The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young

10/22/23 • 16 min

Sermons from Grace Cathedral

“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.

“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

Previous Episode

The Rev. Canon Mary Carter Green

Today is a day of invitations and explorations.

Throughout the day, during the service and beyond, we are invited to observe the Children’s Sabbath, a day inspired by the Children’s Defense Fund, when faith groups celebrate childhood and tune into the concerns of children, youth, and families.

We will celebrate our children in a few ways:

To begin, we remember the children of the previous generation in this altar frontal made by Grace Cathedral’s young people ~25 years ago.

And we celebrate our own childhood by tapping that quiet compass within us.

Later, during the offertory, some of our young people will present their Creation-tide-artwork.

And at coffee hour today, our youth program welcomes you to a screening of the film of their social justice youth pilgrimage to the American South last summer.

Today’s invitation in the children’s sabbath is about more than demonstrations though;

like a wedding banquet, this invitation is to witness and to welcome new life in love.

Walter Brueggemann wrote, in the presence of God, (we) are visited, “with the freedom of God, so that we are unafraid to live in the world, able to live differently, not needing to control, not needing to dominate, not needing to accumulate, not driven by anxiety.”1

This is the joy described of childhood, but also the life possible when we are present to God.

It’s the sort of freedom of perspective and grounded joy found in TS Eliot’s poetic imagery.

With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this Calling, TS Eliot wrote, We shall not cease from exploration.

And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time.

Through the unknown, unremembered gate When the last of earth left to discover Is that which was the beginning.

At the source of the longest river The voice of the hidden waterfall And the children in the apple-tree . . .

Not known, because not looked for But heard, half-heard, in the stillness Between two waves of the sea.

Quick now, here, now, always-- A condition of complete simplicity

Today, when we mark the children’s sabbath, we take this day of rest and restoration, of union with God . . . to realize the divine in our youngest . . . to focus on children, and to find the simplicity of the Great Commandment, to love them as ourselves . . .

In a time of anxiety . . . this stillness . . . to climb the apple tree, to stand between the waves, to find the center point, can seem as out of reach as our own childhood.

Yet, in a time of brutal war, amid cascading atrocities, of unrelenting bad news and the seeming disintegration of the ground beneath us, we need this stillness, this union with God, more than ever.

Our practice and our readings today show us a way forward.

“When the people saw that Moses delayed coming down from the mountain, the people gathered around Aaron, and said to him, “Come make gods for us, who shall go before us; as for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.”

With Moses gone a moment too long, God’s people decided to count on a more expedient deity . . .

This part of the Exodus story with its sense of remove from God, is the story of our search for easy replacements and is evidently as old as human history . . .

We look for easy idols of course, and we become, as TS Eliot wrote, distracted from distraction by distraction.2

Between the Israelites distraction and God’s response, Moses stood in the breach . . . between what is wrong and what is just, we too are called, to enter the gap and to speak for those who cannot – to find a way to make things right.

Today’s children’s sabbath serves as an alternative to the Golden calf distractions that take us away from the life we are called to join.

The sabbath invites us to begin listening for God’s guidance for the nurture of children, to understand their challenges, and to discern actions to empower, protect, and seek justice for all children, youth, and families.

Marian Wright Edelman, the founder of The Children’s Defense Fund made our call as Christians clear, writing this,

Let the little children come unto me and forbid them not, for such is the kingdom of heaven, Jesus said.

He did not say let only rich or middle-class white children come.

He did not say let only the strapping boys but not the girls come.

He did not say let only the able-bodied children come.

All the children He bade come.

He did not say let all my children or your children or our friends’ children or those in our families and neighborhoods and who look and act and speak like us come.

He did not say let only the well-behaved nice children come or those who conform to society’s norms.

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The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young

“Those who trust in [the Lord] will understand truth, and the faithful will abide with him in love...” (Wisdom 3).

Grace Cathedral, San Francisco, CA 2D77

All Souls / All Faithful Departed (LFF 2022) Evensong 50

Thursday 2 November 2023 Bishop Candidates Visit

Wisdom 3:1-9

Psalm 130

1 Thessalonians 4:13-18

John 5:24-27

At the Bishop’s Ranch for my first clergy retreat I remember the late afternoon heat and that September smell of dust, chaparral and Bay Tree (with a hint of campfire smoke). I knew hardly anyone there as I walked up the Ranch House driveway. The first person to greet me was sixty-eight year old David Forbes. He was fit and trim, wearing a t-shirt and short cut-off jeans. He called me by name. He knew that I had graduated from Cal, that I played rugby there and that we were the national champions.

In those days everyone confused me for Bruce O’Neill and for what seems like years David was the only senior clergy person other than the bishop who actually knew my name. David had grown up in San Francisco. He served here for years as we finished constructing this building’s four walls and as the modern cathedral came into being.

David was involved in building the back half of the Cathedral, installing the human endeavor windows in the clerestory, the East lancet windows and the rose window. He was intimately involved in choosing vestments that we still use, making this granite and redwood altar at the center of the crossing, the governance structures of the cathedral and even the design of our worship services. It was his idea to engrave on our pulpit “In the Beginning” in Hebrew, Latin and Greek.

David founded the Cathedral School for Boys (1961) and St. Paul’s School in Oakland (1965), and later the National Association of Episcopal Schools. He helped me a great deal twenty years ago when our church started our own school in the South Bay. When I joined Grace Cathedral, David served as a chaplain to our staff and especially to me. The two of us would have monthly lunches on Polk Street. Sometimes we would drive around town and he would describe his childhood memories of different neighborhoods.

Although David died in April 2022, I think of him nearly every day when I bike past the restaurant where we used to talk. As we celebrate All Souls Day together we remember the people who have died but who seem almost tangibly near to us. David was the most youthful person in his nineties who you will ever meet. He loved new beginnings. He was always oriented toward the future and cared passionately about the Cathedral.

I want to talk briefly about the message David would share with us. We served together on the board for the Cathedral School for Boys almost to his death. David was active on the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion taskforce. For him the purpose of the school is to give students from disadvantaged backgrounds a chance. As a gay man and a passionate advocate for justice David would be alarmed by our national politics. He would insist that Grace Cathedral more eloquently speak out on behalf of the dignity of all LGBTQ+ people.

Today we are not just celebrating All Souls Day, we are also welcoming our three candidates (with their spouses) who will be in the election for a new bishop on December 2. You may be wondering what David would have to say more specifically in this setting. And I would be too if it were not for a surprise gift I received.

A month ago the Postal Service delivered to my office an old weathered manila envelope with David’s handwriting on the outside. David didn’t use notes when he preached, but this folder contained five typewritten manuscripts for sermons preached at Grace Cathedral in the 1950’s. It also included a stole that his daughter said was given to him by his parents at his ordination here at Grace Cathedral.

The first sentence of his sermon on February 2nd 1958 begins with these words. “Churchmen throughout our Diocese will all testify, I believe, that the topic of the moment is the coming election of the Bishop, who... will succeed Bishop Block.” [1] The whole sermon is about the 1958 bishop election! Let me share with you three things I especially noticed.

First, the sermon addresses a pervasive sense of worry in the Diocese. Up until that point there had only been four diocesan bishops in the history of the whole diocese. In previous cases the new bishop had for all practical purposes been chosen before the balloting. To make matters worse the newspapers were carrying quotes from different candidates. David uses words like perplexity, confusion, disillusionment, smear, inuendo. And phrases like, “battle royale,” and, “less than Christian tactics.” Reading the sermon made me feel so grateful for the civility and graciousness that I have been experiencing through our process...