Grace Cathedral
Spoken at 9/29/21 The Vine
Last week I made my financial pledge to Grace Cathedral for the coming year, and I was asked to if I would like to speak about why I give. I would!
Stewardship is a word that encompasses many concepts – all of us here at The Vine, and all of us at Grace Cathedral are stewards of this service and this special place. We serve this institution so that in turn it can serve us too. We do this through our presence, our participation, our greeting, reading, singing, and caring, and we do this through financial participation. It is traditional in the fall to raise the financial participation in this season called stewardship season.
I did not grow up in the church. I feel like I grew up next to the church – I was baptized at age four and I loved singing and praying with others at chapel in camp and school, but I did not regularly attend a church. When I first became a church member as an adult, I did not understand that the budget was funded by the members. I thought that the national church or diocese paid for it – from what funds I am not sure as I didn’t think about it. During stewardship seasons I heard testimonials from parishioners, and I learned that our participation is critical because there is no funding from “above.” Since then, I have been making my pledge annually, prayerfully considering the amount I can contribute.
This year at Grace the stewardship theme is Renewed in Faith – 100% Grace. This theme speaks to me when I think about The Vine – and of Grace Cathedral as a whole. I came to The Vine several years ago seeking renewal of my relationship with God. I found that, as well as community. The Vine embodies an open door into this holy place – combining welcome, worship, and heady exploration of our Gospel messages. 100% Grace represents the coming together of all the aspects of cathedral life – from the pageantry of the 11 am service to lying on the floor for yoga – a cathedral is for the people.
100% Grace also means that through 100% participation in the stewardship campaign, the building and programs of the cathedral can flourish. As we each give according to our abilities, the collective pledges sustain the annual costs of all that is available here. I am honored to be part of this 100%.
Luke 2:41-52
Every year Jesus’ parents went to Jerusalem for the festival of the Passover. And when he was twelve years old, they went up as usual for the festival. When the festival was ended and they started to return, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but his parents did not know it. Assuming that he was in the group of travelers, they went a day’s journey. Then they started to look for him among their relatives and friends. When they did not find him, they returned to Jerusalem to search for him. After three days they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. And all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers. When his parents saw him they were astonished; and his mother said to him, “Child, why have you treated us like this? Look, your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety.” He said to them, “Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” But they did not understand what he said to them. Then he went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them. His mother treasured all these things in her heart.
And Jesus increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favor.
When I became a parent, I realized that I was both a child and a parent. This became a fundamental example for me of how a paradox may be understood, a conflict harmonized. Over time and by the grace of God, we learn that opposing views and even opposing realities can exist. There is no need to take sides – though at times we do and that is often as it should be, for we must make no peace with oppression.
I have learned many things from my child, who is now a young man, and from the act of parenting. I have not yet discovered how to not worry, but I maintain an active practice to recognize that we are not the same person – that his ways, though different from mine, are not wrong – and neither of us need conform.
God has more than once answered my desperate prayers for the wisdom to think from my son’s perspective. When Robby was eight years old we went together to IKEA. At one point I realized he was no longer by my side. I looked everywhere and could not find him. I asked crew members for help, but they would only page him, which I knew would be useless as he was unlikely to listen for that. There was a dark moment – right before praying – that I nearly resigned myself that I no longer had a son. Then my anxiety was calmed with the wisdom that I must think like him: what would he do if we were separated. I rushed to the food court and found him waiting patiently, unafraid, as he knew I would look for him there.
Every child is remarkable in the eyes of their parent and of God. But I think of Mary and Joseph and imagine the array of challenges they must have faced as the human parents of Jesus. How hard must it have been to let him fulfill his destiny. How many times must they have felt “they did not understand what he said to them.” How often must they have wished he could be just a “regular” human child. How many prayers for the fortitude to let go of attempts to control, and instead to treasure all these things in their hearts. Jesus always knew — with his whole mind, body, and spirit — that he would live in his Father’s house. For us he nurtured the paradox of being at once father and son, parent and child.