What Is This Feeling? (New Beginnings UMC)

We are continuing our series for Wicked.

We're going to do one more Sunday in this and and a big

reason why we're doing one more on Sunday is we had the 14th got

snowed out and and I think that message is good for us to hear.

And also Tiny little Paisley learned a song from Wicked and

and it's the song popular and it's a hard song to sing and

there's a lot of words and she's like in second grade and she

worked really hard on learning that and I want her to be able

to sing it for everyone. So we're going to be doing that

next week and that will wrap up our Wicked series here.

OK. And then after that, we'll move

on to other topics. Today we are talking about

feelings and particularly this question, what is this feeling?

What is this feelings? One of the songs sung early on

and wicked, and it's a song that Elphaba and Glenda sing

together. We have Elphaba and Glenda with

us today. Emma and Elena will be singing.

What is this feeling In a little bit.

And I'm really excited. They've sung it twice already.

There. It's dynamite.

Are you really going to do the variation we had talked about on

the way? No, no, not going to do that.

OK. All right, all right.

They had a fun variation they thought they might try.

I thought that's a bold move to make at this stage in the game.

Yeah. Not dynamite.

No dynamite. So.

But that would truly be an explosive experience.

Yeah, you're absolutely right. Absolutely right.

So they're going to sing that in a few minutes.

But I want to talk about feelings before we listen to the

song because feelings are one of God's greatest gift to us.

Feelings, emotions are so, so important not only for the

richness that they bring to our lives, but also for the

information that they bring to our lives.

Feelings. Yeah.

What's up? That's what I thought too.

So I hope that wasn't an appropriate response.

Did you pick that or was it this?

This was just, I bought this. Like this?

No, I did. I'm not that good an artist,

but. But thank you for the compliment

that that so. So one of the things feelings do

is they give us an incredible amount of information about our

interior life, what's going on inside of us.

When? Yes.

Right. Yeah.

Awesome. You can tell me later.

OK. All right, what's going?

If we're afraid, that tells us that tells us what we feel

threatened by. If we're excited, it tells us

what what we feel excited about it.

It tells us what's important to us.

It tells us all different things about our interior life.

What emotions are lousy at is telling us anything about

external reality. They're not good at that at all.

For example, got a friend. I'm going to call him Bob.

That's not Bob's real name. I'm going to use a different

name because I didn't get permission from the person I'm

calling Bob to tell this story. I don't think he'd care, but

there you go. Anyway, so I knew Bob years ago,

back when I lived in Tiffin. Bob's at at least 6 feet 7

inches tall and and Bob is neither fat nor skinny.

Bob is fit. Bob is muscular.

Bob is broad shoulder. Bob's a white dude covered with

tattoos and Bob shared with me one day, he said.

Pastor Cott, I just don't understand.

I go downtown and, and these little old ladies act like

they're afraid of Maine. They'll cross the street to walk

on the other side of the street from me.

Yeah. I was standing at an

intersection the other day waiting for the light to change.

Someone pulled up the other direction.

This little lady looked out her window and saw me and then

rolled her window up like she was afraid.

Did you see how I did that? How many?

Raise your hand if you've never done this to roll up a window.

There's a few people that. No, I guess we got.

OK, maybe I'm just. I haven't done this in years,

but for whatever reason, that was my default.

Rolled up the window and I had two responses to Bob.

One I kept to myself, which was Bob.

You're a scary looking guy. You should not be surprised when

little old ladies want to avoid you.

You look scary. But Bob had touched on a very,

very real thing. Even though Bob looked scary,

there was nothing in Bob that would ever threaten those little

old ladies. He was one of the gentlest,

kindest, most compassionate people I've ever met and and he

was in no way a threat to them. I can understand when they see a

six foot seven tatted up dude walking down the road toward

them that they would feel fear. But that fear, that fear was an

indication of what was going on inside those ladies.

And it said nothing at all about the reality of Bob, whether he

was really a threat to them. Does that make sense?

Does that make sense? And so Glenda and Alphaba faced

this same dynamic, not the exactly, but a very similar

dynamic in Wicked. They grew up apart from each

other. They end up going to college

together. They're at Shizz and they are

assigned as roommates. Not sure who was doing the room

assignments at Shizz, but there you go.

Put Glenda and Alphaba together and they could not have been

more different. They had a very strong emotional

response to each other and that's what they sing about.

And what is this feeling? And so Emma and Elena are going

to come up and sing for us and, and I'm so glad.

Thank you ladies for doing this. At this point in the sermon, we

listen to Emma Taylor and Elena Buckley singing.

What is this Feeling? From the movie Wicked, Emma and

Elena. Did a great job with it, but due

to technical limitations I was not able to get a good recording

of them singing. You can find the Ariana Grande

Cynthia Revo version on YouTube and all major music platforms

though and I hope you'll listen to it.

It's a fun song about two young women who.

Upon first impressions, loathed each other.

Now back to the sermon. Well done ladies.

Thank you again. Let's give it one more round

here. Their initial emotional reaction

to each other Clearly loathing, Loathing, unadulterated

loathing. However, it didn't last.

It didn't last. They actually took time, did the

work, process their emotions, moved past their emotions, and

became very good friends that had a lifelong impact on each

other for good, for good. It's a beautiful story.

Again, if you haven't seen the story yet, if you haven't seen

the movies, watch them. You'll be glad you did.

But Alphaba and Glenda worked through and moved past their

initial feelings, became close friends.

And by doing that, they give us an example of God's way of

relating to people. And that's really what we want

to get at today, is what is God's way of relating to people?

Because God, God has emotions too, right?

We hear about that in the Bible. We read about it in the Bible.

I suppose if it's an audio book, you hear it about in the Bible,

but we read about it in the Bible, God having emotions and

expressing those emotions, experiencing those emotions,

feeling those emotions. But God does not relate to

people out of His emotions. They're not what drives him.

God relates to people differently.

We see it in Samuel, First Samuel.

This is actually God speaking through the prophet Samuel and,

and God, there's been a king in Israel.

The first king of Israel was Saul.

Saul was making a lot of bad moves as king and God said we

need a new king. We're going to get a new king.

He sent his prophet Samuel to anoint the new king, said it's

one of Jesse's sons. Jesse got all of his sons

together except one, because even Jesse didn't think his

youngest son David had a chance to be king.

And and Samuel, God through Samuel says this.

The Lord does not look at things people look at.

People look at outward appearance, but the Lord looks

at the heart. God sees the heart.

God sees people for who they are.

Rather than seeing people out of feelings and emotions.

Glinda and Elphaba initially could only see each other

through their own emotional reactions.

It wasn't until they looked past that and through that and saw

the other's heart that they were really be able able to become

fast and close friends. And this is what God invites us

to. To look at the heart, to look

beyond our own emotions, to see people as they really are and to

respond to them accordingly. Saul never figured this out.

He could never get this when when Saul and his army were

faced with the Philistine army and their champion Goliath.

By the way, I'm, I'm, I'm hearing good things about the

new David movie. Has anyone seen the David movie

yet? I'm, I'm hearing good thing, but

I don't have any first hand experience with it.

But David as as a as a young man, probably an adolescent,

seize the army, seize Goliath and and David says, I can kill

Goliath and Saul and others look at David just with contempt.

You're a kid. You have no chance against a

professional soldier 10 feet tall.

You can't do this. Their feeling was that David had

no chance. But David defeated Goliath, by

the way. Well, no, I will not digress

down that particular rabbit hole.

This morning David defeated Goliath.

Then David ended up being very successful as a military

warrior, very successful as a commander, as a leader.

And now Saul feels not contempt for David, but he's threatened.

He feels threatened by David. He has a fear response to David.

Now, remember, David knew that God had already anointed him as

the next king. But David had determined that he

would not usurp Saul's place. He was not going to assassinate

him. He was not going to do a coup.

He was not going to. He was going to let God handle

all of that. But Saul was afraid, and so he

tried to kill David, operating out of his fear because he never

bothered or was never able to get past his own emotional

responses with David and look at David's heart and see who David

really was. If he had, he would have seen

there was no reason for him to be afraid.

But he didn't. This is the thing that God

invites us to. This is the challenge that God

puts before us, that Jesus calls us to relate to people, God's

way rather than Saul's way, rather than the way Elphaba and

Glenda related to each other early on in their relationship.

And we see Jesus doing this and, and John read part of the story

of the of Jesus's encounter with the woman at the well, the

Samaritan woman. And we see Jesus modeling this

exact kind of behavior. Here's a woman, she's coming to

the well at noon, the heat of the day, the middle of the day

when nobody else would be there because people went to the well

early in the morning before it got hot.

But this woman wanted to avoid all the other people because the

people in her community looked with her, looked at her with

contempt, with this Dane, with judgement, this emotional

response to a woman they saw as contemptible.

And she didn't want to deal with all of that.

So she came to the well in the middle of the day and there was

Jesus. And Jesus spoke to her, asked

her to get him some water out of the well.

And her response to Jesus, you can feel the emotional response

there. And that emotional response was

ick, this strange man, this Jewish dude is talking to me.

And that's what she said. You're Jewish and you're a man.

Why are you even speaking to me? Because Jews and Samaritans

hated each other. They were a threat to each

other, are perceived to be a threat to each other.

And men in that day and in that culture did not speak to a woman

in public unless they were related to her.

And even often, not even then, they would wait till private to

speak to her. And so here's this Jewish man

talking to her. Oh ick, leave me alone and

remember what Jesus's response was.

Jesus's response. Jesus answered her.

If you knew, if you knew, if you knew the gift of God, and if you

knew who it is that asked you for a drink, you would have

given him, you would have asked him, and he would have given you

living water. Jesus is inviting her to look

past her emotions and see his heart.

And in his heart there was no judgement, there was no

contempt, there was no disdain. There was no cultural or ethnic

or religious hatred. There was just a man who was God

in the flesh, who loved her and wanted the best for her, who saw

her as a child of God and a person of worth.

And that's how Jesus related to her.

And because she accepted Jesus's invitation and related to Jesus

that way, she was then able to go back to all of those folks

that she had was afraid of and was avoiding and see them as

children of God and people of worth and invite them to come

and get to know this Jesus as well.

This is the way God invites us. This is the way Jesus invites us

to live and relate to other people.

This Jesus has an advantage. OK, anyone here, God in the

flesh, anyone, anyone not sure when my hand is up, I am not

either. Jesus is the third for second

person of the Trinity, God the Father, God the Son, God the

Holy Spirit. He's got an advantage in this.

Jesus can look at people and instantly know their hearts.

For us, it's not so easy. We have to work at this.

We have to work at processing our own emotions.

We have to work at seeing what are my emotions telling me about

myself as I'm encountering this person or this group of people

and having worked through that and processed that, then we can

do the work of seeing them for who they are, getting to know

their heart. And by heart I don't mean some

sort of romantic fluff and Nutter lambs and bunnies notion

of of heart. This is not modern day Valentine

heart, the heart for the ancient peoples.

It was the seat, it was the core of their identity, it was their

emotions, it was their intellect, it was their

character, it was their will, their decision making.

It was all of those things that were the non biological things

that make a person who they are. That was the heart.

And when God says he's looking at the heart, he's looking at

the real person, not the superficial.

And that's what Jesus did. His disciples struggled with

this. And so later when they're

traveling through Samaria again and they want to go into a

village to refresh themselves again, they get a message from

the village saying, ick, oh, you're Jewish.

We don't want you here, Jesus. It escalated quickly.

Jesus's disciples were like, hey, we want us to pray to God

and ask him to call down and send down fire and kill them

all. And Jesus, I'm this is just me.

I have no biblical evidence for this.

All we're told is that Jesus rebuked them and we get no

content. I feel like it was unprintable.

I feel like Jesus's response was that strong to them and he

rebuked them and they went to another village in Samaria and

stayed there because his disciples were responding out of

emotion. What did his disciples emotional

response reveal? It revealed that they were

afraid of the Samaritans, even though Jesus was with them.

It revealed that they saw themselves as superior to the

Samaritans. How dare these Samaritan dogs

insult Jesus the Christ, the Messiah?

We must punish them. It showed that they held

contempt for them. It said absolutely nothing about

the Samaritans. It revealed a great deal about

the hearts of Jesus's disciples, which is why Jesus rebuked them

and said get over yourselves. And they went to another

Samaritan village. This is the thing.

This is the way Jesus asks us to live in all times and all places

and relating to other people as much as we're able to get past

our emotions, whether we're encountering a person or a

group, whether it's face to face and in person or on TV or

through social media. That, that and whether the

differences are ethnic differences or gender

differences or or political differences or cultural

differences or language differences or racial, whatever

the differences are, Jesus says your emotional response.

Take a good look at that, because that's telling you a lot

about yourself and your attitudes toward that person or

group, but it's telling you nothing about that person or

group. Instead, get to know them.

Get to know yourself through your emotional response.

And then from that place of stability, get to know them and

know their hearts for who they really are and love them and

receive them as I would. This is what Jesus calls us to.

What is this feeling? This feeling is a great tool for

for sorting out what's going on inside of us.

It's a lousy tool for sorting out what's going on outside of

us. So we have to do the hard work

of getting to know people's hearts, of seeing them for who

they really are and like Jesus responding to them that way.

In Jesus name, Amen. Amen.