OK, starting our new series for Advent this year, Wicked for
Christmas. I'm shamelessly piggybacking on
on one of the most popular movies series that we've had in
a very long time. I'm going to.
I never know how to treat these kind of things.
I don't want to make assumptions.
I'm sure not everyone here is a Wicked fan.
I'm a Wicked fan. I know there's some others.
We've had some talk. I know there's some people that
think, Oh my goodness, this is not what about what?
Why can't we just stick with the original 1939 version?
But just so you know, the 1939 version starring Judy Garland
was not the original. It was the 4th full length
theatrical adaptation of what is it E Frank Baum?
Is that am I getting? Yeah.
E Frank Baum, his book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.
When you count all of the different adaptations before the
1939 version, it was like the depending on how you count and
how you divide it and how short you're willing to go on some of
the adaptations, it was at least the 9th or 10th version.
So this is not, you know, it's not a new thing to remake these
things. I think the storytelling and the
lessons and the music and, and the magic of, of the new Wicked
series is just wonderful. There are some incredible themes
within the movies, within the songs.
And each Sunday throughout Advent, we're going to take one
of those songs and use it to kind of as a as a lens through
which we're going to look at the Christmas story and, and the
coming of Jesus Christ into the world and what that's all about
and the impact and the effect that it has on our lives.
So if you have, whether you have seen the movies or not, if you
haven't seen them, go see if you hate musicals, don't bother.
It's a musical and some people just hate musicals.
If you like musicals, I, I, I think you'll really, really like
these films. And they, they have some
powerful characters and powerful lessons.
The very first song that we hear in the very first movie, Wicked,
the one that came out last year is no one mourns the Wicked.
And I'm going to play a clip. Some Sundays we're going to have
live people singing. Some Sundays we're going to have
clips. And this Sunday we have a clip.
And so I'm going to play the clip so we can we can start
where we are. For those of you who are not
familiar with the story of Wicked or the Wizard of Oz,
both. Well, this is they're
celebrating the death of the Wicked Witch of the West here.
So not. Yeah.
Well, yeah. Here we go.
Oh, sound. I forgot to warn you.
We need sound. Do we have sound?
OK, some Everyone's a comedian. I get, I get no respect, no
respect. I don't know how it went mute
between that first one and this one, but here we are.
And now it's unmuted. So here we go.
At this point in the sermon, we listen to the song No One Mourns
the Wicked from the musical Wicked.
For licensing reasons, I can't include it in this recording.
It's a great song and Ariana Grande sings it beautifully.
You can find it on YouTube, Spotify and iTunes.
I hope you'll give it a listen. Now, back to the sermon, all
right? For those of you who are fans,
you're going. That's not the whole song.
You're right. We can't do the whole song.
We don't have time. It's a really long song.
It's a really good song. It's a fascinating song.
No one mourns the wicked on the surface of it.
That is so true. When was the last time you were
really, really sad when someone that you thought was just
really, really awful died? You know, I, I, there was not a
long line of people in the United States and Western Europe
that were, I can pick on the easiest target in all of human
history. When, when, when Hitler died.
No one was going, oh, no one mourns the wicked.
No one mourns the wicked. That's a human tendency.
When we see people out in the world or groups out in the world
that are doing things that we think of and understand to be
really, really awful things, and those people are cut down.
When they're cut out, when they're removed from power, when
they're removed from their position, when they die, when
they're killed, people tend to celebrate.
They tend to be glad. So it there is a very real sense
in which what the munchkins and and here are singing and
celebrating and no one mourns the wicked and they're all happy
about that, that they are right. Spot on.
People just don't mourn when someone that is wicked dies and
is removed. However, however God says this,
we just read it from the book of Hosea.
This is God speaking through the prophet Hosea.
And I'm sorry, this is from this one's from Isaiah.
I will not accuse forever. I will not all, nor will I
always be angry, for then they would faint away because of me,
the very people I have created. I was enraged by their sinful
greed. I punished them and hid my face
in anger, yet they kept on in their willful ways.
I have seen their ways, but I will heal them.
I will guide them and restore comfort to Israel's mourners,
creating praise on their lips. It's a fascinating passage from
the prophet Isaiah. The Old Testament gets a bad rap
and a lot of modern versions of Christianity and and and and
even secular looks at the Old Testament about God of the Old
Testament being a God full of judgment and anger and wrath.
When we say that we we have overlooked intentionally or
unintentionally, passages like this, it's important to note God
as he's talking through Isaiah here.
God is not wearing Rd. color rose colored glasses.
He's not under any delusions I was enraged by.
He knows about their sinful greeds.
I have seen their ways, their sinful greed, their their
willful ways. I've seen all of that.
I know it. But I will heal them.
I will heal them and restore comfort to them.
God mourns the wicked. God mourns the wicked.
Human beings don't, but God does.
When God looked out at the world, Genesis 6, we've gone
over this a whole bunch of times here recently.
Before God sent the flood to wipe out the world, we're told
that God, when he saw how wicked the people of the world had
become, God grieved. It grieved him.
It broke his heart. It caused God pain and anguish.
God mourns the wicked. God doesn't celebrate the
destruction of wicked people because they're God's people
too, in the sense not in the sense that they see themselves
as belonging to God, but in the sense that God gave them life
and breath. God designed them.
God knit them together in their mother's wombs, just as you did
everyone else. And Jesus came and lived and
died for them as well. Human beings don't mourn the
wicked, but God mourns the wicked.
This in Hosea as God. Once again, the first part of
the passage it's all about God seeing how he uses the term
Ephraim, the name Ephraim rather than Israel.
Here Ephraim was one of the 12 tribes and in many of the
writings of the prophets, Ephraim is used to refer to all
of the children of Israel, all of the Israelites and and God
has detailed the ways they've been unfaithful, the ways
they've abandoned. I rescued him, I brought him out
of Egypt, that they keep going back and worshipping these other
gods, all of these wrong things they've done.
But God says this, my heart has changed within me.
All my compassion is aroused. I will not carry out my fierce,
fierce anger, nor will I devastate Ephraim again.
For I am God and not a man, the Holy One among you.
I will not come against their cities.
They will follow the Lord. God says I'm not.
There's tough things in the Bible and there's a couple
different passages in the Bible that that in effect say what God
is saying here. God is saying I'm not like you.
He looks at us and he says that. Just so you know, I'm not like
you. I'm not like you.
I don't celebrate the destruction of the wicked.
I don't rejoice over the death of the wicked.
I mourn and I grieve. My compassion is aroused.
I call them to repentance. I heal them when they will
receive it. I want them to follow me.
God does not mourn the wicked because God is not like us.
Isaiah said it this way, God through Isaiah, my ways are not
your ways, my thoughts are not your thoughts, as heavens are
the higher than the earth's, or my thoughts higher than your
thoughts, and my ways higher than your ways.
And the context is once again mercy and compassion.
Mercy and compassion. God exceeds and excels us in
every way, including in mercy and in compassion.
We don't mourn the wicked, but God mourns the wicked.
That begs a very significant
question. Who are the wicked?
Who are the This is one of the major themes of of the the
wicked movies as who are the wicked really?
And, and if you really want to spend some time, you know,
watching these movies, go back and and watch this opening song
again and see how Glenda is not singing what you think she's
singing the first time you hear it through and how she's appears
to be celebrating the death of the Wicked Witch of the West
with the Munchkins. But she's not, she's not in the
original. See, I do the same thing because
it's original, because it's the first one I saw.
And that's how we human beings do that.
In the 1939 version, the Wicked Witch of the West was the
wickedest of the wicked people. And, and Dorothy was a hero and
the Wizard of Oz was was a wonderful, helpful person, even
if he was a fraud. And and that's how things worked
out. Wicked retells the story.
And now Oz is the Wizard is the villain and his chief assistant
and and Dorothy's kind of a hapless person who's being
directed by forces that she doesn't understand.
And the goodest of the good folks in the land of Oz is
Alphaba. Her name, by the way, taken from
the author's name, L Frank Baum, Alphaba is how that name was
derived. Alphabus, the one fighting for
justice. Alphabus, the one defending the
weak. Alphabus, the one trying to
protect the helpless from the powerful forces that are trying
to destroy and enslave them. But it's very difficult to see.
And most folks in the land of Oz see Alphaba as wicked and as
evil. And the few that don't see her
as wicked and evil but see her as good don't have the strength
or the courage to stand up for her.
Most of them. This is a challenge in the
movie. It's one of the central points
of tension in the movie is who is the wicked person, really,
and what do we do about that? That's one of the central
tensions in human existence. Who is the wicked really, and
what do we do about that? It's something that that I would
say in our modern culture, I don't think there's anything at
all new about this. Maybe just the tendency in human
culture is to divide up and to make easy divisions between the
good and the bad, the wicked and the good, the evil and the good
and decide, you know, we all of these shortcuts, all of these,
you know, easy answers, all of these Cliff notes on who are the
wicked and what do we do when bad things happen to them.
Because it's Christmas season and, and, and, and I'm going to
get really, really dark here and controversial.
I meant to deliver that in a way that would inspire some humor,
but I, I didn't and I know it, it wasn't funny.
I delivered that all wrong. No, I don't, I'm going to going
to move on, going to move on. But we need to get really dark
here for a minute and really controversial here for a minute.
On October 7th, a couple years ago, one group of people
murdered and killed and raped many representatives of another
group of people. And the world was instantly
divided on which side in that conflict should be celebrated
and which side in that conflict should be mourned.
Few months ago a controversial political activist was
assassinated and immediately there was division, with one
side celebrating perceiving that person as being a person of
great wickedness and evil, and the other side mourning
perceiving that person to be a person of great goodness.
This question of who are the wicked divides us as cultures,
as people, as Christian. I got, I had people in both my
ears, Christians who saw, you know, who saw those two events
completely differently, completely differently divide
whether we're whether it's Christian, whether it's division
within the Christianity itself, whether it's, whether it's
political, whether it's social, whether it's ideological,
whether it's culture, whether it's national.
We divide on this question of who are the wicked.
But here's the thing. I, I don't think I changed this.
When I think I've got the next slide out of order, I do.
I'm fix this and then forgot to fix it on this one.
See, now I messed it up. Doggone it, I missed my big
reveal. I was going to feel good about
that. We have a cheat code.
Christians have a cheat code for this question of who is the
wicked and and we got to, we got to go back to the Old Testament
again to get to that cheat code back to Isaiah where we're told
all of us like sheep have strayed away.
We have left God's paths to follow our own.
Yet the Lord laid on him the sins of us all, all of us. 1 of
this one of the main prophecies of, of the Messiah in the Old
Testament, Isaiah chapter 53. And right in the heart of that,
as God is talking about why the Messiah is coming, why this King
is coming, We are told that all of us, like sheep have strayed
away. Being called like sheep, though,
by the way, not a compliment, not a compliment at all.
If you know sheep, you know no one really strives to be a
sheep. All of us, like sheep, have
strayed away. All of us have left God's path
to follow our own way. Yes, the Lord God laid our sins
on him, on Jesus, on Jesus. The the the cheat code in all of
this is who are the wicked we are all of us are.
This is one of the most controversial things about
Christianity is the statement of I'm not going to be, I'm not
going to step back and throw stones at the wicked people
because I'm one of the wicked people.
It's self interested in some respects, which in some ways is
the is the closest we can get to God's compassion.
Here is this self interested compassion.
I'm not going to throw stones because I'm one of the wicked.
We're all one of the wicked. And while the world wants to
divide us into these camps and these groups and to say those
are the really bad people and those are the really good
people. And we can sort that out and we
can sort all of those things and divide that all up on our on our
own. We know darn well who the good
are and who the wicked are. All we have to do is look at how
you vote, or all we have to do is look at what you tweet, or
all we have to do is look at what you post.
All we have to do is look at where you go on Sunday morning
or don't go on so we can sort these things out pretty easily
ourselves. You're in jail.
Yeah, you're one of the bad guys.
Not in jail. You're going all right.
Bible takes all of that away from us and says we're all off
course. We're like sheep.
We've fallen into the ditch again, we've gotten lost again,
we're off course again. And we don't get to throw stones
at other people who have to, who happen to have gone off course,
just in a different direction, a lot of different ways to get off
the path. All of us have been there and in
some respects all of us are always there because none of us
gets it perfect. So are the wicked.
We are. All of us are all of us.
We have that cheat code. Told you that was out of order.
Here's the thing though, this season of Christmas, the season
of Advent, season of Christmas, is a time to celebrate the world
altering truth that God mourns the wicked.
It is such good news that God mourns the wicked because God's
mourning of the wicked is why we have Christmas to begin with.
God's grief and compassion for the wicked is what motivated
Jesus's messianic mission. He came to set the captive free,
to give sight to the blind, to free those possessed and
ensnared and enslaved by demonic forces, spiritual forces beyond
their control. He came not to judge, not to
condemn, but to free to show compassion, to show mercy, and
to show love. It's the fact that God mourns
the wicked. That's why Jesus came, because
God was grieving for us. All of us who like sheep, have
gotten off track. And so he came to us as one of
us, born as a child among us, to show us compassion and restore
us to the way and bring us back into the fold.
That passage, I didn't put that, OK.
That passage from Hosea and the passage from Matthew, they share
that phrase out of Egypt. I have called my son.
Remember that and Aubrey read that earlier that that after you
know, Herod found out about Jesus the Messiah being born and
he was going to had the wise men come back and report to him.
The wise men didn't come back and report to him where he was.
So he just decided to kill all of the two year old and under
baby boys in the region of Bethlehem.
And God warned, God warned Joseph in a dream, take Mary and
the baby flee to Egypt. And then we get this quote.
This fulfills what the prophet said out of Egypt.
I have called my son. There's one way to read these
kind of New Testament prophecy fulfillment things.
And that's like the writers of the New Testament are just kind
of cherry picking. So Jesus had to flee to Egypt
and God brought him back from Egypt.
So this fulfills the prophecy that Hosea made when God says
out of Egypt, I have called my son.
That's a really shallow way of looking at it.
Those prophecies and fulfillments are in there to
show us how Jesus story fits within the story that God has
already been telling and already been doing.
And, and when, when Matthew's ties Jesus's birth, the
incarnation of Jesus himself, to this passage that begins without
of Egypt, I've called my son, Matthew is tying Jesus's mission
and ministry to that whole chapter.
God's coming with compassion, not with anger.
God's coming with grace. His heart has changed.
He's seen the wickedness. He understands the sin.
He knows how bad we've messed up.
But instead of coming to destroy, God is coming to save,
even at the cost of his own life, even at the cost of his
own dignity, even at the cost of his own Son.
It is such a good thing for all of us that God mourns the
wicked, that God does not celebrate the death and
destruction of wicked people. God mourns and grieves the
wicked because that's what motivated him to come to us, to
save us. And he invites us to share his
heart in this way that we too mourn and grieve those others
who like us are off track, even if they're off track in a
different way. Maybe we fell off the left or
the right and they fell off the right or the left.
Maybe they've fallen behind. Maybe they've tried to go ahead.
Doesn't really matter whether how you got off track or where
you went off track. If you're off track and God says
join me in this, have my heart in this, in Jesus name, Amen,
Amen.