Following in his steps
SERMON PREACHED AUGUST 9, 2026 – TWELFTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST
AND JONATHAN MYRICK DANIELS, MARTYR, AUGUST 14th
COLLECT AUGUST 9th AND COLLECT AUGUST 14th
From the Collect August 9th: Give us grace to receive thankfully the fruits of our Lord’s redeeming work, and to follow daily in the blessed steps of his most holy life.
Today is the Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost, the twelfth Sunday after the Church was birthed by the plenteous outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon men and women from all the nations of the world as known in Palestine. In the centuries since then, the Church has struggled to work, pray and give for the spread of the Kingdom of God. To know Christ and make him known. To let justice roll down like water, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream, as the prophet Amos says.
I want this morning to reflect on this struggle by examining the life and witness of Jonathan Myrick Daniels, whose feast day was two days ago, on August 14. He was a modern Episcopal saint, being killed at close range by shotgun in Lowndes County, Alabama in August 1965. He risked and gave his life for a young African American girl.
Committed to civil rights and social justice, his efforts in the Black Belt of Alabama and his murder in August 1965 helped draw attention to racial inequities in the South, and apathy within the Episcopal Church. This is important living memory for our Church, and we must keep it alive.
I am relying for much of the detail of Jonathan Daniels’ story from the Encyclopedia of Alabama. He was born on March 20, 1939, in Keene, New Hampshire, the second child of Philip Brock Daniels, a family doctor and obstetrician, and Constance Weaver, a language teacher. Although his parents were Congregationalists, Jon joined St. James Episcopal Church because it sponsored a Boy Scout troop during his senior year in high school.
In 1961, he graduated first in his class from the Virginia Military Institute and briefly attended Harvard University to study literature. As a young man, Daniels had experienced periods of profound doubt regarding his faith, but he eventually became convinced of a call to ordained ministry in the Episcopal Church. In 1963, he began studies at Episcopal Theological Seminary (ETS) in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
As we know, on March 7, 1965, civil rights activists led by John Lewis and Hosea Williams attempted to march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma and were beaten back by law enforcement officials, leading the press to label the day “Bloody Sunday.”
Martin Luther King, Jr. then called clergy of all denominations to come to Selma and join the marchers in a new attempt to reach the state capitol in Montgomery. This was to highlight ongoing discrimination of African Americans in voter registration and elections, and the recent murder of civil rights activist Jimmie Lee Jackson. Jon and 10 other ETS students flew to Selma to take part in a second march attempt on March 9.
Jon and other classmates stayed in Alabama after participating in the second bridge walk, arranging to finish their ETS studies independently. Over the next several months he stayed with local African Americans, tutored children, and helped register African American voters. He also worked to integrate St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Selma.
On August 14, Jon and roughly 30 other protestors picketed whites-only stores in the town of Fort Deposit in southern Lowndes County. They were arrested and taken to Hayneville, where they were jailed. The prisoners were released a week later on August 20 but were not provided with any means of transportation back to Selma.
Stranded in100-degree heat, Jon and the others sought a cool drink at a nearby store. There, they were met by Tom Coleman, holding a shotgun, who demanded they leave the property or risk being shot. As Coleman fired, Jon pushed 17-year-old African American Ruby Sales to the ground and took the full impact of the shotgun blast in his chest, dying instantly. As Daniels’s companions ran for safety, Coleman fired again, critically injuring Richard Morrisroe, a Roman Catholic priest from Chicago, who survived.
As was the case in numerous race-related crimes during the civil rights era, an all-white jury acquitted Coleman when the defense produced witnesses who claimed that Daniels had a knife and Morrisroe had a pistol.
The Beatitudes in the Gospel according to Matthew promise these things in the Kingdom of God:
“Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
6 “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
7 “Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.
8 “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
9 “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.
10 “Blessed are those who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
11 “Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. 12 Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
The last part of the Beatitudes sound like something farfetched, something from a faraway time and place. But it came to bear during the Civil Rights movement in the American South.
Jesus says that Jon Daniels is among the blessed. He was meek. He hungered and thirsted after righteousness. He was merciful and pure in heart. He was a peacemaker and was persecuted for the sake of righteousness. People reviled him, and persecuted him and uttered all kinds of evil against him falsely on Jesus’ account.
These days are within living mid-memory. And they were in our own country, not in a lesser-developed country, somewhere in the far reaches of the world. We must pay attention to what is happening in our own divided country these days, and consider how to respond. How can we hunger and thirst after righteousness? How can we be merciful and pure in heart? How can we be peacemakers? We may feel protected from the hard bits of the Kingdom of God, but we never know when our day will come. It is our job to work, pray and give for the spread of the Kingdom of God.
May we rise to the occasions that God puts before us to do so.
THANKS BE TO GOD. Amen.