July 19, 2026 · Rev. Gracie · Romans 8:18-25; Matthew 13:24-30
Some of us are great beginners and some are great finishers, but Rev. Gracie makes the case for the middle things: the parable of the weeds is a story about the long wait between sowing and reaping. Like sailors in the doldrums, or a church between pastors, we can let the waiting grow hope.
Transcript
Will you pray with me? O God, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight. For you are our rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Some folks are really good beginners. These are what I imagine that the creative types, the folks who have this initiative to, start one, two, four projects in a day. These folks are really inspiring to me. I don't know how the ideas come to their head at such a rapid pace, but it's something to model. They're great beginners. They're great starters. They have this just spark within them. Does anyone here in the room relate to being a good Beginner. Mami, I knew you were going to raise your hand. Mami is a great beginner. Anyone else? Big project starter? Yes. Just. Just always on fire. Interested in getting the ball rolling?
Other folks are more of closers. They're finishers. They're on the omega side of the Alpha and Omega. They. These are the determined, single minded, sometimes a little intense types that love to walk through a project and see it through its conclusion. And if it's not done, then they're not done. They're going to keep on walking till they get to the end of whatever it is they're working on, and they are going to close it with pizazz. Who in the room feels like more of a closer than a starter? Yes. I, I, I feel a little bit more on that side of the spectrum.
Yes, we make good pairs, you know, so starters and closers, obviously, this is a big generalization of people. There are more than just alpha and Omega. There are more than just beginners and closers. There are people in between, and we'll get to that.
But it makes sense to me that it's a common way that we categorize people, amongst many other ways that we do, because I think there is something that must be in the human DNA that really latches itself to the beginnings and the endings of things. Who doesn't love us? The first day of going to college, how much more excited were you on the first day of going to school? Starting high school, college, whatever it is, than you were halfway through it? Or how about a wedding day, the first day of forever with the person that you have vowed yourself with, or perhaps the first day of life for a child? These are memorable starting days. We remember them. They're important to us. They make an impact on us.
Closing days also exciting. We. you know, we. Pastor Derek has recently retired to come to the end of a great career. That's memorable. It's impactful. It's a big moment. Endings. I graduated from seminary about a year ago. I can't believe that. But that was a huge close of a chapter for me. And it was a day that feels like yesterday because it was an ending. It was a big deal.
Church, church. People love beginnings and endings too. I looked this up this week and I was like, how much time do we as Christians spend around the occasions of Christmas and Easter? So we have the beginning of Jesus's life and mission on earth. And with the resurrection, you have the ending of the mission and life on earth. So I added up Advent Christmas, which is a season, by the way, not just the day advent, the season of Christmas, lent, and the season of Easter. And if I did my numbers right, that makes up forty six percent of the whole church year are on these beginning and ending events of the ministry of Jesus and the rest of it. Well, that's just the middle things.
Who is not a beginner or a starter, but loves to wait in the middle? Yeah, I didn't think so. The middle things are so often overlooked, I think, as we go through life. But there are one of the most necessary portions. And you know, it feels like a good time to be preaching about middle things because we're right here in the middle of the month, in the middle of the summer, in the middle of the year. It feels like a good time to be preaching about middle things because this church is in the middle of a transitional period to its next permanent chapter with a settled minister. It feels like a good time to be preaching about middle things, because Mami and I are going whale watching after this service, and we may never see a whale. I just have to accept in my mind that it may just be all middle things. It all may be waiting and I might. We got the Dramamine, but I don't know that we're going to see a whale, so it feels like a good time to be preaching on middle things.
As we sit on the side of the ocean here, I think of a saline metaphor. Who here knows about the doldrums and what those are? Yes. That was the most dreaded of the middle things amongst sailors who were making passage across the Atlantic Ocean. It's this area pretty close to the equator where the winds, the various winds collide in such a way that they cancel each other out and it's completely still. And momentum slows. And the novelty of being out on the ocean has long since passed. It's the most dreaded middle thing, and it. I feel that feeling personally, as sitting here in the middle of this year and looking up at the sky in wildfire smoke and wondering, is it going to get better? Are we going to get there as a world?
I think the parable of the weeds is a parable of middle things. It's a parable of what happens between sowing and reaping. In the narrative, there's the seeds have already been planted. Did you guys read parable of the sower last week? Have you been in the lectionary? That was the start. And now we have the parable of the weeds. The seeds have been sown. But then an enemy comes in and now there are weeds. And that's a problem for the seeds.
Now the garden workers. I see these guys as on the alpha end of the spectrum. These are the beginners. They love to start things anew. They go to the head of the house and they say, why don't we just rip it all up? It's clearly ruined. Let's just start fresh. Let's start over. And this can all be left in the past.
But the head of the household says no. The head of the household wants to wait this harvest out. He's not prepared to start over. Clean slate. He accepts that the weeds are going to be part of the seed story. These seeds path to whatever they flower into. And so the head of the household decides that for a time, for a middle period between sowing and reaping, the seeds are going to have to endure living in the shade of the weeds. Some will do fine, others perhaps not. But this is the key here. It's not a decision to start anew, but a decision to wait and endure.
I can't blame the line of thinking of the garden workers I. Especially nowadays, this idea that. What if we just abandoned ship? What if we could just start over. Look at how broken our systems are. Look at. Look at the distance between the haves and the have nots. Look at the disparities. How. How can we do anything about this? What is incremental? Change me when we're in such a state of disarray and inequality.
I think Christians sometimes are guilty of this too, of this abandoning of the present and seeking the future. I think it's a tendency. We are a resurrection people, and that's a beautiful thing to be. But we forget that before resurrection came Holy Saturday, a period of waiting and silence. We're impatient to get to the resurrection, to the end. And so Christians, I mean, especially I think of my own tradition growing up felt very detached from the world. The world was kind of beyond repair. They were they were invested in their personal salvation. They were invested in what was going to happen to them at the end of things. But the middle things. It just wasn't as important.
And I worry that when we abandon the here and now, the present. These are. We wait in the shades of these weeds in this world. If we abandon that, we leave room for the sin of despair to creep in, because that's what I see happening in those that that Christian group, you know, those group of people who they're waiting for forever but are clocked out of now. There's no hope. In growing through the weeds, there's a wish, maybe. But it's not the same.
So what do we need to do then with our attitudes around middle things? How do we need to repent? And by repent, I mean it in the basest meaning of the word, which is to change our minds. How can we change our thinking about these dreaded middle things and the doldrums to use them for the purpose of God's kingdom?
Perhaps one way is instead of thinking about these middle things as a punishment from God, we might think of them actually in some way as an act of mercy and of God's faithfulness. Way back in Genesis, God promised to never start fresh again. God was going to endure with us, for better or for worse, because God is merciful and God is faithful to God's covenant with their children. The fact that we are here at all is an act of mercy. Even with the weeds around us, even with the thorns in our side, We could not be here. But it's an act of mercy and faithfulness of God that we are waiting.
Perhaps another way to think about it is how. How do the middle things benefit us now, if we have to, if we have to find a meaning now, what is it? Perhaps it's that in the waiting we are conditioned for hope. Perhaps in the waiting we are strengthened with exactly what we need to carry us to the end, to the Omega. Perhaps it is hope itself that is the first breeze in the doldrums. It is the ultimate vehicle to our end and hope is our greatest power. So perhaps that is what is being cultivated right now in this time between sowing and reaping.
Hope. I hope that we will see a new day, a more just world. A settled pastor in ordination, a whale. We gotta hope. That we'll see it.
So let us together as a church. Thank God for the little things. Those dreaded, boring, seemingly hopeless middle things. And let's thank God for the hope within those, within those things. There's hope in the shade of the weeds. And we don't know who will become without hope. Thanks be to God. Amen.