I woke up this morning to learn of the death of the Rev. Peter Gomes, whose official title at Harvard was “Plummer Professor of Christian Morals and Preacher to the University.” He suceeded George Buttrick in that position in the early 1970s. When I arrived at Harvard Divinity School in the early 1980s, Peter was already a fixture at Harvard. His weekly teas at Sparks House were a popular tradition and his sermons at Memorial Church were brilliant and beautifully-written.

Peter, along with New Testament Professor Helmut Koester, taught the course from which I gained the most for my ministerial practice, and on which I continue to draw. Entitled “Exegesis and Preaching,” the two picked the most challenging texts in the New Testament. We were assigned three of them. One week, we would have to write an exegesis paper that would pass muster with one of the greatest New Testament scholars of his generation. The next week we would write and deliver a sermon on that text. Each step was a lesson in humility, as well as in the interpretation of scripture and the proclamation of the Word.

Following the public delivery of the sermon, we would spend an hour in a one-on-one tutorial with Peter. That amount of time with a Harvard professor was unheard-of. I don’t think I got that much individual attention from a professor in a semester, even when I was writing my dissertation.

The tutorial was humiliating. We were to bring the manuscript to the tutorial. Peter would take it from our hands when we entered his office, we would sit down, then he would deliver it back to us; our pathetic words in his majestic voice. I remember the first session like it was yesterday. As I heard him read my text, I wanted the floor to open up and bury me. It was perhaps the most difficult moment of my entire academic career.

What an experience and how exhilarated I was when both he and Helmut praised my final work, passable exegesis on Revelation 21 and a decent sermon. Whatever my gifts and skills as a preacher, I owe them to that class and those two brilliant professors.

Peter was also quite funny. I still remember the story he told about communion wine. One of the students in class asked him about what wine he used for communion. Peter replied:

My predecessor, George Buttrick, always said that one should use nothing but the best domestic port for communion wine, and he deemed Taylor’s Tawny Port to be that wine.”

I always hoped to see a commercial for Taylor’s with Peter standing on the steps of Memorial Chapel, in full ministerial regalia, holding a bottle of Taylor’s Tawny Port in his hand, and saying those words.

In the 1980s, Peter was often vilified by progressive students at Harvard Divinity School for being a Republican. He gave the benediction at Reagan’s second inaugurals, preached at the National Cathedral in conjunction with George H. W. Bush’s inaugural. That all changed when he “came out” in the 1990s.