Sermon for Sunday, July 6, 2025 || Proper 9C || Galatians 6:7-16

Today, we read a good chunk of the end of Paul’s Letter to the Galatians. One line jumped out at me this week, and that’s what I’d like to focus on this morning. Paul says, “So let us not grow weary in doing what is right, for we will reap at harvest-time, if we do not give up.” Let us not grow weary in doing what is right. Another translation says, “Let’s not get tired of doing good.”

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I don’t know about you, but I am weary right now. I am tired of wars raging far away and not being able to do anything useful to help. I am tired of the gap between rich and poor purposefully growing wider every day. I am tired of the spread of disinformation and rhetoric that promotes violence against the most vulnerable. I am tired of political expediency taking the place of truth and cooperation. I am tired. Down to my bones. I want to check out. I want to find a cottage deep in the forest with no internet connection and become a hermit. Just me and a stack of novels. I’ll stay there until the world sorts out its issues.

The problems with this desire are many, but here are the two most pressing ones. First, the world has never “sorted out its issues.” There has never been a time of peace and prosperity for all except on Star Trek, and that takes place hundreds of years into a fictional future (following World War III). Second, running off to my idyllic forest cottage is a complete dereliction of my duty as a follower of Jesus. While some are called to the cloistered life, I am not one of them. In his earthly ministry, Jesus remained stuck in with the people he encountered, especially those on the margins of his society. In the Gospel reading today, Jesus turns his disciples (that is, ones who learn) into apostles (that is, ones who are sent). He gives them a mission in the world, and we have inherited their mission in our generation.

So, if I can’t run away to my Thomas Kinkade cottage, what do I do with my weariness? I’ve spoken at length in recent sermons about the need for rest and renewal, so today I’m going to go a different direction (though rest and renewal remain super important to tending our exhaustion).

I needed an injection of wisdom this week, and I found it my favorite novel. J.R.R. Tolkien knew a thing or two about not growing weary in doing what is right. A veteran of the trenches of World War I, Tolkien spent decades imagining Middle-Earth, a fantasy world that shared the grim challenges facing the real one. He published The Hobbit two years before the outbreak of World War II and his epic trilogy about a decade after the war’s end. The Lord of the Rings is a tale about the indefatigable spirit of ordinary people coming together to stand against the forces of domination.

Early in the first book of The Lord of the Rings, the wizard Gandalf and Hobbit Frodo Baggins are discussing the history of the Great Ring of Power that has found its way to Frodo. “Always after a defeat and a respite, the Shadow takes another shape and grows again,” Gandalf says.

“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” Frodo says.

“So do I,” Gandalf says, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

Frodo voices the wish that is lodged somewhere inside all of us. Why do I have to be around for war and political violence and climate calamity and all the rest? Why couldn’t this have happened in some other time? And the answer is that it did. It has. At every other time in one form or another. That’s why Gandalf offers the wisdom about deciding what to do with the time that is given to us. And this decision is not a one time event. We decide every day. We decide with every choice we make. We decide with how we spend our money. We decide with every action of our elected leaders that we either protest or condone. We decide, as the Confession of Sin puts it, by what we have done and by what we have left undone.

It’s a lot. We have a responsibility to ourselves, our communities, our planet, and future generations to make just, loving, and lifegiving decisions each day, personally and collectively. And this can be so very tiring.

But remember what St. Paul urges us today: “Let us not grow weary in doing what is right.”

The word translated here as “right” can also mean “good” or “honorable” or even “beautiful.” God calls us to strive for what is good and beautiful, not because these things will help us get ahead, but because they will help us lead authentic, faithful lives. A life of honor and beauty and goodness is its own reward, and such a life also ripples out to touch the lives of everyone we meet. This is the mission God invites us to take part in, and we don’t accept this mission alone. We decide, again and again, to come together in this place to support one another, to share our weariness, to lift each other up in the power of the Spirit.

I’ll close today with another scene from The Lord of the Rings, this time from the movie version. Frodo and Samwise are nearing the last stage of their journey toward land of Mordor where the shadows lie. As Frodo falters, Sam speaks this stirring speech: 

“It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you… that meant something. Even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back only they didn’t. They kept going because they were holding on to something.”

The stricken Frodo looks at him and asks, “What are we holding onto, Sam?”

Samwise pulls Frodo to his feet, looks him right in the eye, and says, “That there is some good in this world…and it’s worth fighting for.”

These are words I try to remember when I am weary. There is some good in this world that’s worth fighting for. The shadow is a passing thing. A new day will come. The psalmist says as much in today’s psalm: “Weeping may spend the night, but joy comes in the morning.”

As we press on in our weariness, never giving up in doing good, God’s promise made through the Prophet Isaiah comes to my mind: “[The Lord] gives power to the faint and strengthens the powerless. Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted, but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint” (40:29-31).