The Outsiders Musical And The Price Of Conflict

Well, my quick survey when I first got here, uh this might be saying to me that many of you don't know the story of the outsiders.

Uh I remember it was a favorite of my dad's, uh, I think because he grew up in the 50s, and so he thought, oh, these these are guys that grew up when I grew up and lived kind of how I lived, and so he was always a big fan.

So I don't know if anybody else identifies with it that way.

Uh uh just to give you a picture a little bit so you can start thinking about uh what the cast might look like.

I first, this is a picture from the movie version that happened.

Gosh, what was that?

Early 80s, I think.

Uh, and uh, those of you who know uh um movies and things like that, pretty much everybody on there became a pretty big star.

There's not a no name on that list, so it really captured a lot of people right at the beginning.

Uh, and then one more picture.

This is the cast of the crew that did the musical.

The musical is the new part and uh uh of what we're talking about, and so uh uh you can kind of get a little bit of a sense of what they look like.

Uh it is a story set in uh, I guess, the late 50s, uh, and um it was an interesting story with this main conflict at its center, and it was a class conflict that was in play.

It was largely the Greasers who were the lower-income working class crew, and then you had the socias, who were the more athletic, the sport team people, and the ones with money.

Uh have we heard that story before?

Yeah, it's kind of a classic thing, probably because we do wrestle with that particular uh dichotomy amongst our community.

Uh so as the story goes, just to give you a kind of a feel of the plot, Pony Boy is the main character.

He lives with older brothers Dairy and Soda Pop after their parents die.

So it's a bunch of the kids uh who, some of them in their 20s, some of them still in their teens, are getting by on their own.

And as I said, the Greasers clash with the socias.

Ponyboy is part of the Greasers.

So what happens tragically at the very beginning is in that conflict, a couple of the socias go and they start hassling Pony Boy and Johnny to the point at which Johnny, to protect himself, even kills one of these socias.

And so uh that becomes uh obviously a real scary moment for Johnny and Pony Boy, because they know there's already conflict, and now they have this really tragic incident.

They flee, they hide in this abandoned church in a place called J Mountain, uh, and then they kind of hide out there for a while.

And part of how they spend their time is with Pony Boy, who's actually pretty well educated, reading to Johnny, which will come into play a little bit later.

Ultimately, this church actually catches fire, and local school children are in the church at the time.

Johnny and Pony Boy go to help the kids to get out.

They become kind of heroes, except Johnny gets tragically injured in this fire and ends up in the hospital.

So, with all of that turmoil and angst, the greasers and the social things really bubbles up to the service, they have one big uh fight scene in which the Greasers win the fight scene, but their joy in winning this fight is that uh they are learning that Johnny is probably going to die from his injury.

Uh and uh from that also there are other characters.

Dally is also grief-stricken and desperate and chooses to end his life.

Uh, the heaviness of all of this just comes to pass on to them.

Uh ultimately, after Johnny dies, Pony Boy is cleared of blame in the court, reconciles with his uh brother, uh, and he ends up deciding to honor his brothers, uh Johnny and his brother Dally by writing his English class term paper about their lives, which becomes the novel itself.

So a neat little tie-in at the very end.

So there's your your your briefer on the story itself.

So, how is the stage version different than the written version?

Well, first of all, it's a musical.

So songs.

That's one of the major differences right there.

You're actually going to hear songs in the musical version.

Uh they also expanded the role of some of the women in the story, including the main woman whose name is Cherry, uh, and a little side note of fun for us in the Cowdry household.

Uh, the woman who originated that role on Broadway and still plays it is a good friend of my son Joseph and was at his wedding and everything.

So that kind of makes this show a little more special for us.

Um they also added some gender and ethnic diversity, probably to make it feel a little more real and uh certainly more contemporary.

So moving into themes, probably the strongest theme we've already mentioned is about this class struggle.

You know, the main characters obviously they sense the inevitability of this conflict.

And they're always wondering why it needs to be this way.

This is Pony Boy and this is Johnny, consistently in that space.

Why does it need to be this way?

Uh we might look at it and think, oh, well, that's kind of quaint.

That does sound like the 50s, but I might question whether or not we really have moved on from class struggle.

We might have even added other struggles to how our life moves around today.

And the question for us posed by this story is why do we set accept this competitiveness, this combativeness as inevitable?

That this is just how people are.

Groups fight with other groups.

This is the space that Paul writing in Romans chapter twelve is uh writing in.

This is where his head is.

He knows that our world can be tough, that rising above lesser influences can be challenging.

So he starts by talking about the importance of committing to the belief in God's presence and in God's love and in God's grace.

He tells us to present our bodies.

That might feel a little bit weird, especially here in 2026, but I am pretty sure he's talking about our actions, doing things for God.

We need to do the things that show God's love.

We need to be the love.

But after he talks about our bodies, then he talks about our minds.

And this might be the most well-known verse from the chapter.

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds.

Is that one of anybody's favorites?

Yeah, there's some people who really love that one.

It really speaks to them.

I hope you're hearing the implication in it.

Do not be conformed to this world.

I try to be cautious around this kind of passage because when we start talking about how all the world is bad, I get a little nervous about that.

It is God's world, God created it.

Sometimes passages like this can make it a little too easy to write off the entire world as unredeemable, and I get nervous about that.

At the same time, we kind of do need to recognize that our world is not perfect.

In fact, it is often broken.

It's always in varying stages of straying from God's will and desire for it, back to some level of redemption, hopefully to some healing.

But the world is always in those cycles, and so to own that it is often broken is probably important.

And this is the headspace that the film and the musical, the outsiders, is in.

This place of brokenness in which all are made to feel like they can't thrive unless they're fighting with others, as if there isn't enough for all of us to thrive.

As if God didn't provide all that we need.

In the context of this story, the characters are consistently asking themselves, are we going to be conformed to this inevitable competition and competitiveness and combat?

Or might we be transformed by something better?

For we Christians, that something better is an experience grounded in our faith, but an experience of God through Christ.

This leads us to the song that we picked for today.

It's called Stay Gold.

Have any of you heard of the Robert Frost poem from 1923?

Nothing Gold Can Stay.

Oh, look at you.

Okay.

We're gonna have to have a poetry class.

All right, some of us are here.

I mean, that's Robert Frost, right?

He's one of, you know, he's top ten.

In any case, it's a this song in the musical, it's a nod to that poem, which is actually referred to in the story.

Remember, Pony Boy would read to Johnny while they were hiding in this church, uh, and uh he would read uh uh some uh Charles Dickens in the musical, but he also read from this poem.

And as Johnny later on is dying, he starts to sing this song called Stay Gold as a way of telling Pony Boy, he finally gets what the poem was all about.

It's a reminder that we need to preserve youthful innocence and goodness in a harsh world.

Johnny wants Pony Boy, despite his death, despite all of this competitive, combative stuff that's going on, he wants Pony Boy to stay gold, stay innocent, and stay good.

And I would argue that he wants him to be transformed by his faith in the good.

So this is Kyle Newkirk, Newkirk.

He had to work today, but he did kindly offer to make a uh recording for us.

Finding beauty in the fold, it's the only way to keep from growing old I friends, stay eager when you're young, and the world is new.

It's easy to forget when you try just to make it free like the morning light and the dawn it breaks, you see the world finding beauty in the same things.

I have looked into a thankful father's eyes, telling me I safety daughter's eyes I do it all again beauty in the form I friend stay go back at the life I've had, I hold on to the good as I paid peace before the man, sixteen years look at all we've done, putting trade for the world.

Can't you see that with lucky eyes?

I have known a love that many never know, and that love lives on no matter where I go, we all will be done no matter if we need in your friend, stay gold finding beauty in the fold is the only way to keep from growing all.