, and soter, savior, in Luke’s gospel and in his Acts of the Apostles.[2]

When Jesus and his disciples went to the grave of his friend Lazarus, Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”[1] Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life.”[2] His words do not prevent Martha from objecting to Jesus having the grave opened. Biblical blindness, if you will, the kind of blindness to God’s presence in the world that begins with the story of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.[3] So today, with the appointed gospel from the supper before the Passover, we hear Philip say to Jesus, using an imperative form of the verb, “You, show us the Father.” Jesus’ reply, “Have I been with you so long, and yet you do not know me?”[4] Biblical blindness.

With the advent of live-streaming, we priests here at Saint Mary’s have been doing more formal preparation and writing out our homilies for weekday Eucharists. On Monday, March 30, Monday in the Fifth Week of Lent, the gospel was John’s account of Jesus and the woman caught in adultery.[1] My preparation included coming across an explanation for its complicated textual history. In some important manuscripts it’s found in Luke. It is absent “from the best Greek [manuscripts].”[2] Raymond Brown in his An Introduction to the New Testament wrote that, though canonical, “almost certainly it is out of context here in John.”[3] He suggests that the story may have “traveled independently of the four Gospels and could not be included until there was a change in the church’s reluctance to forgive adultery.”[4]

Today and tomorrow our gospel lessons together are what we know as the last chapter of John, chapter 21, widely regarded as an appendix, or an epilogue, to the first twenty chapters. The gospel seems to end with these words of Risen Jesus to Thomas and the others, “ ‘Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe.’ Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name.”[1]

Yesterday, today, and tomorrow, we are hearing John’s account of Jesus alone, praying to the Father, before he gathers his friends to go across the Kidron Valley to a garden. The beginning of today’s appointed passage can be understood as the point of Jesus’ prayer. He says, “Holy Father, keep them in your name which you have given to me, in order that they may be one just as we.”[1] That’s a very big ask. In other words, he asks that believers should have the relationship with each other that God the Son has with God the Father.

Since sheltering in place began in March, the friars and your parish clergy read Morning Prayer at home. We have this daily Eucharist at ten o’clock. For Evening Prayer, we gather according to the schedule we had before we were closed for public worship. On weekdays we pray Evening Prayer at six, weekends at five, here in this chapel.