Grace Cathedral
Article | November 10, 2024
Requiem for a Dying Church
Blog|The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young
“[A]nyone who hears my word and believes him who sent me has… passed from death to eternal life”(1 Thess. 4).
Every day in the darkness just before morning Kenji paddles his surfboard out through the warm, green blue waters out beyond the reef at Waiehu on the Northshore of Maui. He never misses the moment when the soft gold of the sun rises through the ethereal clouds on the horizon. Kenji and I have been surfing at this spot for thirty years. I see him pretty much every day of the summer.
Kenji is now about sixty years old with graying shoulder length hair. He drives a beaten old white pickup truck and speaks with a strong Japanese accent. We always greet each other and talk about distant storms. He has the most gentle and positive soul.
Last Friday the water was murky with rain run-off and a tiger shark struck him, biting off his leg at the knee. With the help of friends Kenji made it to shore. They were able to slow the bleeding and get him to the hospital. Kenji is fortunate to still be alive, but I cannot stop thinking of how much he has lost.i He has lost a part of his body, his mobility, perhaps a sense of safety. He has lost surfing, that beautiful daily ritual that he left his native land for and which formed a kind of bridge to holiness.ii
After the election in conversations around San Francisco this week so many people have shared their sense of loss with me. On Thursday night I gave Mayor London Breed a hug. She had only conceded the election a few hours before and I could see the disappointment written on her face. She feels like she still has so much to contribute.
This week two people told me that they are considering moving overseas. Others have talked to me about how they feel like they are losing their picture of America. They dream of a multi-racial democracy with people gathered from every nation and in which every person is treated with dignity and respect. Like me they long for a world in which women and LGBTQ+ people in particular can fully participate and contribute to our common well-being. Yet others have talked to me about the importance of fairness and justice, that no one should be above the law. They feel perplexed that other citizens see our situation in a profoundly different light.
Friday night I felt a profound sense of loss myself. As a young person I chose to study at Berkeley in part because it was such a rich center of religious learning. I remember the grand opening of the new Graduate Theological Union library in 1987 and going to the cozy chapel during rainy winter nights for the Community Eucharist at our local seminary Church Divinity of the Pacific.
At Friday night’s banquet for theologians in the University Faculty Club I sat across from Arthur Holder the former Dean of the Graduate Theological Union, the GTU, that is, the consortium of seminaries on the northside of campus. He told me that Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary and Church Divinity School of the Pacific will be leaving the GTU next year. The Jesuits will be moving to Santa Clara next year. Starr King, the Unitarian seminary, has already left. The number of new doctoral student shrinks every year and is down to less than a dozen. Half of the Pacific School of Religion campus has been converted into a private high school. In the not so distant future it might be possible that there will be almost no physical evidence of the seminaries.
Since summer, our own regional seminary The Church Divinity School of the Pacific exists only online. Walking around campus as the sun started setting through the autumn leaves of the sycamore and liquid amber trees I felt overwhelming nostalgia and loss. The offices, classrooms and dorm rooms are all empty. There are no daily services taking place in the abandoned chapel.
Every loss we experience is an echo of the impending loss of our own existence. Today during our annual requiem we especially remember loved ones who have died. In daily life we have to keep functioning and we need moments like this to feel the full enormity of their loss.
Among so many others today I have especially in mind our dean emeritus Alan Jones. When I was a young man in clergy gatherings I always tried to sit near him, to take in his wisdom. After four decades of being with us here several times a week he died in January. We miss him very much. For the funeral Cricket his widow made an almost life sized print of Alan looking out at the viewer through the Ghiberti doors. We have that image up temporarily in the balcony. From the pulpit you can just make out his face. It feels like he is accepting us, encouraging us.
And that is exactly the point of our Requiem. In a world of cascading losses this service allows us to feel the full pain but to also experience it in the greater context of God’s love. We believe that no matter how far we fall into hopelessness that God is always reaching out to carry us through. We believe that Jesus understands our despair and offers us new forms of joy.
Maurice Duruflé (1902-1986) wrote the requiem we are hearing today from 1941-1947 in Paris during the darkest years of the deadliest conflict in human history. He wrote it in memory of his father. He composed this work so that you could experience the beauty of God and the love of God.
Earlier I spoke about struggling church seminaries. At Grace Cathedral we are thriving. Hundreds more people visited us this week than usual and thousands more sought us out on the Internet. We are inaugurating a new girls’ choir with extraordinary, pioneering young women. The Choir of Men and Boys has never sounded more powerful. Hundreds of people heard them on Thursday for our special Choral Evensong with Multifaith Prayers for the Nation.
In this time when the world has never needed us more God is with us – and we are becoming more alive. This week I read the sermon that Alan Jones preached here on October 22, 1989 the week of the Loma Prieta earthquake. Let me share with you an extended quote.
“Earthquakes, wars, other disasters are all revelations…. [The earthquake] woke up in us the sleeping visions of a different, better world. I found myself galvanized by surprise! Maybe I will have to learn how to live all over again? I saw that same surprise in the faces of other people. Perhaps we have to learn over again what it is to be fully alive!”
Alan concludes saying, “The resurrection moment is now. I bid you feel the tremor of this celebration, as we break bread and share it with one another. Feel. Feel. Feel. Feel — so that your lost heart may find itself and re-connect. Our sharing bread and wine is a foretaste… You and I, whether we live or die… [w]e belong to one another. We break bread today as if this were the first morning of the world, the first day of creation! We break it as if it were the last day. Oh, my friends, feel. Feel the earth tremble. Get connected! Find your heart! Honor the dead by being fully alive!”iii
I’ve been wondering what Kenji will do without surfing, about the future of our country and our churches, about what happens when we die. My dear ones, God is with us. Together we will experience holiness and come alive again. It is the darkness of early morning. Let us talk together about distant storms and watch as the sun rises through the ethereal clouds on the horizon.
i https://www.khon2.com/maui-news/61-year-old-wailuku-surfer-injured-in-shark-attack/
iii Here is more of Alan Jones’ sermon:
“You can’t always tell what’s being revealed. The paradox of revelation is that as much is hidden the same rock! Some people crash on that rock and come through unbelieving; others crash on it and come through to Faith. I have no idea why.
Sentimental and easy talk about miracles, about love and the Providence of God should stick in our throats in the face of tragedy, yet it’s true that we were magnificent last Tuesday night. We were at our best. That night was a revelation of our ultimate fragility, our vulnerability and our need for each other. It was a revelation of what is true all the time. Memories of world war Il flooded through my mind. As I was growing up, there were the flying bombs, or “doodlebugs.” When their engines cut out, there was a terrible silence as we waited for them to fall. It was impossible to know where the wretched things were going to drop.
Earthquakes, wars, other disasters are all revelations. To some, they open the door to Faith. To others, they close it. Is life a lottery? Tuesday night revealed to us our petty and ridiculous ambitions and our shabby visions. It also revealed to us depths of heroism and a sense of solidarity we had scarcely imagined. It woke up in us the sleeping visions of a different, better world. I found myself galvanized by surprise! Maybe I will have to learn how to live all over again? I saw that same surprise in the faces of other people. Perhaps we have to learn over again what it is to be fully alive! We had to think the unthinkable. We had to try to make sense of a senseless experience.
One way to make “sense” of experience is to say that nothing makes sense. If a human being is merely a collection of molecules, an accident on the stage of evolution, a freakish speck of mind in a mindless universe, what does it matter if a few people are killed in an earthquake? We’re thankful that it’s not us or anyone we know. We say, “Life has to go on!” It does. We’re right. We also know that we can’t prove that life has meaning. Life is taken on trust. Taking life on trust is a matter of faith. We know that, living lovingly and faithfully, there is no such thing as an earthquake-proof life.
Most of the time, we thank God for the anesthesia of routine; for the antidotes for relieving emptiness and anxiety. Now, we have an opportunity to be fully alive because all of us have come to the edge of the abyss…
For a few hours, we knew that we belonged to each other. All of us. For a while, we were born again. Strangers became friends. Suddenly we found ourselves linked to one another through fragility, vulnerability, heroism, and fear – all the things that make us human. We shall soon sink back into routine and forget what we have experienced. This cathedral with its quilts and its cranes, is an antidote to our amnesia. It is a reminder of the fact that we belong to each other.
Two years ago, Los Angeles suffered a serious earthquake. Our Bishop preached a magnificent sermon then on the Feast of St. Francis. He called on us to surrender to the resurrection power which could shake foundations, dislocate graves, turn over great stones, and lead people who are imprisoned in various forms of death into a path that re-connects the heart to the source of life. Bishop Swing went on, “You are called to do more than wallow in the sensate splendor of San Francisco and worry about Richter scales. The ‘Big One’ isn’t going to happen in California and it didn’t happen this week. The big one happened a long time ago in Jerusalem.” The Jerusalem moment is now. The resurrection moment is now.
I bid you feel the tremor of this celebration, as we break bread and share it with one another. Feel. Feel. Feel. Feel — so that your lost heart may find itself and re-connect. Our sharing bread and wine is a foretaste of the “Big One.” You and I, whether we live or die, are well-connected! We belong to one another. We break bread today as if this were the first morning of the world, the first day of creation! We break it as if it were the last day. Oh, my friends, feel. Feel the earth tremble. Get connected! Find your heart! Honor the dead by being fully alive!” Alan Jones, “Earthquake,” Sermon preached at Grace Cathedral, San Francisco, California, 22 October 2024.
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