Wicked: Where Faith Meets Film | Rev. Adam Hamilton | Church of the Resurrection

0:45 As we continue in worship, I invite you to hear these words of scripture. Our first passage today is from Proverbs chapter 29. People are trapped by their fear of others. those who trust the Lord are secure. And from 1 John chapter 4, there is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear. May God add a blessing to the reading, hearing, and understanding of Scripture. Movies tell stories that capture our imagination. 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.

1:51 Today's movie is Wicked. We hope you enjoy the show. Today we conclude our three-part series of messages looking at some of the hit films of 2024 and finding the gospel themes that are within them. And we turn today to one of my favorite films of the last year, Wicked. And you may know it was based upon a novel that was written by Gregory Maguire, a Catholic. The novel was called The Life Wicked, The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West. That novel explored the themes of good and evil. Then, and really, what constitutes being wicked and how do people become wicked? And from that became, it was adapted into a musical on Broadway. It made its debut in 2003. It became the second largest or highest grossing Broadway musical of all time after The Lion King.

2:50 And of course, all of these are loosely based on L. Frank Baum's year 1900 novel called The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. The original book published in 1900 became a Broadway show in 1902. Can you believe that? And then in 1910, it became a silent film. Again, in 1914, it was made into a silent film. 1925, here's just a little scene from the 1910 silent film. Take a look.

3:14 It was in 1939 that MGM decided to make this into a film, a talkie, if you will, and actually a colorized film. And so in 1939, it came out. That film, I'm guessing many of you have seen, it didn't do that well the year that it came out. But in 1956, CBS decided to air it on television. and then again in 1959 and every year thereafter from 1959 to 1991 and I'm just curious for those of you at our various locations how many of you saw the 1939 at some point in your life the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz yeah and I saw it at least 10 maybe 15 times I want to show you a clip from it and this is a clip where you have a chance to see the Good Witch Glenda and you have a chance to see the Wicked Witch the West and Dorothy 16 year old Judy Garland playing Dorothy take a look Thank you.

4:08 give me back my slippers i am the only one that knows how to use them they're no use to you give them back to me give them back keep tight inside of them their magic must be very powerful or she wouldn't want them so badly you stay out of this glinda or i'll fix you as well oh rubbish you have no power here be gone before somebody drops the house on you by the way i mentioned in my pastor's you know it this week that one of our band members here at Resurrection Leawood, Bill Baum, his great-grandfather was L. Frank Baum, who wrote the novel. And again, it sold millions and millions of copies. And I love the fact, Bill told me that, like him, his great-grandfather was a Methodist. All right, so Wicked the novel, the musical, the movie, they're all telling the backstory of the Wicked Witch. And in this case, we find that she doesn't look very much like the 1939 adaptation of the novel. She's not a cackling evil woman anymore, and instead, she's a remarkable young woman who has been rejected by her family and by other people because of the color of her skin.

5:09 And then the story of, well, the story of the people around her and what ultimately happens to her. So as we're looking at this, we're going to try to understand some of the key ideas in the film. And we're going to see some film clips as well. The film starts with Glenda the Good Witch, and she is telling the story after the Wicked Witch of the West has died. She's telling her story. And she starts with her birth, with Elphaba is her name, the Wicked Witch. Her name is Elphaba, and it starts with her birth when her parents discovered she was green and they were horrified. Take a look. It's a healthy, perfect, lovely day time. Sweetheart! What is it? How can it be? What does it mean? It's uncanny, subsane! Like a froggy, ferny cabbage, the baby is a hedge! Don't roll me.

6:06 Grieve. So she's rejected by her parents. She's raised by talking animals and, you know, surrounding her home, but not really as a child in her home. She has a sister who is in a wheelchair. She's disabled. And so this is her life story. She's growing up bullied by other children. There's a number of scenes in the film in which you see her being bullied, picked on, marginalized, made to feel like she isn't good enough or isn't, you know, isn't beautiful. Instead, she's something abhorrent. And so the film progresses until she's going to school, to the university, with her younger sister. She's taking her there to help her at the University of Shiz or Shiz University. And when she first shows up on the scene, you have a chance to see once more the reaction of the people at Shiz University to her appearance. Take a look.

6:59 What? What are you staring at? Do I have something in my teeth? No, it's just... You're green. I am. Fine. Let's get this over with. No, I am not seasick. No, I did not eat grass as a child. And yes, I've always been green.

7:33 Well, I for one am so sorry that you have been forced to live with this. Is that so? Yes. And it is my intention to major in sorcery. So if at some point you wanted to address the, um...

7:57 problem. Problem. Perhaps I could help. Oh! She's so good. She's so good. We love you. All right. Offering to help someone that you don't know with skills that you don't have. I'm sure everyone is duly impressed. I could care less what others think. Couldn't. What? You couldn't care less what other people think. Though I doubt that.

8:34 I mean, this is a cringe-worthy scene, and you're meant to feel that way when you watch the film. And I'm wondering, who is Galinda? Who does she represent? And who is Elphaba? And of course, sometimes Galinda has represented, or sometimes in our lives, she's represented us, right? The way that we see we're superficial, we tend to see things from a certain perspective. We tend to see people who are different from us as having problems. We tend to think that we can solve other people's problems. And the reality is that probably most of us at some point have been the shallow and superficial, narcissistic Glinda. And some of us have also had an opportunity in our lives to be Elphaba. Elphaba is that person who's been marginalized, made to feel like she's less than, who has been hurt, you know, has been looked down upon by other people. Maybe you have been Elphaba.

9:29 It's perhaps because of the color of your skin. Maybe it's because of your gender, sexuality. Maybe it's because of the socioeconomic environment in which you grew up. Maybe it's your education. Whatever it might be, but there are times that we have felt, some of us, have felt bullied, picked on, marginalized as we were growing up. I think of a woman in our congregation who grew up in a trailer park in a very impoverished part of town. And she would tell me these stories of when she'd go to school and what the other kids would say about the people who came from her neighborhood on the other side of the tracks. Or I think about my friends who are Jewish who are being bullied or picked on because they were Jewish as they were growing up. I think about the families in our congregation whose children were picked on or bullied when they were growing up because they were gay or lesbian. And the fact that we have a dozen families in our congregation whose children took their own lives when they were teenagers or young adults because the way they were made to feel by the people around them. You know, this is a different era when this was happening, but still sometimes to this day, the marginalization of people, making people feel small or insignificant.

10:26 And when we look at the gospels, what I love about Jesus is Jesus spends most of his time in ministry befriending and coming alongside people who were made to feel small or marginalized by the other religious leaders of his time. So they had a chance, they had a way of looking at people who didn't live up to their expectations, who didn't measure up to the rules and the regulations that they had, you know, that they were trying to live by. They looked at people who were uneducated as bumpkins. There was a way of making other people, putting them in their place and making them feel insignificant. And for that reason, there were a lot of people who were non-religious and nominally religious in Jesus' day. And these people were sometimes called Amha Eretz. I've shared that term with you before. Amha Eretz means people of the land. And by the time of Jesus' day, it was a derogatory term that was used to describe the uneducated, the unsophisticated, the sinners, the tax collectors, and the people who didn't quite measure up. That's interesting. These were Jesus' people. And I was reading this week an article in the Jewish Encyclopedia on the term Amha Arete. So this article is written by a Jewish scholar, and this is what he says. He says, there can be no doubt that it was this contemptuous and hostile attitude of the Pharisaic schools, those are the Jewish religious leaders, the number of the rabbinical leaders, the Pharisaical schools towards the masses that was the chief cause of the triumphant power of the Christian church. In preaching the good tidings to the poor and the outcasts, Jesus of Nazareth won the great masses of Judea. The Pharisaic schools held the Amha'aretz in utter contempt. The new Christian sect recruited itself chiefly from the ranks of the untaught, laying special stress on the merits of the simple and the humble.

12:05 And we see this throughout the Gospels. I love how at the very beginning of the Gospel of Luke, Mary, the mother of Jesus, finds out she's with child. Elizabeth, you know, announces to her that She knows she's going to have the child. Blessed are you, Mary, among women. Blessed is the fruit of the womb, the child that you'll bear from your womb. And Mary responds with her magnificat. And in it, she speaks about God who lifts up the lowly. This is a common theme throughout the Bible. In the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, we find that God has a special concern for the people who've been marginalized, pushed down, or made to feel insignificant or small or less than. And God lifts up the lowly. The psalmist says the same thing over and over again. God lifts up the lowly, the outcast, the poor, and the powerless. I love how Jesus' ministry begins in the Gospel of Luke with Jesus quoting. He's in the synagogue in Nazareth, and he quotes from Isaiah chapter 61. The Spirit of the Lord is on me because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free.

13:04 He proceeds to minister with lepers, with the disabled, with sick and sinful people, with the tax collectors and the broken, with people who are demon-possessed or mentally ill. He, in Luke chapter seven, he has a special moment where he befriends a prostitute that everyone else has already condemned. In Luke chapter eight, we learn that there's a woman who's had seven demons. This might be demons. They might be mental illnesses, but she's had seven demons. And Jesus has a particular concern for her. Her name is Mary Magdalene. And then in the same chapter, Jesus travels across the Sea of Galilee. Would have taken him four or five hours by boat to travel across the Sea of Galilee. He goes to find one man who's been forced to live among the tombs because everyone in his community is afraid of him. And Jesus heals him and liberates him and demonstrates compassion and demonstrates dignity towards this man. This is what I love about Jesus. The blind and the lame and everyone else, these were the friends of Jesus. These were his people. This is who he associated with. By the way, it's also what I love about United Methodism. Methodism began in the 18th century in the early, the first half of the 1700s. And during that time, John Wesley and the other Methodists, they had a special concern for the prisoners in the prisons, for the poor and the outcasts, for people who were made to feel like they didn't fit. He went out and started preaching in the fields to the coal miners who didn't go to church because they didn't feel like they fit in church, or the farmers and other people.

14:21 This is a part of who we are as United Methodists. And we're that because this is who Jesus was. He was concerned for the people who were the outcasts. And you know, we speak of them as the non-religious and nominally religious, the people who feel like they don't really fit within the religious settings. And these were Jesus' people. That takes me back to the film. Now, in the film, Galinda, who is the blonde, shallow, superficial girl, is forced to be roommates with Elphaba, what we'll know later as the Wicked Witch. And so, forced to be roommates, she doesn't like it one bit having to live with Elphaba. At one point, she pretends to befriend her, and she says to Elphaba, you know, I have this, you know, there's this ball coming up, this wonderful dance, and I have this perfect hat and costume, you know, dress that you could wear. And the hat is a crooked hat, a witch's hat. And she convinces her she's going to be beautiful, stunning coming to the ball in this. And I wanted you to see what happens. Her goal was to humiliate Elphaba. And that's exactly what takes place. Take a look.

15:20 Oh, sorry. Where are you? Oh, shit, look at this. This is so cool. This is so cool. This is so cool. You have a ridiculous hat.

16:01 Thank you. Thank you. You can tell she's been mocked throughout her life.

17:31 And in this moment, she decides she has nothing more to lose. And so she begins to pour out her heart on the dance floor. You begin to see her pain. You also begin to see her desire to fly away like a bird. And you see the strength and the power that she has inside and her resilience as everyone else is mocking her. When we look at this film and we read the story, we're meant to ask the question, who are we going to be like? As Christians, we ask this question. Are we going to be like Glenda and her friends who mock and humiliate and tear people down? Are we going to be like Jesus, who befriends people, who comes alongside them, who dances with them on the dance floor? Which are you?

18:13 All right, that takes us to The Wizard of Oz. So as we talk about The Wizard of Oz, Jeff Goldblum plays this role in the film. And the thought was in the novel, in the original novel and in Wicked as well, people believed in The Land of Oz that The Wizard of Oz was a good wizard. He was a powerful wizard. He was a good wizard. If you ever had a chance to have an audience with the wizard, you could ask him for whatever you wanted, and he would grant your dreams and your wishes. And so Elphaba, when she's a little girl, wants desperately to be like all the other kids. She wants to be, quote, normal. But it's not until about two hours into the film when she finally has a chance to meet the Wizard of Oz. And at this point, she doesn't really care about that. She doesn't want to change what she looks like. She's found her own internal strength. She's come to see that she's beautiful. So she doesn't want to change her appearance. That's what the wizard thinks she wants. But instead, there are talking animals in Oz, and somebody is giving the orders for them to be arrested, these sentient animals, and to be put in cages because they're perceived to be a threat to the humans.

19:13 And she's gone to the wizard to plead with him on behalf of the animals, not realizing that it's the wizard himself who has led to the order for the animals to be arrested and put in cages. Now, when this finally takes place, this picture of the Wizard of Oz and meeting with Elphaba. The wizard appears first in a giant mask, you know, with power, and he's hiding behind the mask, and there are flames that are jutting out from the walls. But soon as Elphaba meets the real wizard, she realizes he's not powerful. He's powerless, and he's not good. He's got a lot of evil in his heart. Take a listen to this little clip where Elphaba finally has a chance to talk to the quote, wonderful Wizard of Oz. Take a listen. When I first got here, there was discord. There was discontent.

20:06 And back where I come from, everybody knows that the best way to bring folks together is to give them a real good enemy. Tragically, this has been a part of human history for as long as we have recorded history. And in the film, it's the animals, the talking animals that the wizard has made into the really good enemy so that he can unify people around having this common enemy. But before the film is out, he's going to unify people around Elphaba being enemy number one in the land of Oz. As we look at this film, of course, it reflects our own life experience and the world that we live in. I want you to think about the enemies that we've had. Every country has had their enemies. So many leaders, not all leaders, but so many leaders have found that enemy. given the people a common enemy to secure their power. And when we think about in America, what that looks like, of course, when the colonists came here, it was Native Americans who were the enemy.

21:03 We should be afraid of them. And the idea is, again, to be afraid. These people are a threat to us. So let's make everyone afraid of them. And then we have a chance to bring them down, tear them down, maybe even arrest them or kill them. So it was Native Americans. And then after Native Americans, of course, it was the Africans that were brought to our continent to be slaves here. And then we were to be afraid of them. And to this day across our country, racism and bigotry and fear of the other, in particular, the fear between the races. And then it was Chinese-Americans, Chinese immigrants who came to America to work here in building the trains. And then what happened after they were building the railroad tracks? And that became the yellow scare. And Americans were told to be afraid of Chinese. Then it was Irish Catholics we were supposed to be afraid of. And then it was Italian immigrants. And of course, throughout history, it was Jews. And then during World War II, it was the Japanese. And then the communists after World War II under McCarthyism and the Red Scare. And after 9-11, it was the Muslims.

22:00 And of course, throughout history, it was LGBTQ people, socialists, and many others. Groups like the KKK were masters at harnessing the fear of human beings, making people afraid of people who were different from themselves. And in doing that, they could get support. They could get financial support. They could get power if they could name a good enemy of the people. Across history, our leaders have played to those fears, consolidated power based upon the fears that they placed into our hearts. And it's not hard for that to happen because by nature, we are paranoid. There's a part of us that tends to look around and see what dangers might be out there. And somebody can play into that by the way they talk about the other. When we talk about the fear of the other, the term is xenophobia. And xenophobia is a part of human history. It's something that we have experienced in our own lives. We have been guilty, I'm guessing most of us, of xenophobia at some point. when a politician or a leader tries to make us afraid of other people, when they call it other people groups and try to make us afraid of them, as Christians, we're meant to stand up and say, wait, hold on a second.

23:01 We're meant to do some homework of our own. We're meant to do our own kind of research to see, do I really need to be afraid of these people? Are all of those people in that group, the way that the leader or the person has described, am I meant to live in fear of other people? I think of the way the Huda leaders in Rwanda in 1994, now 85% of the population had convinced the population that they needed to be afraid of their Tutsi neighbors. Now, Hutu and Tutsi are actually one people, but European powers, the colonial powers, had divided them. And in this way, they thought they would better be able to control the land of Rwanda if they could divide the people. And so the 85% who were Hutus, their leaders convinced them that Tutsis were dangerous to them. And so they became the enemy. And finally, you may remember, from April to July in 1994, four years after this church started, 500,000 Tutsi were killed at the hands of their Hutu neighbors. These were their fellow church members, their fellow choir members.

23:53 These were the people that they worked with. And they murdered them in cold blood because they were told by their leaders that they needed to be afraid. Last summer, we were in Auschwitz with a group of our teenagers. I shared some of this in a sermon last year. And you walk around Auschwitz and you see how the German people, these were among the most sophisticated people in the European continent, most educated people, affluent people, convinced that their Jewish neighbors were something they needed to be, someone that they needed to be afraid of. And they were eventually arrested and then sent off to the concentration camps and six million of them murdered in the Holocaust. How did that happen? Except that leaders were able to convince their people to be afraid. They played upon the fears and the paranoia that's hardwired into us as human beings. I want to ask you this question. Were you taught to fear as you were growing up? Any people groups, any types of people? And who were they?

24:46 And, you know, I don't know that my parents ever told me specifically to be afraid of certain people. But there was this idea that maybe I should be afraid of people who didn't look like me. And they lived on the other side of the state line from me. And I really had no contact with them because in my school, we didn't have people who didn't look like me, right? And so somewhere along the way, there's this inherent fear that we have. We see it reinforced in news stories and other places. Fear is the underlying currency of bigotry, prejudice, and racism. And I wanna ask, who are you afraid of today? Who are we told to be afraid of today by our leaders, whether we're Republicans or Democrats? So sometimes if you're a Democrat, you're told to be afraid of the far right. And if you're a Republican, it's the far left you should be afraid of. It's the socialists we should be afraid of. Or the immigrants, undocumented persons who are here. Again, LGBTQ persons. There are many more.

25:39 But I wonder, do you live your life giving in to fear? Do you listen to the narratives that say you should be afraid of other people? And if you do, I want to encourage you to remember the words of Scripture. Proverbs 29, 25 says this, People are trapped, trapped by their fear of others. Those who trust the Lord, however, are secure. Or similarly, 1 John 4, 18 says, There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear. The aim of the Christian life, Jesus said, is to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. And just to make the point crystal clear, he goes on to say, and you're even to love your enemies. If you have enemies, you have people that you're afraid of or you think are your enemies, you're meant to love them too. So how do we overcome our fear and our prejudice? What involves in part actually getting to know the people that we're told to be afraid of, it's demonstrating, it's being able to cultivate in your heart compassion.

26:32 Compassion from two Latin words that mean to suffer with someone, right? It is to understand, to feel what they're feeling, to understand what it might be like to walk in their shoes. And when we do that, we begin to find things change. This is what we find happening in Wicked. So Galinda is standing there in the ballroom. We're going to return to that ballroom scene. She's standing there in the ballroom. And as she's listening to everyone laugh at her roommate, she realizes she's the reason why they're laughing at her. That she's the one who coaxed her into wearing this, you know, this black dress and the crooked hat. And there's something that begins to happen in Galinda. She begins to feel compassion. She begins to feel remorse. she begins to feel ashamed of what she'd done. And she wants to try to rectify that by stepping on the dance floor with Elphaba and dancing with her while the people are laughing.

27:27 And I want you to see, this is a powerful scene. There are no words. No words are needed to see what happens as Galinda is being transformed. Take a look. 10 years old When you've met you have to change it You're more space for your own But that's really fun You're more space for your own But that's really fun You're more space for your own But that's really fun I'm sorry. I love you.

29:01 What a powerful scene. And this entire film is not about the transformation of Elphaba. It's about the transformation of Galinda. How she's going to be changed as she comes to see her friend. As she comes to see her roommate as her friend. And it's interesting, she's not all changed at one time. You see the very next scene in the film and Galinda's still looking at Elphaba as a project that she's going to work on. She's going to make her like herself. but she's beginning to change and that change happens as we get to know people. This week, I shared last Sunday, this week we had 80 of our high school seniors who were in Asheville, North Carolina and on Friday I was reading our GPS, our Grow, Pray and Study Guide, our daily devotional and Leah Swank Miller, one of our youth pastors was describing being there in Asheville, North Carolina and she said among the things they were doing is there was this United Methodist ministry that provided meals for the homeless and she said it was beautiful, they have nice napkins, They have the meal set out like it's just a beautiful meal.

30:01 It's meant to instill a sense of dignity and just beauty in the meal. And she said, not only did the teenagers prepare the meal, but then they had a chance to sit with the homeless and share in the meal. And it was transformative. But who do you think it was transformative for? Was it for the homeless? No, they had a good meal and they had teenagers that they allowed to sit by them and they talked with them. It was our teenagers that were transformed by the experience of listening to the stories and seeing the humanity of the homeless in Asheville. That's really how all of our mission trips work, if you're curious. We have a chance to go to a variety of places. It's pretty awesome. You take a week's vacation or 10 days, you go somewhere around the world or maybe here in the United States, maybe right here in Kansas City in our serve projects here in Kansas City. But when we show up, people are inviting us to come into their lives. They're allowing us to come into their homes, to their churches. And in the process of doing that, guess what? They understand that they're a part of our transformation.

30:56 Like we're the ones who are being sanctified by being in a relationship and getting to know their stories. Yes, we go to help. We're hoping to come alongside his servants to say, how can we help? What can we do? How can we bring something that we have to offer? But in the end, the person who's changed most is you in the process of getting to know people's stories, walking in their shoes, living their life with them for a short period of time. I think about going to Israel and Palestine. So I've taken a dozen groups, maybe more to Israel and Palestine. when we go, we always go into the West Bank. And when we go into the West Bank, I remember the very first time I was anxious. I mean, you had to go through a number of security checkpoints to get in. And here we are with Palestinian people. And the only experience I had was what I'd seen on the evening news about Palestinians. And I was kind of anxious. And I thought, I have to spend time getting to know these people and hear their story. And what happened was all of my fears melted away. And instead, what I found was compassion and concern for these people, some of whom were my brothers and sisters in Christ, fellow Christians.

31:54 who were living a life in which they were made to feel second class. I think of my Jewish friends and what it's like to break bread with them when I hear their stories and know the way they have been treated at various times and made to feel like they were less than. And yet they have become some of my dearest friends. And so what's fostered in that is a transformation in me by virtue of befriending and associating with and connecting with and listening to the stories of people who are different from me. In the end, in this film, Elphaba believes in herself. So she comes to believe in herself. She comes to risk everything to fight the wizard. She ends up learning that she can fly. And I love this song, Defying Gravity. She says, something has changed within me. Something is not the same. I'm through with playing by the rules of someone else's game. I'm trying to defy gravity. And it's just this high point in the film. I love it.

32:45 But I'm not going to share with you that clip right now. I do want you to know that Elphaba does fly away. She ends up flying. And as she flies, she ends up becoming, you know, she's going to resist the Wizard of Oz and the things that he's doing. But in the end, it is Elphaba who saves Glinda. So Elphaba's life is transformed by her relationship with Glinda, but it's Elphaba who saves Glinda. They are both being transformed by one another. And one of the most beautiful songs in the musical on Broadway is one that doesn't show up in the film. Remember, this is Wicked Part 1, and Wicked Part 2 comes out in November. And in part two, we're going to see this song. But I loved it in the Broadway musical. It captures how in their friendship, these two were changed for good. And I want you to have a chance to hear just a little bit of the song as it was sung by the two original lead actresses in the Broadway musical. This sung by Kristen Chenoweth and Idina Menzel.

33:41 And this is just the tail end of the song. Take a listen. Because I know you Because I know you I knew you, because I knew you, I have been changed for good.

34:20 I kept singing this song in my head throughout the week. And I was thinking about all of the friends that I've had who changed me for good. When I thought about LaVon. In fact, at one point I got out of the car and she was in the house and I came up to her and I said, I just want you to know that because of you, I have been changed for good. And she looked at me like I was nuts. Like, why did you say that? She hadn't been watching the film with me or watching the soundtrack, listening to it. And I said, it's just the truth. Because I knew you. I have been changed for the better. This was her birthday this last week. And part of my giving thanks was, you know, I just was giving thanks for the fact that God brought her into my life and how my life has changed because of her. And that's true of so many of my friends, really all of my friends. My life is changed because of them. It got me thinking about, I wonder if that's true for, you know, my relationship with my friends. I mean, we're friends, but I wonder, is their life any better because of their friend?

35:14 Have they been changed for good because I'm their friend? And I'm not really sure about that. but here's what I began thinking about is I would like for that to be the case what would it look like for me to be such a friend such a good friend to someone else that their life was changed for good because I was their friend because they knew me I want to ask you your friends are their lives better have they been changed for good because of your friendship as I continue to ponder this and think about my friends who changed my life, I realized the one friend who'd most changed my life was Jesus. And I began to pray about this this week. I just began to say, thank you for being my friend, Lord. And my life has forever changed, has completely and radically changed for good because you befriended me. I love that old hymn, what a friend we have in Jesus. And when you get to the third verse, it says, are we weak and heavy laden, cumbered with a load of care, precious savior, still our refuge, take it to the Lord in prayer. Do thy friends despise forsake thee? Take it to the Lord in prayer. In his arms he'll take and shield thee. Thou wilt find a solace there. I want you to hear the words to this song from Wicked, at least part of them. And the two, Elphaba and Glenda, are singing this to each other. I've heard it said that people come into our lives for a reason, bringing something we must learn.

36:42 And we are led to those who help us most to grow if we let them and we help them in return. Well, I don't know if I believe that's true, but I know I am who I am today because I knew you. Like a comet pulled from orbit as it passes the sun, like a stream that meets a boulder halfway through the wood, who can say if I've been changed for the better? I do believe I have been changed for the better. And because I knew you, I have been changed for good. I want to remind you what Jesus said to his disciples at the last supper. He said, I don't call you servants any longer because servants don't know what their master's doing. Instead, I call you friends. I want to ask, have you allowed Jesus to be your friend? Because he will change you for good.

37:33 and with your friends? Are they changed for good because of your friendship? Why don't you pray that God might help you be a friend that helps other people's lives be enriched because they knew you? And then finally, are you giving into fear of other people? It's time to stop giving into fear and instead to allow love to have its sway in us. And that's the message I see. in the movie Wicked. Would you pray with me?

38:09 Oh Lord, how grateful we are for your love and grace. And you know how paranoid we can be. You know how easy we give in to fear. And when leaders, political leaders or religious leaders or others begin to tell us that we should be afraid, how easy it is for that fear to capture our hearts. And when it captures our hearts, we're no longer practicing love. God, please forgive us for the way we've given sway to fear in our lives. and help us instead to recognize your perfect love, to accept it, and to cast out all of our fears. We pray, O Lord, that we might be people who love, and when we love and we befriend others, that somehow you might use us, that their lives might be changed for good. And help us so to receive your love and the love of our friends that our lives might be changed for good. we ask this in Jesus name