Sermons from Grace Cathedral
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The Fury of Jesus
Sermons from Grace Cathedral
03/03/24 • 15 min
Exodus 20:1-17
1 Corinthians 1:18-25
John 2:13-22
The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young
Sermons from Grace Cathedral
10/22/23 • 16 min
“Lord you have been our refuge from one generation to another" (Ps. 90).
The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young, Dean Grace Cathedral, San Francisco, CA 2D74
21 Pentecost (Proper 24A) 8:30 a.m. and 11:00 a.m. Eucharist Sunday 22 October 2023
Exodus 33:12-23
Psalm 99
1 Thessalonians 1:1-10
Matthew 22:15-22
1. Where is God hidden? Beth and Jonathan Singer, the senior rabbis at Temple Emmanuel feel like big siblings to me. This is the ninth year we have been friends and I admire them very much. On Thursday for lunch they convened a group of 13 religious leaders (half Jewish and half not Jewish) to talk about the recent violence in the Middle East. They opened the conversation by sharing their deep concern for the people who live in Gaza, and their support for a two state solution to the diplomatic crisis.
They also talked about the terrible pain they are feeling, about friends with family members who are being held hostage in tunnels under the ground. I heard about many funerals, some for young people. Beth said that she hoped that together we would really speak from the heart, even if this lead us into uncomfortable places.
All the Jewish leaders spoke, then most of the others except me. Jonathan said, “what do you have to say Malcolm?” Frankly I did not want to say anything. I have never been to the Middle East and did not feel I had much to add. It is difficult to talk about how horrifying and inhumane the terrorist attacks by Hamas are and yet at the same time to recognize that the situation for ordinary people in Gaza seems impossible. I told them that our community is connected to Jewish people and Palestinians too, that every day we pray for peace, that we long for peace.
This seemed to understandably upset one of the other rabbis who I don’t know as well. She said that peace is not enough. After the terrible violence, after the innocent people who have been murdered, something has to be done immediately to make things right. I think all of us felt the tension, the anger and despair, as she emphatically said that prayers are not enough. We say that here too – when we talk about the epidemic of gun violence in America.
It felt like we had moved far away from the Hebrew prayer of blessing before the meal. God is not just hidden in violence and inhumanity. God can seem hidden to us in our personal pain and fear, and in our humiliation when we have said the wrong thing.
The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young
Sermons from Grace Cathedral
02/05/23 • 15 min
“[N]ow we have received not the spirit of the world, but the spirit that is from God” (2 Cor. 2:1).
Grace Cathedral, San Francisco, CA 2D9
5 Epiphany (Year A) 11:00 a.m.
Sunday 5 February 2023
Isaiah 58:1-9a
Psalm 112:1-9
2 Corinthians 2:1-12
Matthew 5:13-20
You are the salt of the earth. At 6:00 p.m., at the height of the century’s worst winter storm, I put on waterproof biking pants and a jacket to go walking in the darkness. Rain poured down in sheets. In the Presidio forest, along the ridge, 60 knot gusts of wind tore through the Monterey Cypress and Eucalyptus trees. It sounded like a deafening freight train. As debris landed all around I felt nagging fear but also awe in the face of such power and beauty, in the presence of God. I could see no sign of another living soul except for a single light far offshore in thirty foot swells outside the Golden Gate.
This week I gradually began to understand the news. Our seminary, the Church Divinity School of the Pacific will be closing its classrooms for in person learning and most likely selling their property (which lies across the street from the University of California, Berkeley).[i] The university motto Fiat Lux, means “let there be light.” And today I want to begin by expressing what a great light our seminary has been for me during my whole adult life.
I remember going to Thursday evening community eucharists there during the ferocious El Nino storms of my first year in college. As an eighteen year old I loved the Episcopal Church. Berkeley with its four Episcopal churches, two break-away churches, a university chaplaincy, a kind of Anglican newspaper (called the New Oxford Review) and seminary seemed like heaven to me. I have fond memories of studying in the Graduate Theological Library from the time it first opened.
My college chaplain Peter Haynes had us meet in the seminary parking lot to drive together for my first retreat at the Bishop’s Ranch. The people in this setting profoundly shaped my faith as a guide to a compassionate, generous, beautiful, uniting, and thoughtful way of being. This faith opened me to the experiences of people of different backgrounds, even of different religions and of no religion. This faith also grounded me in traditions that connect us to our deepest humanity.
Before long I was kneeling on the warm red carpet at St. Clement’s Church in Berkeley and getting ordained as a priest. Soon after that I began participating in monthly Faculty Clergy lunches. John Kater first introduced the idea of online learning to us a year after the invention of the world wide web.
For twenty years I participated in Pacific Coast Theological Society meetings at the seminary with Owen Thomas, Patricia Codron, Huston Smith, Herman Waetjen.[ii] I cherish my clergy colleagues who were educated there and their teachers. I can see in my mind’s eye the busy brick refectory at lunchtime with students and teachers from across the country engaged in friendly talk on a fall day as the liquid amber tree leaves outside the windows burst into an impossibly beautiful redness.
You may be getting a sense for the heartbreak I feel about our seminary, that with others I am mourning its loss. This brings us to one of Jesus’ most important lessons about how to live, known in the Gospel of Matthew as the Sermon on the Mount. Let me briefly talk about the central elements of Jesus’ teaching and then introduce a psychologist and two theologians who give us further insights into its meaning.
Today we hear the second part of the Sermon on the Mount. It begins with Jesus saying “blessed are the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, those who hunger for righteousness, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers” (Mt. 5). Jesus does not say that one thing leads to the other as if we should somehow try to be poor in spirit in order that we might be blessed. No, Jesus speaks to US. We are the people who mourn, the humble ones frustrated by injustice, longing for goodness and mercy.
Indeed Jesus says to us this morning, “YOU are the salt of the earth... YOU are the light of the world.” The Greek word “you” is plural. It involves all of us. It is imperative to notice that Jesus is not asking us to change who we are. We are already what we need to be. We do not have to become something entirely new. We just need to learn how to magnify the goodness we already possess.
For this metaphor Jesus chooses things that in small quantities have a massive effect. A tiny bit of salt brings out the flavor of a large meal. You are that salt, enriching the banquet for everyone. A single candle flame can be seen from 1.6 miles away. It takes half an hour to walk the distance to that tiny light that might guide someone home.
So again Jesus is not saying that this is a cause and effect relations...
The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young
Sermons from Grace Cathedral
01/22/23 • 13 min
“The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom then shall I fear” (Ps. 27)?
Grace Cathedral, San Francisco, CA 2D6
3 Epiphany (Year A) 11:00 a.m. & 6:00 p.m. Eucharist
Sunday 22 January 2023
Isaiah 9:1-4
Psalm 27:1, 4-9
1 Corinthians 1:10-18
Matthew 4:12-23
What new season of life are you entering? How will you need to change? What relationship will you have with God?
The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young
Sermons from Grace Cathedral
09/08/24 • 17 min
“Looking up to heaven [Jesus] and said... “Ephatha,” that is, “Be opened” (Mk. 7).
The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young, Dean
Grace Cathedral, San Francisco, CA 2E58
16 Pentecost (Proper 18B) 11:00 a.m. Eucharist Sunday
8 September 2024, Congregation Sunday
Proverbs 22:1-2, 8-9, 22-23
Psalm 125
James 2:1-10, (11-13), 14-17
Mark 7:24-37
How can we open ourselves to God? When we go beyond the way others experience us, beyond who we think we are, we will encounter God. Today I am going to offer two pictures of this openness the first from Mark’s story of the Syrophoenician mother and the second from the ancient Book of Proverbs.
The Rev. Canon Mary Carter Greene
Sermons from Grace Cathedral
09/01/24 • 12 min
Song of Solomon 2:8-13
James 1:17-27
Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23
The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young
Sermons from Grace Cathedral
08/30/24 • 9 min
“Once there were three baby owls: Sarah and Percy and Bill. They lived in a hole in the trunk of a tree with their Owl Mother...” [1] These are the first lines in the children’s picture book Owl Babies. One night the three children wake up and find that their mother has gone.
The older two siblings have theories about where their mother went and wavering confidence that she will return. The youngest one Bill just repeats “I want my mommy.” It is a simple story about growing up, about the difficult task of learning to become separate from our parents. Sweet Alexandra loved owls, animals, babies and the experience of childhood itself. This was her favorite story and the basis for her nickname “Owlexandra” or just plain “Owl.”
It is hard to move gracefully from being a child to adulthood. It is hard to leave behind our childhood especially when we are very well adapted to it. It is hard to care for children in this time of transition. It is hard to be a child, or the friend of a child, who is becoming an adult.
Stories help to guide us as we make our way. Alexandra loved stories like Frozen, Wicked, and Hamilton. Her mother is American and her father is from England so they read quite a variety of stories including those of the British author Enid Blyton (1897-1968). In Five on a Treasure Island the first book in the Famous Five series, Julian, Dick and Anne are on their way to spend their first summer away from their parents, at the seashore home of their uncle and aunt, and their cousin Georgina and her dog Timmy.
“The car suddenly topped a hill – and there was the shining blue sea, calm and smooth in the evening sun...” At the house they meet their aunt for the first time (and they “liked the look of her”). She says, “Welcome to Kirrin [Bay]... Hallo, all of you! It’s lovely to see you... There were kisses all round, and then the children went into the house. They liked it. It felt old and rather mysterious somehow, and the furniture was old and very beautiful.” [2]
These books are filled with secret passageways, hidden treasure, stolen goods, old maps, smugglers, spies and suspicious strangers. But ultimately bravery, perseverance, kindness and loyalty are always rewarded. In the end everything is perfectly resolved and clear. You know where everyone stands. There is no gray area or ambiguity.
You might say that real life is not like this and you would be right. Each of us is a mixture of good and bad. But we need each other to remind us to feed what is good in us every day so that we grow in kindness.
I love the way Alexandra’s parents talk about her as a “gift from God” and uniquely filled with Christmas magic. In London her older sibling asked Father Christmas (or Santa Claus) for a little sister and ten months later she arrived. Alexandra was an angel in our Christmas pageant right here where I am standing. At the age of three she fell in love with the realistic looking babies in the FAO Schwartz store window. She loved children and animals. The Marin Primary motto is “treasuring childhood” and Alexandra did. She participated in theater, sports like cross country. She made art including a painting based on the work of Keith Haring.
One of the greatest treasures in this Cathedral is a triptych that Keith Haring (1958-1990) finished only weeks before his death from AIDS. It shows a mother holding her baby surrounded by joyful angels.
Alexandra knew that the most important question for a child is not what do you want to be when you grow up. It is who do you want to be; or better how do you want to be. Alexandra was empathetic, a thoughtful caregiver who valued kindness above everything else.
This way of being matches the values of this Cathedral where it is not about who is in or out, who is good or evil, who is saved or damned. The style of faith here is not about condemning other people or other religions. It is not overly preoccupied with the sin which is so evident in the world, the cruelty and unkindness that lead to tragedies like a young person’s death.
Instead we believe that God loves everyone without exception. We hold a faith that arises chiefly out of gratitude, out of an experience of nature’s beauty and the simple pleasure of being kind and helping the people who travel along with us. Jesus says, “Blessed are the pure in heart... Blessed are the peacemakers” and we try to be people who build bridges and look for the best in others. We sing “All things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small, all things wise and wonderful, the Lord God made them all.” And in the midst of terrible tragedy we remember what a gift our life is.
At the end of the service my friend Luis will sing a poem by the sixteenth century Anglican priest George Herbert. It ends with these words. Th...
The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young
Sermons from Grace Cathedral
08/25/24 • 13 min
“We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God” (Jn. 6).
1 Kings 8:(1,6,10-11),22-30,41-43
Psalm 84
Ephesians 6:10-20
John 6:56-69
The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young
Sermons from Grace Cathedral
09/15/24 • 15 min
“For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world, and to forfeit his life?” (Mk. 7).
Proverbs 1:20-33
Psalm 19
James 3:1-12
Mark 8:27-38
What does it mean to lose our life in order to save it?
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FAQ
How many episodes does Sermons from Grace Cathedral have?
Sermons from Grace Cathedral currently has 139 episodes available.
What topics does Sermons from Grace Cathedral cover?
The podcast is about Christianity, Spirituality, Religion & Spirituality, Podcasts, Church, Sermons and Episcopal.
What is the most popular episode on Sermons from Grace Cathedral?
The episode title 'The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young' is the most popular.
What is the average episode length on Sermons from Grace Cathedral?
The average episode length on Sermons from Grace Cathedral is 14 minutes.
How often are episodes of Sermons from Grace Cathedral released?
Episodes of Sermons from Grace Cathedral are typically released every 7 days.
When was the first episode of Sermons from Grace Cathedral?
The first episode of Sermons from Grace Cathedral was released on Jan 22, 2023.
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