August 10th, 2025 - "Bible on Broadway - Wicked: Live Your Weird" - Rev. Dr. Michelle Morris

Matt Nelson: Welcome to the Sermon podcast from First United Methodist

Church in downtown Bentonville.

If you have questions related to what you hear today or just want to find

out more about the ministries of First United Methodist Church, please visit us

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Rev. Dr. Michelle Morris: Y'all, I'm so glad we're doing this.

Series.

'cause I just get to listen to people singing all around the

church all week, and we have such an amazingly talented staff.

Thank you Kristen, for sharing your gift.

Allison's gonna share hers at 11 o'clock and I like to say in a staff of 10

people, I'm the eighth best singer.

On staff.

Welcome to First United Methodist Church.

My name is Michelle Morris and I'm the lead pastor here, and we are

doing a series called The Bible on Broadway, in which we're gonna look

at some famous Broadway musicals, really, and compare them with

stories that happen in the Bible.

And I have to give some props out to last year's confirmation

class because they're the ones.

That championed this series helped us pick out some of the songs and

the musicals from this series.

So you have them to thank, if you like it and you have me to blame if you don't.

But today we're doing Wicked.

We will not be giving summaries of each of the musicals we're doing Wicked this week.

Miserable.

Next week, rent the following week in Hamilton will finish this out.

So if you wanna read up in advance, if you don't know the musicals you

can, but we will also have these little summaries that we'll hand out.

As well.

And since we are talking about a prophetic figure such as alphabet,

we're gonna hear this very strange passage from the book of Ezekiel, and

we're really looking at Ezekiel and Alphabet alongside, uh, one another.

So hear now the word of the Lord.

The Lord's word came to me.

Human one.

You live in a household of rebels.

They have eyes to see, but they don't see ears to hear, but they don't hear

because they are a household of rebels.

But you human one, prepare a backpack for going into exile in the daytime while

they watch, go into exile while they watch, go out from your place to another.

Even though they're a household of rebels, perhaps they will understand.

In the daytime while they watch Carry Your Backpack as If for exile at Twilight

while they watch, go out like those who are led out to exile while they watch,

dig a Hole through the Wall and take your backpack out through it while they watch.

Shoulder Your Backpack and carry it out in the dark.

Cover your face so that you can't see the land because I'm making

you a sign for the House of Israel.

So I did as I was commanded.

I carried out my backpack like an exiles backpack in the daytime.

At night, I dug a hole through the wall with my hands in the darkness.

I shouldered my backpack and carried it out while he watched in the morning.

The Lord's word came to me.

Human one has the House of Israel.

That house of Rebels asked you, what are you doing?

Say to them, the Lord proclaims this concerns the prince in Jerusalem, along

with the entire house of Israel in it.

Say, I'm your sign.

Just as I have done so, it will be done to them.

They will go into captivity in exile.

Their prince will shoulder his backpack at night and go out.

They will dig through the wall to lead him out through it, and he will cover his

face so that his eyes won't see the land.

But I will spread my net over him, catch him in my trap, and bring him to

Babylon to the land of the Chaldeans.

He won't see it, but he will die there.

As for all those who are in league with him, I will scatter his helpers

and all his troops to the winds and let the sword loose after them.

They will know that I am the Lord when I disperse among them the nations and

scatter them throughout the lands.

But I will preserve a few of their number from the sword, famine, and plague.

So that they may confess all their detestable practices among the

nations where they go, then they will know that I am the Lord.

The Lord's word came to me.

Human one.

Eat your bread and trembling and drink your water in anxious agitation.

Say to the land's people, the Lord God, proclaims to those living in Jerusalem

regarding Israel's fertile land.

As they anxiously eat up their bread and drink up their water and dismay the land

will be emptied of everything in it.

Because of the violence of all who live there, the inhabited cities will be laid.

Waste the land left desolate and you will know that I'm the Lord.

This is the word of God for the people of God.

Thanks be to God.

Let us pray.

Lord, open our hearts, our minds, and our eyes that we may see and know

the word you have for us this day.

In your holy name we pray, amen.

You know, Ray has to look for hymns to match the scriptures that I pick out.

No hymns match this one,

but it's great for the blessing of the backpacks, don't you think?

No.

Um, it does remind me what the, the sermon that I'm gonna preach in here,

but this one other thing to know about this Series nine in 10, 10 have the same

music, and then 11 has different music.

If you wanted to spend the day at Broadway, you could come all day and

you won't have to listen to the same sermon twice as long as you don't repeat.

9, 18, 10. So nine and 10, 10.

I'll do one sermon.

11 o'clock I'll do a different sermon.

And for today, for in here, you're gonna hear live your weird, they

will hear the power of the prophet.

If you can't make it to both sermons, uh, you can always watch online.

But thinking about living your weird, I remembered.

And also going back to school, uh, when I was in seventh grade.

My dad's best friend came to visit and brought his kids and their

eldest son was, if there was any definition of popular, he was it.

And he irritated me to no end.

It's a little bit like we were playing out wicked.

But anyway, so he says to me, after having some interaction

with me, he says, are you popular?

And I said, I don't know.

And he said, what do you mean you don't know?

And I said, well, popular is defined by other people, and I

haven't asked, and it blew his mind.

Today we're gonna be looking at this tension between trying to be popular and.

Trying to accept who you are.

And we see this tension in wicked between Alphabet and Galinda.

Alba is the proverbial wicked witch of the west.

Galinda is the good witch, and they first start out enemies.

Then they kind of become frenemies.

Later they become best friends.

But in that frenemy stage, Belinda decides she's gonna makeba popular,

even though alphabet is somewhat uneasy.

She kind of, you gotta get a sense that she might like it.

And she certainly would like to be accepted.

And then that's why you get this line in the song popular.

When Glenda says, though, you protest your disinterest.

I know clandestinely, you're gonna grin and bear it.

Your newfound popularity, right?

She's gonna make her be popular whether she wants to be or not.

And I wanna lift up the fact that the musical Wicked does not

actually really demonize popularity.

I mean, it does sometimes make Belinda out to be.

Very surface.

Um, but it doesn't totally demonize that reality.

And I want us to reflect that there is a value to popularity because those

who are popular in a sense, define and represent the status quo really well.

They're like the shiniest of what our social expectations

are, and they sort of represent.

At least on some level what our values are collectively as a people.

And some people play that role really well.

They are popular.

Well, and I wanna lift up that Ezekiel might have been in that role.

He is from a priestly family, which means that he would have been a priest serving

in Jerusalem and serving the temple.

And as such would have represented the shiniest of the values of the community.

Just as Glinda represents the shininess of the values of Oz, it's just, it becomes

very clear that in wicked, the values that are so shiny are actually pretty shallow.

There's not a lot behind the curtain.

And since Ezekiel cannot serve as a priest because he is exiled about 11

years ahead of the fall of Jerusalem.

Both of them serve as a canary in the coal mine that something is wrong

when something happens to the popular.

Something is wrong in society, but also when we reach unusual circumstances, times

of stress and times of strain, popular doesn't hold the status quo, will not do.

We need someone to challenge the ways that things are and to expose the lies

and the hypocrisies so that we can become a healthier, more stable community.

Again, as I mentioned, Ezekiel did not actually get to be a priest.

He was exiled in his 30th year of life.

30 is when you become a priest, so right as he would have stepped into

that role, he is sent into exile.

And has no access to the temple in Jerusalem.

So he now finds himself in this situation where he can be a prophet and

he is in fact called to be a prophet.

And when you are a prophet, you do not need to be status quo.

You need to be weird because weird gets people's attention.

Weird is how people notice.

And can receive or not receive, but at least they're getting access

to a new message, to something to get us to pay attention.

And Ezekiel did some very weird things besides putting on this backpack and

wandering around in the night and cutting a hole in the wall and crawling through.

Besides doing things like that, he also had to eat a scroll.

He had to talk about some very strange visions.

He had to lay first on one side for a certain number of days to represent how

long Israel would be in exile, and then lay on the other side for a certain

number of days to represent how many years that Judah would be in exile.

He was told he had to cook food over dung.

He had to build a model, a full scale model of Jerusalem and

act out the fall of Jerusalem.

He was called to some very strange things.

Strange things that challenge how we see the world behaving.

Elphaba was also called to break down walls and to pull back the curtain and

expose the fact that the wizard was a lie.

He had no power.

He was a false leader, and she was called to expose that reality.

She was also called to stand for the vulnerable, which she was uniquely

equipped to do because she herself had been outcast for so long because

of her green skin, and it is in fact that green skin that then becomes

a sign, a representation, something that draws people's attention.

They could not ignore her because she looked so strange.

And then they really couldn't ignore her when she could fly, when she shows what

true power looks like and flies over the proverbial wall, pulls back the curtain.

But she had to make a choice.

She had to make a choice in that moment.

And in fact, Glinda tells her, you can still have everything you want.

Just say you're sorry and you can have all you desire.

Alphabet recognizes she can't choose the popular way.

She says, I don't want it.

No, I can't want it anymore.

Ezekiel and Alphabet both had to recognize that it is their

weird, that gave them power.

It was their weird that drew attention.

It was their weird that allowed them to share a message that

a society desperately needed.

Alphabet was, in a sense, created to be outcast, but that gives her

the very reasons for why she has to challenge this society for.

It is not just her.

She's not the only one who is suffering, but the animals.

Are suffering.

And anyone that's vulnerable and not like the popular people, it it can be

persecuted, may suffer, and at the hands of a man with really no power at all,

just a good bluff that gives her all the reasons she needs her challenging society.

Ezekiel understands that the real power is not in putting on the

garb and standing at the temple of Jerusalem, but in fact, in serving God.

In being loyal to God, in following God, wherever that path leads, and

it is Ezekiel who is a participant in the resurrection of the dead bones.

In the valley of the Jere who sees the dead rise and understand that

it is God who has the true power.

This Prince who's himself going to be an exile is not one of true power.

It is God where the power lies, but weird is why we know them.

We would not be talking about Ezekiel today.

If he was not so weird, he wouldn't have made the Bible.

If he wasn't so weird, the Bible is so full of so much weird.

Y'all.

An alphabet.

Strange is her power.

The fact that she can fly when no one else can is her power.

She can in fact defy gravity and someone who can defy

gravity can overturn the world.

So my friend, this is your encouragement if you are popular.

There is purpose to that popularity, and I encourage you to be a

representative of good because as I said, you're the bellwether for

what our culture really stands for.

So if the most popular among us are actually good, then we are a good society.

If they are not, then we are not.

But if you are weird.

Then understand that you are a prophet, that you can draw

people's attention, and you can use that also for good or for evil.

Please be a sign for good.

Please stand up for the other weirdos.

Stand up for the ones that society would ignore and push aside.

Be the weird that gets attention drawn to that.

Whatever this moment is before us.

Whether it calls for the status quo or it calls for the weird, be that

and be willing always to take a leap for justice, for others, for good.

Leap my friends, and then you too will defy gravity.

Thanks be to God.

Matt Nelson: Thanks for listening to the Sermon podcast from First United

Methodist Church in downtown Bentonville.

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