Elsa M. Tranfaglia starts with a fancy new weeder in a neighborhood of perfect lawns, then works through five of Jesus’ parables of the kingdom: the mustard seed, the yeast, the hidden treasure, the pearl and the net. Each is stranger than it looks, and the kingdom turns out to be less a place than a becoming, wherever the influence of Jesus shapes a life.

Some of us are great beginners and some are great finishers, but Rev. Gracie Paterson 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.

Ferns pushing up through black lava on Kilauea, and a childhood in hard, volcanic conditions of its own, lead Rev. Jamie to the parable of the sower, who scatters seed everywhere without asking whether the soil deserves it. Grace comes first: keep planting, because some seeds will grow.

Deacon Jim Schell, a lifelong lover of music, reflects on breath and spirit as the divine image in each of us: a love letter from God, hidden in the envelope of the body. By way of a country song built on Psalm 139, the message is simple: the person beside you is fearfully and wonderfully made, and so are you.

Rev. Anne remembers a first visit to Rockport for the church’s ham and bean dinner, and calls the Old Sloop a fountain at the center of town whose radical hospitality flows from the communion table. With the congregation between pastors, the sermon leaves a question to carry: what do you thirst for?

In a final week with the congregation, Rev. Rick Spalding takes on the golden calf: frightened people melting down their jewelry into a god they can make themselves, and Moses smashing the tablets. Set beside Jesus’ answer about Caesar’s coin, it’s a call to ‘rethink our people’ and to see God’s image, not Caesar’s, in every face.

A song of longing from the musical The Band’s Visit opens Rev. Rick Spalding’s sermon on thirst, and on the Israelites at Massah and Meribah asking, ‘Is the Lord among us or not?’ God answers at the rock, then asks us the same question through the commandments at Horeb; the evidence of God’s compassion in the world, it turns out, is us.

Adults and youths reflections from our time at Common Cathedral where we worship with and feed some of Boston’s unhoused population.

Before Moses asks God’s name at the burning bush, Moses asks a question of his own: ‘Who am I?’ Rev. Rick Spalding suggests that’s where every journey toward freedom begins, and invites a church in transition to become a question to itself: who are we, what do we value, and what holds us captive?

Rev. Susan Moran calls the fourth commandment, to honor the Sabbath, the hardest of all, especially for activists and list-makers. With help from Thomas Merton and Wayne Muller, the sermon argues that rest is the root of the wisdom our work needs, and offers two places to start: give yourself more time than you need, and take a walk.