Last week I went to see my dermatologist for my usual 6-month checkup. A reminder that I grew up under the Florida sun and so I keep her very busy. But it was the first time in my 7 years with her, where, before the exam began, she asked: “May I touch you?” She’s never asked me that before. And then I got it. In a world where there is way too much “bad touch” there is now clear and certain need for consent.

This afternoon when I turned my attention to the late Raymond Brown’s An Introduction to the New Testament to read about the letter we know as “The Second Letter of Paul to Timothy,” knowing that I would have to confront the issue of New Testament authorship.[1] So that’s what this homily is about. There are two technical words that comes up in this discussion, I will mention them only once: pseudepigraphy (false writing) and pseudonymity (“false name”).[2] Now, I’m going to try to summarize what we know about who wrote what.

Simeon is described as a man who lived in Jerusalem who was waiting for the consolation of Israel—that’s all we know about him, except for one thing, “Inspired by the Spirit he came into the temple”—and at the point in time when God wanted him there.[1]

After being driven by the Spirit to the barren wilderness where Jesus would confront Satan, Jesus hears that John has been arrested. Then Jesus begins to preach, “The time has been fulfilled, and the dominion of God has come near!”[1] But before he begins his ministry of power—his exorcisms and his healings, he calls Andrew, Simon, James, and John to follow him. Then Jesus and his four disciples head to Capernaum.

Tonight I want to set aside for the most part the first reading. It’s from that part of Isaiah generally known as Second Isaiah. Most scholars date these chapters from the time after the return of the Hebrew people to Jerusalem from the years in exile in Babylon.[1] In the passage we heard, the prophet uses the image of a ruler’s daughter who has lost all her family and all of her possessions and has been enslaved. The prophet asserts that the false religion and the wickedness of the people of the city has brought about its destruction by God.

Unraveling the origins of early Christian festivals means wading backwards, as it were, through how the gospel lessons, and the celebrations they inspired, were understood by the generations of Christians who came before us. In the Christian West, second-century Christian writer and teacher Justin Martyr wrote that the wise men were kings from Arabia.[1] Matthew’s gospel, of course, doesn’t mention “kings”; he speaks of “Magi”—probably best understood as Persian wise men, priests, astrologers.[2]
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A friend with whom I chat at my gym and his wife are young parents. They go to church. They happen to be Roman Catholic. Last week Epiphany came up. I don’t remember exactly how it came up, but I said something about there being shepherds and angels in Luke, but only wise men and a star in Matthew. My friend realized that I was telling him there were two different stories. I think I said something about Mary being a virgin in Matthew and Luke, but the stories are different. I reminded him about the seven-day creation story at the beginning of Genesis, followed immediately by the entirely different story of Adam and Eve.

In the Israel of Jesus’s birth, very young women, eleven- or twelve-years-old, were formally betrothed by contract to a man, who was often somewhat older. A young woman would continue to live with her parents for a year or a more. According to the commentaries I read, the timing of the move to her husband’s house, in Mary’s case at least, had to do with the ability of a husband to provide a home for a wife.[1]

The preface to the first, the 1549, Book of Common Prayer, begins—famously—with these words, “There was never any thing by the wit of man so well devised, or so sure established, which in continuance of time hath not been corrupted.”[1] These words were the work, of course, of archbishop and reformation martyr Thomas Cranmer. We know that the seventh-century practice of the monks of St. Peter’s in Rome to read the Bible all the way through in a year had by the ninth century spread through the Christian West. But by the time of the Reformation, these readings had been greatly shortened by the addition of many weekday commemorations—feasts of saints—and other devotions.[2] There was also the major problem that if you did not read and speak Latin well, you could not understand the words you heard in worship.

I was ordained a priest 41 years ago tomorrow.[1] I was confident that becoming a priest would make a difference not only in my life but in the world. I was arrogant. I was a much better Episcopalian than I was a Christian. I was perhaps a Christian in name only. I knew that being a priest would give me power to effect change, and I knew how to save the church.

What follows is a series of musings that have blessed me and I hope they will you. It all started, sadly, with one word that stood out in an email from our assistant dean for student affairs. That word is home. She told us that 88 out of some 1600 students call the state of California home. We opened up our offices to these students who may no longer have a home in their home state. I spent a good deal of time on my walk home on Thursday wondering what it would be like to leave one’s home last September in California, excited about going all the way to NYC to study nursing at NYU, and then discovering during final exams, that there was no longer a home to go home to. Tomorrow, I will discover if that is actually the case for any of our 88. Sadly, so many in California have lost their homes and everything in them. But so many are glad to be alive.

At the Solemn Mass on Friday night on the feast of the Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the choir sang a Mass setting by Francisco de Peñalosa. Peñalosa died in 1528, so I think music historians would place him somewhere in the middle years of the Renaissance, but two of our choristers, who know about such things, tell me that Friday’s Mass reminded them of music from the early years of the Renaissance. I know too little about such things to venture an opinion about all that, but I will say that there were things in Friday’s Mass that seemed distinctive to me and very powerful. That was especially true of the song of praise, the Gloria in excelsis.

There are two Christmas stories in the New Testament. There is one by Luke that begins with the annunciation to the Virgin Mary by the angel Gabriel.[1] The other is by Matthew that begins with Joseph having a dream in which an unnamed angel announces to him, “Do not fear to take Mary your wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit.”[2] Now in Luke, Gabriel tells Mary what God plans to do—note carefully: he does not ask for her permission or agreement. In Luke, she responds, “Let it be to me according to your word.”[3] But Mary’s response is beside the point. With respect, God decided that Mary would be the mother of Emmanuel.

This morning I woke up and realized that there is a high probability that Mark’s gospel was written during the Jewish-Roman War that began in Jerusalem in the year 66. Jerusalem was reconquered by the Romans at the end of August in the year 70. Masada, the last fortress holding out, fell to the Romans in the year 73.[1] But before we get to Mark, I want to begin this morning with Isaiah.

The master is Christ.[1] The servants, or better, slaves, are believers, Christians.[2] [The Greek word here can mean servant or slave, but the one called simply “man” at the beginning of this passage is called “kyrios,” kyrie, that is, “lord,” when he returns. The primary definition of this word is “one who is in charge by virtue of possession, owner.”[3]

“Then [the Chaldeans] sweep by like the wind and go on, guilty men, whose own might is their god! . . . Therefore [the wicked man] sacrifices to his net and burns incense to his seine; for by them he lives in luxury, and his food is rich” [Habakkuk 1:11, 16].

In the gospel according to Matthew, Jesus gives five sermons. All of them have acquired names. The first and the longest is the Sermon on the Mount.[1] Then there’s a Mission Sermon,[2] a Sermon in Parables,[3] and a Sermon on the Church.[4]

Tonight’s second lesson and the reading at Benediction to come, both from Luke, probably are familiar to all of us, because these words are more frequently heard in the form Matthew gives them in the Sermon on the Mount.[1] Luke and Matthew are quoting what New Testament scholars now call the “Sayings Source.”[2]—it was known as “Q” for the German word “quelle,” meaning source, when I was in seminary. The text, of which no copy exists, almost certainly did exist in the classical world. In addition to its use by Matthew and Luke; the passage we heard tonight was also quoted by Justin Martyr, who died c. 167, in a form that suggests he was using the Sayings Source, and not Matthew or Luke.[3]