The Very Rev. Debbie Thomas
Sermons from Grace Cathedral
Genesis 28:10-17 Revelation 12:7-12 John 1:47-51
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The Very Rev. Debbie Thomas
Sermons from Grace Cathedral
Genesis 28:10-17 Revelation 12:7-12 John 1:47-51
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Making Greatness Great Again - Debie Thomas, Author
Sermons from Grace Cathedral
What does vulnerability have to do with greatness? How is a defenseless child a portrait of God? Our reading from Mark's Gospel this week cuts hard against the grain of our obsessions with performance, perfection, achievement, and superiority. In likening the divine to a child, Jesus invites us to relinquish the deep fears we harbor around our own self-worth and value. At a cultural and political moment rife with harmful notions of "greatness," God lovingly offers us another way forward — a way of precarity and smallness. The...
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The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young
Sermons from Grace Cathedral
“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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The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young
Sermons from Grace Cathedral
“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...
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The Rev. Canon Mary Carter Greene
Sermons from Grace Cathedral
Song of Solomon 2:8-13 James 1:17-27 Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23
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The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young
Sermons from Grace Cathedral
“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…” 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,...
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The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young
Sermons from Grace Cathedral
“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
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The Rev. Joe C. Williams
Sermons from Grace Cathedral
1 Kings 2:10-12, 3:3-14 Ephesians 5:15-20 John 6:51-58
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The Rt. Rev. Austin Keith Rios
Sermons from Grace Cathedral
In the crypt of the basilica in Assisi, there is a shirt made out of hair that once adorned the mortal body of St. Clare. Each time I visited that Umbrian mecca of a kind of sainthood that remains admirable and replicable today—the decision of St. Francis and St. Clare to choose worldly poverty in exchange for spiritual richness—I found myself dwelling on that hair shirt relic. Legend has it that Clare was beautiful and possessed some of the most luxurious golden locks of hair ever seen in the region. And yet because of how she experienced God’s presence in her contemporary St. Francis,...
info_outline“O God, your never-failing providence sets in order all things both in heaven and earth."
1 Samuel 3:1-10 (11-20)
Psalm 139:1-5, 12-17
2 Corinthians 4:5-12
Mark 2:23-3:6
1. Near the end of The Last Battle, C.S. Lewis’ children’s book about the apocalypse, the great Lion stands before a massive closed door which seems to have nothing behind its doorframe. He has just presented a bountiful banquet to a crowd of bickering dwarfs. But they are not able to see or experience it – as they eat the delicious pies, wines and ice creams, they think they are eating old hay, wilted cabbage leaves and putrid water. They complain and fight each other. One says, “the Dwarfs are for the Dwarfs.”
The Lion explains to the children with him that the dwarfs, “will not let us help them. They have chosen cunning instead of belief. Their prison is only in their own minds, yet they are in that prison; and so afraid of being taken in that they cannot be taken out.” Then the Lion goes to the door and roars so loudly it could shake the stars. He calls, “Now it is time!” Time! Time! And the door to another world flies open.[1]
Today I am talking about the sabbath. We will think about what that word means, how ancient Hebrews practiced the sabbath, what questions it raised for them and for us today. But the simple thing I want to express is the idea that of the sabbath as a kind of doorway into another world. We walk through the sabbath into a world which constantly changes our experience of this one, a world which helps us to see what is real and what is a distraction and what is an illusion.