Today the church remembers, with mixed-emotions, Cyril of Alexandria, 5th Century Bishop and teacher.

Cyril (a name that should make a comeback) was not exactly a stand-up individual, but had a keen theological mind. He was a ruthless ideologue who sometimes incited his followers to violence. Whether or not this was by intention or accident, history is unclear.

He was quick to raise hell against church leaders he found heretical, focusing most of his ire against Nestorius, who was taught in the theological school of Antioch. Nestorius argued that Jesus was of two persons, one human and one divine. Cyril championed the opposite, that Jesus was of one person, both human and divine. He presided over the Council of Ephesus in 431 where this was discussed and where Nestorius was condemned as a heretic.

In the years following the council, Cyril mellowed, though, through wise counsel from Isidore of Pelusium.

He grew up, aged though he was.

He left a great number of writings, and is cited in several places throughout the Lutheran Confessions.

Cyril is a reminder for me, and the whole church, that brilliant people are not always kind, and kind people are not always brilliant, and that we can honor the good in someone without honoring the whole of a person’s life and conduct.

For as much as we talk about “sinner and saint,” we’re sure quick to denounce and deride people who, though they contribute mightily to the common good, were greatly flawed themselves.

Cyril was brilliant but brash. He was even violent to the point of despicability. Yet we can take his brilliance and still denounce his character.

May none of us be remembered for our worst traits.

-historical notes gleaned from Pfatteicher’s “New Book of Festivals & Commemorations”

Today the church remembers the Siskel to Luther’s Ebert, the Burt to Luther’s Ernie, the Ginger to Luther’s Fred: Saint Philipp Melanchthon, Reformer, Renewer, and Editor.

Saint Philipp’s true last name is Schwarzerd, and he was born on February 16th at the end of the 15th Century. In Greek, though, his last name is Melanchthon, meaning, “dark earth,” probably a nod to his family’s farming heritage.

Saint Philipp was a great student and a natural talent. By the age of twelve he had already mastered Latin, and by thirteen had Greek under his belt as well. He attended both Heidelberg University and Tubingen where he was awarded a Masters Degree for his studies. He was brilliant, he was a humanist, and eventually he became the first professor of Greek at Wittenberg where he would encounter a grumpy, fiery Martin Luther in the Theology Department.

Luther encouraged Melanchthon to study theology as well as Aristotle, and he eventually started teaching that as well at Wittenberg, proving quite popular with the students. With this outstanding professor roaming its halls, Wittenberg became a leading university in Medieval Europe.

In the fall of 1520 Saint Philipp entered unwittingly into the arena of politics when he married the daughter of Wittenberg’s mayor. Their marriage was both a blessing and included a good bit of tragedy as two of their children died quite young. In this both Saint Philipp and our own Blessed Martin shared a similar heartache. All the same, Saint Philipp and his wife, Katherine, were known to be generous and hospitable to everyone they encountered.

In 1521 Saint Philipp published his Loci Communes, the first compilation of Lutheran doctrine ever assembled. But Saint Philipp was not only interested in theology. With Luther’s help, Saint Philipp would go on to tackle social issues in Germany, reorganizing schools and championing public education. It was Saint Philipp who would take the lead in the development of elementary and secondary education, making the study of the classics as the bedrock of public schooling.

Saint Philipp was often called upon to make appearances at debates and meetings where he would draft reports, refutations, and articles of reconciliation. He was a master writer and had a way of tempering Luther’s often bombastic treatises.

Saint Philipp never entered the priesthood, but rather played the important role of invested layperson. He died in Wittenberg just three years after his beloved Katherine in 1560. He is remembered on this day because today is the anniversary of the Presentation of the Augsburg Confession, the founding document of the Reformation. Melanchthon’s influence and pen is all over that document, and he presented it to Emperor Charles V at 3pm at his diet to settle religious controversies because Luther had already been excommunicated.

Saint Philipp is a reminder for me, and should be for the whole church, that every endeavor is a team effort. Luther would not have gotten far without Saint Philipp, who quietly, brilliantly, created the road on which the Reformation trod.

-historical bits from Pfatteicher’s New Book of Festivals & Commemorations

Today the church celebrates the Nativity of John the Forerunner, you probably know him as “John the Baptizer,” popularly called the Cousin of Jesus.

John is the miraculous child of the aged Zechariah and Elizabeth, and we first hear of John’s movement in the world when a very pregnant Mary visits a very pregnant Elizabeth, and the still-wombed John leaps for joy.

John was religiously an Essene, otherwise known as a Son of Zadok, an extremist streak of Judaism known for odd behavior and dress. The Essenes focused heavily on repentance, rejected an immoral life, and publicly critiqued the rulers of the day, the Herodians.

This last part will get him killed in the end.

There are still followers of John the Forerunner in Iraq, believing that he is the rightful and true Messiah. They are a severely oppressed minority.

John’s birth day is no accident and is certainly not factually bound. The ancient church put it squarely six months before Jesus’ natal day, near the other pole of nature’s sequence, the Summer Solstice. As Jesus’ birth was placed near the Winter’s Solstice where light will ever increase, John’s natal day was placed near the Summer Solstice, where light will ever decrease, but never be extinguished. This dating of John the Forerunner’s feast pairs nicely with his own words in the Gospel of John (3:30) where the baptizer says, “I must decrease so that he might increase.”

Interestingly, Saint John the Forerunner is the patron saint of Quebec, and is celebrated all across French Canada.

Saint John the Forerunner is a reminder for me, and for the whole church, I think, that the call of the faithful is the call of both personal and societal critique. So much of what passes for Christianity today is focused too heavily on personal reform. John reminds us that our own internal reform should always lead us to call for societal reform.

Even if we lose our life in the process.

Today the church remembers a 4th Century saint that has largely been lost to history, but whose name continues to be used on church signs, street markers (even here in Raleigh), and a number of notable British towns and landmarks: Saint Alban, Master of Disguise and Martyr.

St. Alban was a Roman soldier stationed in what was then the far reaches of the Empire: Verulamium, twenty miles north of London on the British Isles.

One night a priest came knocking at his door seeking shelter from bounty hunter soldiers who intended to kill him for the reward offered. St. Alban took him in, and when the marauding soldiers came to his house, St. Alban dressed as the priest and let the old Father escape.

The soldiers took St. Alban, tortured him, and martyred him in place of the priest, even though they knew they had the wrong person.

At the place of the martyrdom an abbey, St. Alban’s Abbey, now stands.

St. Alban is the earliest person we know tied to the Christian faith on the British Isles, and he’s largely considered the first Christian martyr of Britain (though we have no knowledge of his belief system).

Personally, I like to think that St. Alban was not a Christian, but rather just a good human who understood that when someone knocks at your door intending to harm someone in your house for their beliefs, their skin color, or their heritage, you have no choice but to tell them the truth: there is no one in that house that they can take.

St. Alban is a reminder for me, and should be for the whole church, that sometimes salvation isn’t found in people who believe like you do, but rather in wonderful humans of every creed and stripe who just know the face of the Divine when they see it.

Let those with ears to hear, hear.

Today is a day when the church laments.

It laments of white privilege which, by the way, I’ve had more than a handful of “good, God-fearing church members” tell me is fictional. What an ignorant pleasure it must be to ignore truth.

It laments of racism, in which it is (not has-been, is) complicit.

And it honors the Emmanuel 9, gunned down in Bible Study and prayer, after they welcomed the stranger, Dylann Roof, in their midst, a boy taught in a Lutheran church and raised on a supposed diet of grace and peace.

There are no fail-safes in this world, Beloved, not on guns nor gospel perversions.

Today I am reminded of the words of the Reverend William Sloane Coffin, my spiritual mentor and muse, when he said,

“Believers know that while our values are embodied in tradition, our hopes are always located in change.”

So as the Confederate monuments (real and metaphorical) continue to topple around us, as Mary predicted they would in Luke 1:52, we also today lift up our voices in confession for having erected too many racist monuments in our lives by the things we have done and left undone.

Indeed, in many cases the cross, our symbol, has become a racist monument, twisted into the swastika, burned in front of hanging bodies, a barrier between peoples.

But not just those literal monuments. Most especially we repent of all of the figurative ones we erect, too.

Today we cry and lament and work for that change which is the currency of our hope.

(art by Philippe Lazaro)

Though not an official saint day, I would lobby hard for it to become one.

Today the church (should) honor the 49 pulses stopped too soon in the Pulse Nightclub shooting, an act that was both domestic terrorism and hate crime wrapped into one bloody night.

In the days following I remember giving blood, and upon entering the waiting room, finding a number of young adults in tears, waiting. A young woman walked up to the attendant, asking, “How old do you have to be to give? If I bring my mom in, can she sign for me? She’ll give too.”

So much blood. On the dance floor. On the hands of a country that refuses to adequately deal with the scourge of gun violence. In vials filled to help the 53 victims wounded in the act.

And especially now when it seems to be increasingly dangerous for LGBTQIA+ folks due to hateful legislation being passed around the country targeting their representation, their stories, their families, and their dignity, we need to hear the call of the Saints of Pulse and act. We must not remain silent.

Pride month is a month of celebration; yes. But even more so it is a protest against the powers and principalities that seek to harm the splendid diversity of humanity through intimidation, violence, and laws that target rather than protect.

The Saints of Pulse remind the church, and all of us, that until we tackle both the hate of the heart and the lack of regulations that allow people to wantonly act on that rage in mass murder, we’re not done.

We’re not done.

Today is one of my favorite feast days because an early apostle, who doesn’t get a lot of play, gets a nod from the church.

Today the church honors St. Barnabas, a Jewish-Christian from the Diaspora. His name means, “child of encouragement,” probably because he was such a dynamite preacher.

He has long been thought to be one of the seventy that Jesus sent out in Luke 10, and he was a staunch defender of Paul in the courts of the early church, believing that Paul had indeed had a conversion.

His early work was in Antioch, where the church was thriving, and he asked Paul to assist him there…yes, you read that correctly, Paul assisted Barnabas in his early career. Eventually Paul would take the lead, but he learned how to lead from Barnabas. This little tidbit has been lost in history due to Paul’s enormous influence and ego, but it’s worth remembering.

In the early church arguments over the inclusion of Gentiles, Barnabas sided mostly with Paul, calling for Gentiles to be accepted into the fold. Barnabas eventually took John Mark under his tutelage, leaving Paul to travel with Silas, and as Barnabas headed toward Cyprus, we lose track of him in the fog of history.

Lore states that Barnabas was stoned in Cyprus around the year 60.

The Epistle of Barnabas, supposedly written by the apostle, was widely used in the early church and almost made the canon, and some think Barnabas is the author of Hebrews (I don’t buy this).

Barnabas is a reminder for the church, and for all of us, to look just behind the shining stars to see who made them shine. He was Paul’s mentor and defender in Paul’s early days, and like every good teacher, encouraged Paul to outshine him one day (for better or for worse).

-historical bits gleaned from Pfatteicher’s “New Book of Festivals & Commemorations”

Because two Irish saints are commemorated on June 9th, I’d lobby one of their feasts be transposed to tomorrow and one retained today as this good Abbot of Iona kept the lamp of learning and love alive in the toughest of times: Saint Columba, Rebuker of Monsters and Community Organizer.

Those with a Gaelic tongue would call him “Colum Cille,” or “Dove of the Church,” but you may call him Columba. He was born into a royal Irish dynasty (yes, there is such a thing) in the early 600’s, educated at the finest monasteries of the day, and eventually ordained a deacon and a priest for the people of the Emerald Isle.

At the ripe old age of 42 he left Ireland with twelve fellow travelers (you know, that old chestnut) to establish a community on Iona off the coast of Scotland. This little outpost would become the center for Irish missionaries serving the Scotch-Irish (those Irish who had settled in Scotland) and the Picts (the original Scots), as well as those living in Northumbria.

Saint Columba lived at Iona for more than thirty years, preaching and teaching both on the island and on the mainland.

One fun story about Saint Columba is that he took on the Loch Ness monster face-to-face after it had killed a young Scot. Saint Columba said, “Whoa, buddy!” and made the sign of the cross in front of it, calming it before it attacked another. The monster became docile and has never since attacked another human. This miracle was said to have converted King Brude, leader of the Picts, bringing many Scottish to the faith.

A powerful preacher with an imposing personality, Saint Columba was a force to be reckoned with and his footprints dot the literal landscape as well as the figurative landscape of the faith. He died on June 9th at the age of 77 (according to the Venerable Bede) and was buried on Iona (though his bones have since been moved to Kells).

Iona still remains a contemplative pilgrim destination for so many today; a sacred, thin space. In thin places there is very little separating you from God…Iona is considered one of the thinnest.

Saint Columba is a reminder for me, and should be for the whole church that sometimes we find thin places.

And sometimes we create them, by God.

Let those with ears to hear, hear.

-historical bits gleaned from Pfatteicher’s New Book of Festivals & Commemorations

-icon written by Daniel Mitsui