The Gospel in Despicable Me 4 | Rev. Adam Hamilton | Church of the Resurrection

1:44 They inspire us, provoke questions, and deeper reflection. Movies make us laugh, cry, ponder, and the really good ones even have the power to change us. Sometimes, oftentimes, movies echo God's greater story, the greatest story ever told. Whether it's a coming of age tale, a battle between heroes and villains, the story of unlikely friends fighting for their place in this world, God's story can be found even in the movies. Today's movie is Despicable Me 4. We hope you enjoy the show. During the summer at Church of the Resurrection, we try to have some fun in worship. That is, we try to have some sermon series that are a little lighthearted, family-friendly, and which at the same time make some really important gospel points.

2:41 And so last year, we had a Mustang convertible parked up on the stage. The year before that, we had a tractor. This year, we're taking a look at the gospel in films. We do this every few years, and we're looking at fun family films that came out last year. So we're looking at three of the top five highest-grossing films of 2024. We started last week with the highest-grossing film of the year, and that is Inside Out 2. This week, we're looking at Despicable Me 4. Now, Despicable Me 4 is the latest in a franchise of animated films that is the highest-grossing franchise of animated films of all time. They've grossed together about $5 billion. dollars. And last year's Despicable Me 4, about a billion dollars. And in this film series, there is an overarching theme that comes up. And we're going to explore that theme today. And we're going to see how it ties in to some really important ideas in scripture. And my hope is that the scripture and the film clips that I share are both going to speak to you and help us together to understand God's word for us today. Now, I want to give you an overarching picture of this series because some of you may not have seen any of the films. So it starts with a character named Gru. And Gru is a supervillain. You can see the minions in the background, these little yellow creatures. And he has this ambition to be the greatest villain of all time.

3:52 He's involved in heists, huge heists. Ultimately, he wants to try to steal the moon. He's going to shrink it down with a special, this is in Despicable Me 1, shrink it down with a special ray. He's going to steal the moon. But his plans to become this supervillain across the course of his life, to make that his career, are thwarted when he ends up adopting three little girls. Now he adopts them thinking that they might help him in his life of crime. He doesn't really care about them. He just thinks he can use them. But in the end, they get to him. These three little girls are Edith, Agnes, and Margo. And you see them here in this picture. And so he ends up adopting them in Despicable Me 1, which came out in 2010. I thought you might enjoy seeing just a little bit of the trailer from the first Despicable Me. Take a look. Being a supervillain isn't easy. We stole the Statue of Liberty. The small one from Las Vegas. He has to control...

4:45 Listen up, please! ...an army of minions. Dave? Beedle. He has to outsmart A ruthless arch enemy And he's about to inherit Three small problems You will not cry or sneeze or burp or fart No annoying sounds Does this count as annoying? I love this series. It's really a lot of fun. And so what happens in Despicable Me 1 is that Gru is transformed by love. His life is transformed. He ends up leaving his life of crime as a supervillain. He joins the anti-villain league, and there he meets a woman named Lucy. And Lucy and he fall in love. And in Despicable Me 2, they get married. There's their wedding picture and with the three little girls. By the time you get to Despicable Me 4, they've actually had a baby. The film starts off with them having a baby. That baby's name is Gru Jr. And so this is the family. And so there are three big ideas that are going to show up in these four films and really highlighted in Despicable Me 4. So here they are. This is the outline of the sermon series.

6:01 Very simple. The first one is love has the power to transform us. The second, the lure of temptation is real, so resist it. And then finally, love will hold us together. Those are the three big ideas we're going to draw from this series that are biblical themes, key gospel ideas in the New Testament. All right, so Groot represents all of us. We are not supervillains, but there is something in us that's broken. As you look in scripture, the apostle Paul describes it this way. He says, the good that I want to do, I don't do. The evil that I don't want to do, I find myself doing. we are drawn to sometimes doing the wrong thing. So while we were created in the image of God and there's a desire, an inherent part of us that wants to do the right thing, the good thing, the just and the loving thing, the selfless thing, we find inside we're also, you know, we're torn and we find ourselves drawn towards selfishness, drawn towards, you know, sometimes the things we know we shouldn't do, sometimes doing things that hurt other people.

6:54 We find ourselves drawn to do the things that we were not made to do. I'm reminded of one of my favorite hymns and I've shared this line dozens of times over the last 35 years, but in Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing, you get to one of the verses and it says, prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, prone to leave the God I love. We are all, there's a little bit of grew in all of us. We find ourselves struggling. Now, a picture of this I have is from John chapter three. So in John's gospel, chapter three, Jesus is ministering, it's nighttime, and there is one of the religious leaders, a Pharisee named Nicodemus. He is also a member of the Jewish ruling council, the Sanhedrin. He comes to Jesus by night. So he's a rabbi. He's a highly respected religious leader. He comes to Jesus by night, drawn to Jesus. But he comes by night because he's a little afraid of people seeing him associating with Jesus because a lot of his fellow religious leaders did not care much for Jesus.

7:48 They weren't very fond of Jesus. So he comes by night. And the idea of Nicodemus at night or Nick at night, we've got Nicodemus coming to Jesus. And he starts saying, you know, Jesus, we know you're a man of God. You're doing these things that, you know, that are important. And then Jesus says to him this, Jesus said to Nicodemus, I assure you, unless someone is born anew, it's not possible to see God's kingdom. And the more, you know, the King James version of this was unless someone is born again, you cannot see the kingdom of God. So unless you are born anew, born again, born from above is another way of saying it. It's not possible to see God's kingdom. Nicodemus said, how is it possible for an adult to be born or reborn? It's impossible to enter the mother's womb for a second time and be born, isn't it? I mean, clearly Nicodemus is just a little dense on this. And Jesus answered, I assure you, unless someone is born of water and the spirit, it's not possible to enter God's kingdom, born of water and the spirit. So Jesus is talking about new birth, a second birth.

8:41 You know, it's interesting when we baptize, we give people a baptismal certificate, it corresponds to their birth certificate, we name them. And so in a sense, the new birth, you know, we think that process starts at baptism, or at least that's an expression of the desire for that process to happen in our lives. So whether it's a baby and we begin that process of regeneration or new birth, you know, even in our childhood when our parents are nurturing us in the faith. Or if we come to faith as an adult and we choose to then express our faith by baptism, I mean, this is the sign that you become a follower of Christ is baptism. If you weren't already baptized as a little one, that is a sign of new birth or regeneration or being born anew. When we think about being born anew or born from above, we're talking about a fundamental transformation that happens in our hearts and minds. So the struggle that we've had with sin and the identity that we've had kind of giving into the self and following the self. Now, when we've chosen to follow God and become the people God wants us to be, we find when we ask for God's deliverance, for the Holy Spirit to work in us, we are born anew, born from above.

9:42 John Wesley in his sermon on the words of Jesus in John chapter 3, his sermon called The New Birth, and John Wesley was the founder of the Methodist movement in the 18th century. He wrote this, When the love of the world is changed into the love of God, pride into humility, passion into meekness, hatred, envy, malice into a sincere, tender, and unbiased love for all mankind. In a word, it is that change whereby the earthly, sensual, devilish mind is turned into the mind which was in Christ Jesus. That is the new birth. So is everyone that is born of the Spirit. So we're seeing a fundamental transition from a life centered around me and doing the things that I want or doing the things that I shouldn't do that God doesn't want me to do, to saying, I belong to you, God, and I want to honor you, and I want to live for you. And I want your Holy Spirit to form and shape my thinking and my actions and my words. And so this is the new birth, a complete reorientation and regeneration or rebirth of who we are, reforming of who we are. So I just want to ask you this question. Have you been born again? Have you experienced the new birth? Have you been born from above? Are you focused primarily on yourself or are you focused on God? And Jesus says, unless you're born again, you can't enter the kingdom of God. Like we need this rebirth, this renewal, this transformation, this regeneration inside of us. And this is something we do for ourselves. It's something we ask God to do for us. God, I offer my life to you. I don't want to be the person I have been. I don't like the person that I have been. Parts of who I have been, I like, but parts of who I've been, I don't like.

11:12 I don't want to be that person anymore. Lord, I offer my life to you. Forgive me, purify me, transform me, make me the person you want me to be. The story of Despicable Me, one, two, three, and four is a story about transformation, about the fact that even the supervillain Gru can be transformed and he's transformed by the power of love. Now, a scene that I've shared, a little video clip, I've probably shared five times in the last 35 years because it's one of my favorites. In fact, every time I watch it and I listen to the song from it routinely as well because one of my favorite songs, an Alison Krause song, but when I watch this film clip, it just makes me smile. The movie was, Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? And I shared this, I think it was two years ago in a sermon. Oh brother, where art thou? And you've got these three guys who are, it's deep south, and these are three criminals. They've escaped from jail and they're committing crimes. They're continuing to burglarize and harass people. And they're out in the woods near the river, when all of a sudden there's this congregation of people who are coming for a baptismal service in the water. And I want you to watch and see what happens with these three guys, especially as Ulysses, Delmar, and Pete, as Pete feels God calling him to run into the water to be baptized, take a look.

12:24 Come on mothers, let's go down. Well, I guess hard times flush the chumps. Everybody's looking for answers. So is it. I'm sorry, friend. The Lord shall be the way. Oh, sinners, let's go down. No, Mark, been saved. Well, that's it, boys. I've been redeemed. The preacher done washed away all my sins and transgressions. It's a straight and narrow from here on out. and heaven everlasting's my reward. Delbert, what are you talking about? We got bigger fish to fry. The preacher said all my sins is washed away, including that Piggly Wiggly I knocked over in Yazoo. I thought you said you was innocent in those charges.

13:17 Well, I was lying. And the preacher said that that sin's been washed away, too. Neither God nor man's got nothing on me now. Come on in, boys. The water is fine. I just love that. It just captures this wonderful sense of what happened at conversion, right? What happened to Gru when he was transformed? What can happen in our lives? What the new birth is about? It's like suddenly you see the person I have been, I don't wanna be that person anymore. And you plunge in the water, right? Now, if you were baptized as a baby, you don't need to be re-baptized, but that baptism, if you were never baptized, that can be a symbol or remembering our baptism. I mean, I stopped by and touched the water. We have here at the Leawood location, we have multiple baptistries or one baptistry, but then we have rocks with water just bubbling over the top of them. And every time I go by, I step and I touch my forehead with the water. And I remember, I need the new birth. I am in the process of being born again.

14:10 It's not like it happens once and it's done. It's like a daily process of Lord, renew me, regenerate me, make me the person you want me to be. But baptism captures that idea. So, you know, Pete and Delmar, they end up jumping in the water and they feel as the water washes over them, they feel like they have been born again, born anew. They've been washed clean of all their sins. By the way, it's really a great time to be preaching this message because at two o'clock on Sunday afternoon, some of you are seeing this message on Saturday night, some of you are seeing it on Sunday night, but most of you are seeing it on Sunday morning. Sunday afternoon at two o'clock this weekend, today or tomorrow, if you're watching Saturday night, we are having a special baptismal service at our Leawood location. If you live in Kansas City and you're watching on TV or at one of our other locations, here at the Leawood location, we are having a special baptismal service. It starts at two o'clock in the Wesley Chapel. You can just show up if you've never been baptized, If you want to renew your baptism, you can do that. But you can just show up if you want to.

15:04 You can go online at core.org slash next and you can let us know you're coming if you'd like to do that. And I'm going to be there. Some of our other pastors are going to be there. We're going to talk at two o'clock in the Wesley Chapel. We're going to talk about what baptism means. And then those who want to be to have water, you know, to be baptized by sprinkling or take the water and pour it over your head three times, you'll have a chance to do that. Or you can join me and one of our other pastors in the Memorial Garden, as you see here. And we have an immersion baptistry out there. and yes, it'll be a little chilly. We're gonna have you come in your shorts and a t-shirt and we dip you into the water just like they did in Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? We dip you into the water and bring you back out as a sign that you, the person you had been has died. You've been buried with Christ and then resurrected and you are a new person, born again, just like a baby is surrounded by water in the womb. And when the water breaks, the baby is born. You come out of the water in the early church. They called the baptismal fonts, the womb of God. And you are born anew. You are beginning again, washed and clean.

15:58 and God has promised you, I have forgiven your sins in the past and I'll forgive those in the future as you come and you fall before me, you ask me to forgive because I made a promise. It's God's promise and a sign of God's promise and our acceptance of that. So anyway, if you've never been baptized, you live in the Kent City area, you'd like to be baptized, you'd like to commit your life to Christ, we'd like to invite you to do that today. Or if you want to remember your baptism, two o'clock on Sunday afternoon, or if you're watching Saturday, it's tomorrow afternoon, but join us. And so go to core.org slash next if you want to for more information and you can sign up there to be a part of this. All right, so the underlying premise of all the Despicable Me films is that we can be changed. So sometimes we think, I can't change. I just can't change. This is who I am, I can't change. That's ridiculous. We can change. The Holy Spirit can change us. And sometimes we gotta do some work ourselves. Sometimes with a therapist, sometimes just consciously working on certain things. But the Holy Spirit is also able to change us and we can be born anew.

16:54 We can be transformed. we don't have to remain the supervillain that we have been. Whatever that means for us. Gru didn't have to remain the supervillain Gru. He was changed. And his transformation came. So this is a universal film. It's not a gospel film. So his transformation comes through love. And that is the love that these three little girls feel towards him that surprises him and ends up changing his heart and mind. And that he begins to love them. And so through the power of love, he's transformed. You see that beginning to work on him as he's putting these girls to bed. Take a look.

17:54 Your bald head. Oh, yes. It's really smooth. Sometimes I stare at it and imagine a little chick popping out. Beep, beep, beep. Good night, Agnes. Never get older. I love that. I was thinking about my kid brother. So my family for Father's Day weekend met at the lake and I had a chance to spend time with my siblings. My kids weren't there, but my siblings and my little brothers each had, so my little brother, Matt, had his son, Edison. My little brother, Aaron, had his daughter, Kennedy. And I just enjoyed watching them because I remember when these guys were teenagers, they're a lot younger than I am. And when they were teenagers, you know, they were, kind of got in trouble sometimes. And, you know, I wasn't sure what their life was going to turn out to be like.

18:47 And then they ended up having children. And somehow the love that they felt for their children and their children's love for them. I mean, I just look at these guys and I'm so proud of the fathers they are and the men that they are and the way that they live their lives. As I watched how they were impacted by love. And that's how it works. And ultimately the greatest love that we can know is the love of God, who in Jesus, his son, suffered and died for us to show us, this is how much I love you this much. And so we are transformed by love. And when we're transformed, we accept God's love for us. We pledge to love one another. And that's the transformation. All right, so the second theme that we see, so we are transformed by love. The second thing that we see in the Despicable Me films is that in every one of them, one, two, three, and four, now I only went back and looked at one, two, and four, so I think this is true in three, but in all of the films you find there is a moment when Gru is tempted to go back into his life of crime. There is somebody in each one of these films that is trying to lure him back to become a supervillain once more. So in Despicable Me 4 it's because there's a girl her name is Poppy and Poppy wants to convince him to commit a heist with her and to teach her how to become a criminal and she's got something she's holding over his head because at this point there's a villain trying to kill Gru and his family. And so he's gone into witness protection, but she knows who he is. So she's bribing him. She's blackmailing him and saying, you have to help me to be able to commit these crimes. Here's a picture that you see of Gru and Poppy and a couple of the minions and baby Gru. And you can see this girl has forced him basically to go back into his life of crime. They're going to commit a heist. And this is a lot of what the film is about. So Gru doesn't want to be a villain by this time. In the other films, he's sort of torn between going back to that or not. But it struck me when I was watching this, that as we begin to follow God, as we're born again, we see transformation happening in our lives. As that begins to happen, we also find that the lure of the dark side or the lure of evil or the devil or Satan or the tempter or whatever name you want to give to it begins to try to pull us

20:55 away. So I always found this when I was leading youth camp for teenagers. And we would have, you'd get to the last night and the whole week was building towards that last night and people would make their commitment to Christ. And then I'd tell them, look, you're going to go back home and you're not going to be at camp. And you're going to find suddenly your friends are going to try to pull you back into the life that you have been living. Or it may be the habits that you've had or the way that you interact with your parents, but there's going to be something that's going to tempt you to come back to where you had been as you've begun to change. This is true for people who start going to church and they begin going to church and they find, you know, maybe they're starting to come to faith in Christ. Maybe that's you. And you started to grow in your faith in Christ, and then maybe the old habits start to come back, or it's your old friends, or it's somebody else who is trying to lure you back, but we find temptation comes. That's not unique to you. Guess what? Jesus, this is Jesus now. The gospels begin. Matthew, Mark, and Luke begin. Jesus is after his birth stories in Matthew and Luke. Mark doesn't have them, the birth stories, but we get to his baptism. This is where he comes on the scene is at his baptism.

21:56 And he's out in the wilderness of Judea and John the Baptist baptizes him. And you may remember Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the Holy Spirit descends from heaven like a dove and Jesus hears the voice of his father saying, you are my beloved son, with you I'm well pleased. So he has this pinnacle spiritual experience where he's heard the voice of God and he's received the Holy Spirit. And yet what happens right after that? Do you remember Matthew, Mark, and Luke? In all three of them, he is led out or forced out into the wilderness where he's going to be tempted for 40 days and 40 nights by the devil. So what happened to Jesus is what we find happening in our own lives, that we begin to grow spiritually, and then we find ourselves, we find temptation comes, and we're beginning, there's something that's trying to lure us back into the life that we once had lived. That's what we find happening in this film series. So Paul writes to the church at Corinth to warn them of this. Now, Corinth was a town, I've taken some of you to Corinth, I've been there multiple times, and it was a city, it was sort of like the French Quarter in New Orleans in the first century.

22:53 There were sailors, there were two ports, one on the Aegean Sea, one on the Adriatic Sea, and these sailors would come and they would spend the day in Corinth. And so there was a lot of, you know, a lot of temptation that was in Corinth. And one of the major sources of temptation in Corinth seems to have been prostitution. And so at least according to Strabo, as he looked back, you know, centuries before the time of Christ, there were a thousand temple prostitutes in the city of Corinth.

23:21 Historians debate exactly what that meant. But what we do know is that Paul talks about sexual issues more in the letters to the Corinthians than anywhere else. So there had to have been something that was there. And Paul says this in 1 Corinthians 6, verse 11. He starts talking about before that, he says that some of you had been sexually immoral. Some of you had worshipped false gods. Some of you had been thieves. You had been greedy, drunks, abusive, and swindlers. And then he says, that is what some of you used to be. But you were washed clean. Again, there's that metaphor of baptism. You were washed clean. You were made holy to God. and you were made right with God in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the spirit of our God. So there's water in the spirit again, you find in 1 Corinthians 6, 11. So he says, you used to be this, but you're not that anymore. Now you're something else. So you'd think like that's done, okay? You were baptized, you gave your life to Christ. There's no more temptation. Then he devotes the next five chapters to encouraging them to not give in to temptation.

24:14 And he goes into very graphic detail about what these various temptations might be for them. And then you get to 1 Corinthians 10, 13, and he says this, he says, no temptation has seized you that isn't common for people. So he's talking to believers now, and he's saying, when you're tempted, this is just common. This is a part of being human, is you're going to be tempted. If you're not tempted, you're not alive. So I get tempted, you're going to be tempted. This is just how it is. No temptation has seized you that isn't common for people, but God is faithful. He won't allow you to be tempted beyond your abilities. Instead, with the temptation, God will also supply a way out so that you will be able to endure it. So it's not saying that God won't let, this is often misquoted like, God won't let more happen to you than you can handle. That's not what it's saying. It's saying when it comes to temptation, there's always gonna be a way out for temptation. You're tempted to do something, there's always gonna be an off-ramp if you pay attention and you look for it. But you gotta pay attention and you gotta decide to take the off-ramp.

25:09 And sometimes we just plunge ahead, going ahead and doing the thing we know we shouldn't do. And then we feel guilty and ashamed afterwards. And so here's what's important to know. It's possible to resist temptation. I'm going to be tempted this week. You're going to be tempted this week. It may be to say something I shouldn't say. It may be to be, you know, to self-importance, maybe pride, maybe to overeat, maybe overconsuming, maybe whatever, maybe where my eyes are wandering to. We're all going to have times that we are tempted in every single week. If you're not tempted, you're not alive. This is part of being human, Paul says. But I love what James says in James chapter four, verse seven. And he says, submit to God, resist the devil, and he will run away from you. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. So it's possible to resist the devil. Nobody has to give in to temptation. The devil can't make you do anything. The dark side, it cannot make you do anything. You either go along with it or you choose to resist it.

26:02 And it's possible to resist it. And I love how Paul talks about this. So when Jesus was tempted, Jesus quoted scripture to the devil. He quoted scripture to the devil. By the way, the devil quoted scripture to him too. So the devil can twist in our minds, the devil can twist scripture to make us do something we know we shouldn't do, right? Or at least to try to coax us to do that. But Jesus quoted scripture back to the devil again and again. All three of the temptations we read in scripture, he quotes scripture back to him. Paul describes scripture as the sword of the spirit. So when you know scripture, you know God's mind, God's heart, you know what God wants of us, then you can use that as a way of resisting temptation as well. But resist the devil, submit to God, resist the devil, he will run away. Or in 1 Peter, we read these words, Be clear-headed, keep alert. Your accuser, the devil, is on the prowl like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith. All right, listen.

26:55 In every one of these films, we find Gru is tempted to go back into his old life, and what he has to do is resist, and he has to say no. And so I think part of the message for us in this simple, fun sermon and this fun series of movies is temptation is going to come. and in the name of Jesus, we can say no. And at the same time, when we stumble and fall, there's grace. So we sometimes will stumble and fall and there is grace. That takes me back to the last idea in our three-part series here in the sermon. And that is that love will hold us together. Love will hold us together. So in Despicable Me 4, there is a villain that wants to destroy Gru. In every one of these films, there's a villain that is coming after Gru. And this villain is a man, his name is Maxime Lamel. Maxime Lamel. Lamel is bad, the bad. So Maxime Lamel is like the maximum bad.

27:49 That's kind of what the name means, the maximum bad. And this guy has, you know, he wants to defeat, once and for all, he wants to defeat Gru. And he's figured out that he can have power and control and be the greatest supervillain ever if he can turn himself into a life-size human cockroach. because cockroaches, of course, have been around for, you know, millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions of years, and they seem almost indestructible. And so he's figured out a ray gun that he can shoot at himself and turn him into a cockroach. And so this is a picture of Maxime Lemao. You may have seen it already, but he's turned himself into a cockroach. And so there he is, Maxime Lemao. He has become a cockroach man. All right. So Maxime wants to really hurt Gru, and so he wants to kidnap Gru Jr. So he's going to kidnap Gru Jr., and he's going to turn him into, he's going to turn him against his father, and he's going to turn him into a baby cockroach. He's going to aim the gun, this ray gun at Gru Jr., and he's going to turn him into a baby cockroach. So there comes this moment in the film, and I don't want to give anything away here, but I am going to give a little bit away. There comes a moment in the film where Maxime is trying to kill Gru, Gru Sr.

29:02 And at the same time, he's got baby Gru, Gru Jr. with him. And Gru Jr. has become this cockroach that doesn't even recognize his father anymore. He's in a daze. He can't even, you know, he doesn't even remember who he is. And there is this moment where Maxime is about to kill Gru. And, well, let me let you take a look.

29:25 This ends now. Say goodbye to daddy. You Oh, it's okay, Junior. Danda loves you. ha ha ha

29:51 Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! So in this moment, there's Gru Senior, right? And he recognizes he's probably going to die. And he looks at his son who's been transformed into this little monster, this little, you know, cockroach baby. And he says, it's okay. Your daddy loves you. Right? And it's that. It's the power of love. It's the fact that his father continued to say, I love you, even after his son had become something different. He was dazed and sort of in a stupor. But eventually it is those words, your daddy loves you, that transforms him and brings him back to his senses, helps him remember who he is, wakes him from his stupor. And I love that because that's what scripture says God's love does for us, is that God loves us.

30:45 And because of God's persistent love for us, there are times when we have wandered away, but his persistent love remains steadfast and we find ourselves remembering who we are. I love the parable of the prodigal son. And when you get to that parable, Jesus is talking to a lot of people who had forgotten who they were, who'd been living in a stupor or a daze and had become something God never intended for them to be. And Jesus says there was a father, he had two sons, you know the story. And one of those sons took his inheritance and went to a far off country and he squandered it in wild living and he made a mess of his life. And then I love how Jesus says, when he came to himself or when he came to his senses, He thought, maybe my father would take me back, if not as a son, at least as a servant. And he goes back and you remember his father who never stopped loving him, ran to meet him, wrapped his arms around him, called for the shoes for his feet, the ring for his finger, the fatted calf to be slaughtered and said, my son who was dead is alive again.

31:42 This picture of God's persistent love is what we see in the parable of the prodigal son. It's what we see in Jesus' entire ministry where he's constantly seeking to save those who are lost, where he's constantly finding people who had wandered away from God, prone to wander and bringing them back home again. At some point I have seen really over the course of the last 35 years, many times where I have met with families where there is a child who has gone, taken the wrong path. It might've been drugs. It might've been something else, but they turned away from their parents. And I've met with the parents. I've said, you know, what do we do? I mean, we've tried everything and we're like, and you know, now it just hurts. It's just, there's so much pain. and our son is, you know, our daughter has left us entirely. And I've said, you know, here's the thing. You have no control over what they do, right? All you can do is continue to try to love them. And there are times that's gotta be tough love, but the ability, and often I've said, why don't you write them a letter and make a plan to write a letter.

32:38 Maybe it's every six months you're writing them a letter. Maybe for you today, it's today writing somebody a letter who's alienated from you and being able to say, I want you to know, I love you. I love you. I will love you forever. I love you relentlessly and fiercely. I will take you back. I love you. I'm sorry if I've done anything that's hurt you or pushed you away, but I love you. And you know what? They may not respond to that for today. They may not respond to that in six months, but a persistent message that comes off every few months, every six months, every year, I just want you to know I'm thinking about you. I love you. You matter to me. Eventually has the power, and I've seen it happen again and again and again, where prodigal children come back home and are reconciled to their parents because the parents refuse to stop loving them. And sometimes it's the child who struggles with a parent who hasn't been loving, who hasn't been caring, who's been hurtful or abusive.

33:31 And so in those situations, there are times where you have to step away from the abuse. You're not called, love doesn't mean you have to stay and continue to be abused. But there is still the ability to say, you know, okay, I still love you. I can't be with you, but I still love you. I still care about you, but I can't, I can't put myself in a position to be hurt anymore. But that continued to persist in love. And I've seen this again and again at funerals. And I've seen it where people, as somebody was approaching death, a parent, sometimes it's a father, sometimes it's a mother, and their kids are alienated from them because of the way the parent was. And the parent didn't know how to love well. They didn't know how to be a good parent. They struggled. They were abusive or they were hurtful or whatever it was. They were hard to love. But the kids continued to show up, right? And maybe they weren't there all the time the way they would have been if there had been a great relationship, but I've watched to see families surrounding loved ones, people, children who've come back to their parents near the end and to see a reconciliation that happens near the end and the healing that happens in the heart of a child whose parents were difficult to love, but who continue to love anyway, not putting themselves in a position to be abused, but who continue to demonstrate love regardless of the broad healing.

34:47 That's how it is with God and us, right? There are times that we have been unlovable or times that we have wandered away from God or we've done things that were hurtful or harmful to God or to other people. And God continues to love us, is persistent in his love for us. I'm reminded of that Eucharistic prayer that we pray. When we turned away, actually, why don't you say this with me? Let's say this together. When we turned away and our love failed, your love remained steadfast. That was the point of the parable of the prodigal son. who finally came to his senses. Listen, we live in a time where there is so much polarization in our country. We see it, we feel it, we feel it about almost everything. Every day I feel like we're seeing this polarization. Or there are times where somebody's hurt us or we've hurt them and so we feel like we have to get even or we say bad things about other people. We're gonna, and so we do these things, right? But that never heals anything.

35:41 That just messes things up even more, just leaves us even more broken. Or we look at our world today and we see bombs being lobbed by the Israelis against the Iranians and the Iranians against Israel, where does it end? But Jesus offers us a better way to love even our enemies. Love is a powerful force that transforms our lives. I love the Matt Marr song. It came out a number of years ago called Love Will Hold Us Together. I wonder if you remember these words. It goes like this. I don't have a job. Don't pay your bills. Won't buy you a home in Beverly Hills. won't fix your life in five easy steps, ain't the law of the land or the government, but it's all you need. And love will hold us together. Make us a shelter to weather the storm and I'll be my brother's keeper so the whole world will know that we're not alone.

36:35 Love has the power to awaken us from our stupor. Love has the power to draw us to one another. Love has the power to heal what's broken in our world. Here's the three big ideas I took away from watching Despicable Me 4 this week. Love has the power to transform us and we need to be born again. We need to be transformed. The lure of temptation is real, but we can resist it. And finally, love really will hold us together. Let's pray. God, we pray that you would help us to entrust our lives to you. We need to be born again. we need to be regenerated to be transformed by the power of your Holy Spirit I'd like to invite you just to whisper to God this prayer Lord transform my heart Form me and shape me as a potter shapes the clay. Forgive my sins.

37:36 and Holy Spirit, give me the new birth. Help me to be born anew. to be the person you want me to be. Lord, help us to resist temptation, to remember that we can resist temptation and the devil will flee from us. And finally, oh Lord, when it's hard, when people have hurt us, when we've hurt other people, when we're estranged from people in our world where we're so polarized, Republicans and Democrats, Lord, help us to remember that love has the power to hold us together. Help us to love.