Sermons

Like all of us, I’ve felt lonely, overwhelmed and afraid these past few weeks. Yesterday, for some reason, was particularly hard; I wept talking on the phone with seminary classmates. So I was heartened, this morning, to listen to last Sunday’s sermon by the Rev. Canon Dr. Ellen Clark King.

“It seems like anyone who isn’t afraid at the moment isn’t awake,” she began. She shared her own fear that distant loved ones might fall ill and die without any way for her to say goodbye — a fear I share. She reminded us that the Bible is full of people expressing their anger and fear to God. Even Jesus, she suggested, had an “ugly cry” when he came to the tomb of his dear friend Lazarus in the Gospel of John. Ellen also named the brokenness we are all experiencing as the pandemic unfolds, evoked by ancient story of the Valley of Dry Bones from Ezekiel:

“We are a profoundly broken society, broken long before Covid-19 came along to highlight our deficiencies. We choose leaders … who consistently put the economic prosperity … above the basic needs of the poor. We rate our own safety as more important than the well-being of others and use fear as a reason to hold children in cages. We fail to weep whenever we see a fellow human being sleeping in dirt on a street corner. This is us – me as well as ‘them’ as well as you. Our society. Our responsibility.” 

Acknowledging the fragility of our society, our relationships or even our own capacity to respond to these challenging circumstances is difficult. It can be easy to retreat, emotionally as well as physically, into distractions, stock-piling, or self-pity. But the hope of and promise of our faith is that God brings new life even to the most dry and hopeless places. Ellen reminded us:

“…But we are not a forsaken society. New breath, new gentleness, new vulnerability, new life can come to this bleak valley, to these stripped bones….It is beyond time to open ourselves to God’s breath in us. To the breath that brought us life in the first place. To the breath that speaks words of love and forgiveness. To the breath that breathes in every human being, every living creature, and that unites us more closely more fiercely than our shared vulnerability to Covid 19.” 

And she called us to find new ways to “draw the prophetic breath of God into our society’s dry bones.” She called on us to “decide to live as if each person mattered as much as we do. To decide to live as though we truly believe in a God who can bring forgiveness out of judgment, abundance out of scarcity, hope out of despair, life out of death. And to live like this without denying the storm of emotions that sweep through us on a daily basis. The fear, the despair, the anger, the longing for life to be otherwise. Bring these to God. Speak these to others. Know your humanity, and in knowing your own, know the humanity of every person who shares this world with you.”

I’m grateful for this reminder of my human frailty at this time, and of God’s care for me and for us. I recall how deeply Jesus entered into humanness when he chose the mystery of the Incarnation, embracing all of life’s suffering and loss along with its joys. As we move into Holy Week, I’m going carry with me the vision of quiet, vulnerable openness evoked in the poem by the Australian poet Michael Leunig that Ellen shared to conclude her sermon:

When the heart
Is cut or cracked or broken
Do not clutch it
Let the wound lie open

Let the wind
From the good old sea blow in
To bathe the wound with salt
And let it sting

Let a stray dog lick it
Let a bird lean in the hole and sing
A simple song like a tiny bell
And let it ring

Amen.

The Rev. AnnaMarie Hoos is a transitional deacon in the Diocese of California and a communications consultant, currently working for Grace Cathedral. She serves at Holy Innocents, San Francisco and Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe, San Francisco. 

“The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” – John 3:8  

In his sermon on Sunday, March 8, our dean, the Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm C. Young offered wisdom and support for this increasingly anxious time in our community. A few words from his sermon are below. We invite you to listen and be lifted, and to stay in touch with the Grace community online. 

“…During these days we again realize a truth that we have pushed deep into our subconscious. In a moment we could go from being the center of our own universe, from being accepted and perhaps even respected by the community. And then suddenly we are treated as a grave danger to others, like a diseased animal that needs to be quickly slaughtered for the sake of the whole society. There are many forms of dehumanization. Events of recent days make us more aware of our vulnerability. In the cathedral’s Year of Bridges we are realizing that this is one world, we are all on this cruise ship together miles away from safe harbor…” 

As we journey through Lent together, read a sermon by the Rev. Kristin Sermon on finding ways that God wants to feed us. Follow us on Instagram and #lentwithgrace.

The night before Ash Wednesday, I came home late after our fabulous Carnivale to discover a rather unusual sight: my husband (who I had been sure would be in bed), was sitting on the couch in his pajamas, happily strumming out a bossa nova song on his guitar. As I stood in the doorframe staring at him and wondering if this was the first time he’d touched said instrument since we moved from New York a year and a half ago, he looked up and said, cheerfully: “I figured out what I’m going to do for Lent! I’m going to play some music everyday. Because I think that’s how God wants to feed me right now.”

How does God want to feed us right now? It’s an arresting question in a season that tends to focus on fasting more than feeding, on deprivation over nourishment. It’s an especially interesting question to ask in light of these two temptation scenes that we just read, both of which center around food and being fed – temptation of Eve in the Garden of Eden and the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness. In Lent, as we work out our own personal disciplines, we often focus on what we’re eating – or not eating. But these readings invite us to look deeper, not just at food but at all forms of consumption. How do we relate to what we’re consuming? And, even more importantly, what is the source of the sustenance we take in? Are we, like Adam and Eve, reaching for the forbidden fruits of our own day, sure that we know better than God what is good for us? Or are we actually listening to God, welcoming the nourishment that is so abundantly on offer?

In Matthew’s Gospel, the tempter tries to goad Jesus into relieving his hunger by using his divine power to turn stones into bread. To which Jesus replies, “One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” Taken literally, this verse becomes a justification for fasting from food during Lent, an invitation to prioritize spiritual nourishment over physical consumption of calories. But what happens if we look a little deeper?

Jesus’ response to the tempter is about power, and refusing to abuse it for the sake of convenience. Jesus knows who he is and how God wants to feed him. His response to Satan is an invitation to remember that we are not our own source; that we are dependent on God for life and sustenance. It is a call to be mindful of what we are consuming, to diversify our spiritual diets, and to remember at all times that God is the one doing the feeding, not us. When we fast, if we fast, however we fast, it is never to glorify ourselves, improve ourselves, or compete with anyone else. It is to make room for what God is trying to feed us.

And sometimes we discover, to our delight and surprise, that what God is trying to feed us is really tasty. Lent is not designed to make us miserable. It’s designed as a season of preparation for the ultimate joy that awaits us at Easter. And sometimes the timeline of fasting and feasting isn’t neat and tidy – if the joy of Easter starts to sneak into your life through whatever you’re doing or not doing this Lent, then embrace it. Joy is permitted even in the wilderness.

So instead of asking what you’re going to give up or take on this Lent; I invite you to reframe the question: How does God want to feed you? Not how do you think God should feed you, but what is tugging on your heart right now? What makes you feel the most alive? Maybe you are being nudged to dust off a neglected musical instrument, or another creative outlet that lets you commune with the divine. Maybe God wants to feed you through silence, or natural beauty, or the book you’ve been meaning to read for three years, or the comp day you’ve been meaning to take for three months. It doesn’t have to be programmatic. It doesn’t have to yield measurable results. It doesn’t have to feel heavy or onerous. Maybe simply asking the question gives you strength and sustenance.

Because, however God wants to feed each of us this Lent, the end goal is the same: to remind us of our fundamental belovedness. The key to this temptation scene lies in the tempter’s opening line: “If you are a child of God…” That if, that seed of doubt is the bait the devil uses to try to lure Jesus off track – to make him doubt his true identity and the solidity of God’s love. That’s usually how temptation works for us too, however cleverly it may be disguised, making us doubt who we are and whose we are. Leaving us scrambling to prove ourselves and one-up each other in an economy of scarcity and fear that there isn’t enough love to go around. Lent is about rewriting the narrative, about grounding ourselves, as Jesus does, in God’s unshakeable love, so that we can resist the voices that whisper in our ear that we’re not enough.

So what practices will help you along that road? How does God want to feed you this Lent? How might we feast on God’s love in these forty days?

This Lent, may we find abundance in the wilderness. Amen.

Proverbs 1:20-33; James 3:1-12; Mark 8:27-38

Have you heard that old saying, “God loves us as we are, but too much to leave us that way”?  That’s what I like to think of when we share stories of divine impatience, as we do today. Wisdom, in her embodiment as a generous but dramatic hostess seeking to bring guests to her bounteous table, is yelling on street corners. Jesus calls one of his best friends “Satan.” James is pretty sure most of us should just keep our mouths shut.

I hope these images have made you smile, because you recognize the loving invitation that underlies all of them. In our frailty and in our earnest but sometimes awkward attempts to get closer to God, we don’t always choose rightly, or act rightly, or speak rightly. Jesus understands that if he wants us to have a path to doing better, he’s got to tell us. We can’t embark on the journey if we don’t know that anything’s wrong.

On this path, how blessed we are to have so many wonderful companions! Today we celebrate our congregation – that is to say, each other – and the variety of ways we accompany each other, praying, growing and serving. I invite you to learn more about what our ministries are doing, and ways that you can learn to respond more deeply to God’s unique call to you.  There’s a place at Wisdom’s table for each of us.

Carol James has been part of the cathedral community for over a decade. She has served as a co-mentor in the Education for Ministry program. She currently leads the evening prayer providers in the Jail Ministry and is a cathedral staff member.

Proverbs 22:1-2, 8-9, 22-23; Psalm 125; James 2:1-10, 14-17; Mark 7:24-37

Faith vs. acts. This is one of those topics that reverberates throughout Christian history. What matters more: my personal faith or what I do? In the Reformation, this became a central part of Protestant dissent from Catholicism: we are saved by faith alone. 

Today’s readings touch on this. In Mark’s gospel, we see two miraculous healings. Jesus hesitates to heal the woman’s daughter, but seeing how strong her faith is, he does heal her. And the expectant faith of the crowd who brings the deaf and mute man to Jesus is rewarded with his healing. 

In the epistle of James, we read it is not enough to hear the Word, but we must act on it. Some people see this sentence as creating opposites: faith vs. action, but perhaps we should see these not as opposites but as intertwined and intersecting. We act in the world because of our faith, and we grow in our faith through our actions. One feeds on and encourages the other. Jesus healed because of the faith of others.

How do you balance faith and action in your life? How does your faith affect what you do? What actions will you take this week because of your faith? How are you encouraging others to act through their faith? 

Joe Garity is a recent graduate of the Cathedral’s EfM group, one of our Deanery delegates and a docent who gives tours of the Cathedral.