The Globe reported today that the Rev. Peter Gomes, the Plummer Professor of Christian Morals at Harvard and Pusey Minister in the Memorial Church, has died.
When I was in law school, I was lucky enough to sing with the Harvard University Choir at Sunday services in Memorial Church. For those of you who have not been inside, the church is in a classic New England style, but the choir sits in stalls behind a screen, and it’s impossible to see the pulpit from where we sat. I remember my first Sunday service, listening to the excellent sermon. From the accent, which was vaguely patrician and which the New Yorker described as “three parts James Earl Jones and one part John Houseman,” I pictured a high-churchy and certainly white Angligcan (under Murray Forbes Somerville, the organist at the time, the music at Memorial Church was very high church, despite Harvard’s history). Imagine my surprise a few weeks later when I met “the only gay, black, Republican, Baptist preacher” I’ve ever had the pleasure to know.
Gomes’s sermons and collects always sparkled. Two of them stand out in my mind particularly. The first was some advice he gave to the senior class just before graduation. He was explaining to them the value of a Harvard education, and he told them that if they had learned one thing, “it’s not who you know … it’s whom you know.” He had a way of poking fun at the pretensions of the place even as he reveled in them. He reminded me of a preacher at Versailles, knowing that he had to be at least as worldly as his bored and over-privileged parishioners if he was to have any chance of moving them with his sermons.
The second was a prayer he offered on the 250th anniversary of Bach’s death–I don’t know this for sure, but I suspect Gomes was a Bach lover, as most big-hearted people are. I wish I could remember the words, because like all of Gomes’s prayers, this one was exceptionally well-crafted and pleasing. I do remember, though, that he emphasized Bach’s humility: Bach often wrote, at the bottom of his manuscripts, “to the glory of God alone.” Humility was not one of Peter Gomes’s vices, I think, but his many other virtues more than made up for a lack of meekness.
Farewell, Peter Gomes!
Anyone who is interested in a rigorous spirituality should give them a listen.
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p>His voice was fantastic. And the most fantastic thing about it was the greater subtlety and depth of the mind behind it…
The world, and Cambridge, has lost a spiritual giant.
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p>I heard only one live sermon (a homily, really) by Peter Gomes, at a Thursday afternoon Eucharist at the Episcopal Monastery of St. John the Evangelist in Cambridge. His theme was powerful: the distinction between “problem” and “mystery”.
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p>He observed that at places like the Harvard School of Government (he offered a friendly gesture towards the nearby building), we learn about “solving problems”. He characterized that as something that is done once and is then “complete”; having “finished” one we then “move on to the next”.
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p>He then observed that “here” (gesturing to the gathered congregation) we learn about “entering mysteries”. This he characterized as an ongoing and life-long process — to paraphrase, “as we enter one mystery, we discover that it unfolds to reveal more within it.”
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p>Our pulpits and our schools will miss the commanding presence of Peter Gomes.
His sermans never failed to inspire.
This is a huge loss. I had the good fortune to listen to Rev. Gomes off and on for the last few years and he never failed to inspire. As mentioned before, he had a great combination of wisdom and wit, the latter of which he wielded with great skill in bringing a place of lofty ambition and egos down to earth. Two anecdotes stick out.
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p>The first was when he was giving a talk to those of us involved in teaching and working with undergrads, and how important it was to educate the whole person. “For Godsakes,” he boomed over the room, “remember that they’re not just heads on sticks!” Good advice it seemed to me at the time, and it still does.
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p>The second was part of a sermon he was preaching on the parable of the mustard seed and how difficult it would be for the rich man to get into heaven. Gomes was rolling along, growing increasingly more impassioned about the perils of affluence. Not surprisingly the audience — a pretty affluent one to say the least — started growing a little uncomfortable with the message until Gomes, sensing this, paused and looked up from his notes and said: “Well, just because the gospel means “good news” doesn’t mean that it’s always good news for you!” It was the kind of thing that only he could pull off.
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p>Anyway, all of this is simply to say that he will be sorely missed.
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p>-JC