Rev. Dr. Michael Knowles, recently retired from the George Franklin Hurlburt Chair of Preaching at McMaster Divinity College, is the featured preacher on the January 26 episode of “Day 1” with host Katie Givens Kime. Day 1 is a nationally broadcast ecumenical radio program, also accessible online at Day1.org and by podcast.
Dr. Knowles will be speaking on “Names and the One Name,” drawing from Nehemiah 8:1-10, the dramatic account of Ezra’s reading at the Water Gate of the Law to the gathered people of Jerusalem recently returned from captivity. Knowles comments on the two verses from this reading that are omitted from the Revised Common Lectionary. Those verses list the names of the people who stood with Ezra and the people who helped the returned captives understand what they were hearing. “Fourteen of those 25 names incorporate the unique name of Israel’s God; eighteen if you add the ones that have been abbreviated. In Babylon, where other gods claim to be in charge, it’s good to remember the name of your God,” he says. “Those two missing verses record a living faith that survives exile when everything else has been lost and forgotten.”
Following his undergraduate studies in Victoria and Québec City, Dr. Knowles earned his MDiv and ThD in New Testament at Wycliffe College, Toronto. Ordained in the Anglican Church of Canada, he served as assistant director of the Wycliffe College Institute of Evangelism from 1991 to 1997. He then became Professor of Preaching and the George Franklin Hurlburt Chair of Preaching at McMaster Divinity College, serving in this role until his retirement in 2024. Dr. Knowles is the author of numerous scholarly articles and books, with his most recent work being “Third Voice: Preaching Resurrection.”