God Mourns the Wicked (Chester UMC)

OK, starting our new series for Advent this year, Wicked for

Christmas. I'm shamelessly piggybacking on

on one of the most popular movies series that we've had in

a very long time. I'm going to.

I never know how to treat these kind of things.

I don't want to make assumptions.

I'm sure not everyone here is a Wicked fan.

I'm a Wicked fan. I know there's some others.

We've had some talk. I know there's some people that

think, Oh my goodness, this is not what about what?

Why can't we just stick with the original 1939 version?

But just so you know, the 1939 version starring Judy Garland

was not the original. It was the 4th full length

theatrical adaptation of what is it E Frank Baum?

Is that am I getting? Yeah.

E Frank Baum, his book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

When you count all of the different adaptations before the

1939 version, it was like the depending on how you count and

how you divide it and how short you're willing to go on some of

the adaptations, it was at least the 9th or 10th version.

So this is not, you know, it's not a new thing to remake these

things. I think the storytelling and the

lessons and the music and, and the magic of, of the new Wicked

series is just wonderful. There are some incredible themes

within the movies, within the songs.

And each Sunday throughout Advent, we're going to take one

of those songs and use it to kind of as a as a lens through

which we're going to look at the Christmas story and, and the

coming of Jesus Christ into the world and what that's all about

and the impact and the effect that it has on our lives.

So if you have, whether you have seen the movies or not, if you

haven't seen them, go see if you hate musicals, don't bother.

It's a musical and some people just hate musicals.

If you like musicals, I, I, I think you'll really, really like

these films. And they, they have some

powerful characters and powerful lessons.

The very first song that we hear in the very first movie, Wicked,

the one that came out last year is no one mourns the Wicked.

And I'm going to play a clip. Some Sundays we're going to have

live people singing. Some Sundays we're going to have

clips. And this Sunday we have a clip.

And so I'm going to play the clip so we can we can start

where we are. For those of you who are not

familiar with the story of Wicked or the Wizard of Oz,

both. Well, this is they're

celebrating the death of the Wicked Witch of the West here.

So not. Yeah.

Well, yeah. Here we go.

Oh, sound. I forgot to warn you.

We need sound. Do we have sound?

OK, some Everyone's a comedian. I get, I get no respect, no

respect. I don't know how it went mute

between that first one and this one, but here we are.

And now it's unmuted. So here we go.

At this point in the sermon, we listen to the song No One Mourns

the Wicked from the musical Wicked.

For licensing reasons, I can't include it in this recording.

It's a great song and Ariana Grande sings it beautifully.

You can find it on YouTube, Spotify and iTunes.

I hope you'll give it a listen. Now, back to the sermon, all

right? For those of you who are fans,

you're going. That's not the whole song.

You're right. We can't do the whole song.

We don't have time. It's a really long song.

It's a really good song. It's a fascinating song.

No one mourns the wicked on the surface of it.

That is so true. When was the last time you were

really, really sad when someone that you thought was just

really, really awful died? You know, I, I, there was not a

long line of people in the United States and Western Europe

that were, I can pick on the easiest target in all of human

history. When, when, when Hitler died.

No one was going, oh, no one mourns the wicked.

No one mourns the wicked. That's a human tendency.

When we see people out in the world or groups out in the world

that are doing things that we think of and understand to be

really, really awful things, and those people are cut down.

When they're cut out, when they're removed from power, when

they're removed from their position, when they die, when

they're killed, people tend to celebrate.

They tend to be glad. So it there is a very real sense

in which what the munchkins and and here are singing and

celebrating and no one mourns the wicked and they're all happy

about that, that they are right. Spot on.

People just don't mourn when someone that is wicked dies and

is removed. However, however God says this,

we just read it from the book of Hosea.

This is God speaking through the prophet Hosea.

And I'm sorry, this is from this one's from Isaiah.

I will not accuse forever. I will not all, nor will I

always be angry, for then they would faint away because of me,

the very people I have created. I was enraged by their sinful

greed. I punished them and hid my face

in anger, yet they kept on in their willful ways.

I have seen their ways, but I will heal them.

I will guide them and restore comfort to Israel's mourners,

creating praise on their lips. It's a fascinating passage from

the prophet Isaiah. The Old Testament gets a bad rap

and a lot of modern versions of Christianity and and and and

even secular looks at the Old Testament about God of the Old

Testament being a God full of judgment and anger and wrath.

When we say that we we have overlooked intentionally or

unintentionally, passages like this, it's important to note God

as he's talking through Isaiah here.

God is not wearing Rd. color rose colored glasses.

He's not under any delusions I was enraged by.

He knows about their sinful greeds.

I have seen their ways, their sinful greed, their their

willful ways. I've seen all of that.

I know it. But I will heal them.

I will heal them and restore comfort to them.

God mourns the wicked. God mourns the wicked.

Human beings don't, but God does.

When God looked out at the world, Genesis 6, we've gone

over this a whole bunch of times here recently.

Before God sent the flood to wipe out the world, we're told

that God, when he saw how wicked the people of the world had

become, God grieved. It grieved him.

It broke his heart. It caused God pain and anguish.

God mourns the wicked. God doesn't celebrate the

destruction of wicked people because they're God's people

too, in the sense not in the sense that they see themselves

as belonging to God, but in the sense that God gave them life

and breath. God designed them.

God knit them together in their mother's wombs, just as you did

everyone else. And Jesus came and lived and

died for them as well. Human beings don't mourn the

wicked, but God mourns the wicked.

This in Hosea as God. Once again, the first part of

the passage it's all about God seeing how he uses the term

Ephraim, the name Ephraim rather than Israel.

Here Ephraim was one of the 12 tribes and in many of the

writings of the prophets, Ephraim is used to refer to all

of the children of Israel, all of the Israelites and and God

has detailed the ways they've been unfaithful, the ways

they've abandoned. I rescued him, I brought him out

of Egypt, that they keep going back and worshipping these other

gods, all of these wrong things they've done.

But God says this, my heart has changed within me.

All my compassion is aroused. I will not carry out my fierce,

fierce anger, nor will I devastate Ephraim again.

For I am God and not a man, the Holy One among you.

I will not come against their cities.

They will follow the Lord. God says I'm not.

There's tough things in the Bible and there's a couple

different passages in the Bible that that in effect say what God

is saying here. God is saying I'm not like you.

He looks at us and he says that. Just so you know, I'm not like

you. I'm not like you.

I don't celebrate the destruction of the wicked.

I don't rejoice over the death of the wicked.

I mourn and I grieve. My compassion is aroused.

I call them to repentance. I heal them when they will

receive it. I want them to follow me.

God does not mourn the wicked because God is not like us.

Isaiah said it this way, God through Isaiah, my ways are not

your ways, my thoughts are not your thoughts, as heavens are

the higher than the earth's, or my thoughts higher than your

thoughts, and my ways higher than your ways.

And the context is once again mercy and compassion.

Mercy and compassion. God exceeds and excels us in

every way, including in mercy and in compassion.

We don't mourn the wicked, but God mourns the wicked.

God mourns the wicked. That begs a very significant

question. Who are the wicked?

Who are the This is one of the major themes of of the the

wicked movies as who are the wicked really?

And, and if you really want to spend some time, you know,

watching these movies, go back and and watch this opening song

again and see how Glenda is not singing what you think she's

singing the first time you hear it through and how she's appears

to be celebrating the death of the Wicked Witch of the West

with the Munchkins. But she's not, she's not in the

original. See, I do the same thing because

it's original, because it's the first one I saw.

And that's how we human beings do that.

In the 1939 version, the Wicked Witch of the West was the

wickedest of the wicked people. And, and Dorothy was a hero and

the Wizard of Oz was was a wonderful, helpful person, even

if he was a fraud. And and that's how things worked

out. Wicked retells the story.

And now Oz is the Wizard is the villain and his chief assistant

and and Dorothy's kind of a hapless person who's being

directed by forces that she doesn't understand.

And the goodest of the good folks in the land of Oz is

Alphaba. Her name, by the way, taken from

the author's name, L Frank Baum, Alphaba is how that name was

derived. Alphabus, the one fighting for

justice. Alphabus, the one defending the

weak. Alphabus, the one trying to

protect the helpless from the powerful forces that are trying

to destroy and enslave them. But it's very difficult to see.

And most folks in the land of Oz see Alphaba as wicked and as

evil. And the few that don't see her

as wicked and evil but see her as good don't have the strength

or the courage to stand up for her.

Most of them. This is a challenge in the

movie. It's one of the central points

of tension in the movie is who is the wicked person, really,

and what do we do about that? That's one of the central

tensions in human existence. Who is the wicked really, and

what do we do about that? It's something that that I would

say in our modern culture, I don't think there's anything at

all new about this. Maybe just the tendency in human

culture is to divide up and to make easy divisions between the

good and the bad, the wicked and the good, the evil and the good

and decide, you know, we all of these shortcuts, all of these,

you know, easy answers, all of these Cliff notes on who are the

wicked and what do we do when bad things happen to them.

Because it's Christmas season and, and, and, and I'm going to

get really, really dark here and controversial.

I meant to deliver that in a way that would inspire some humor,

but I, I didn't and I know it, it wasn't funny.

I delivered that all wrong. No, I don't, I'm going to going

to move on, going to move on. But we need to get really dark

here for a minute and really controversial here for a minute.

On October 7th, a couple years ago, one group of people

murdered and killed and raped many representatives of another

group of people. And the world was instantly

divided on which side in that conflict should be celebrated

and which side in that conflict should be mourned.

Few months ago a controversial political activist was

assassinated and immediately there was division, with one

side celebrating perceiving that person as being a person of

great wickedness and evil, and the other side mourning

perceiving that person to be a person of great goodness.

This question of who are the wicked divides us as cultures,

as people, as Christian. I got, I had people in both my

ears, Christians who saw, you know, who saw those two events

completely differently, completely differently divide

whether we're whether it's Christian, whether it's division

within the Christianity itself, whether it's, whether it's

political, whether it's social, whether it's ideological,

whether it's culture, whether it's national.

We divide on this question of who are the wicked.

But here's the thing. I, I don't think I changed this.

When I think I've got the next slide out of order, I do.

I'm fix this and then forgot to fix it on this one.

See, now I messed it up. Doggone it, I missed my big

reveal. I was going to feel good about

that. We have a cheat code.

Christians have a cheat code for this question of who is the

wicked and and we got to, we got to go back to the Old Testament

again to get to that cheat code back to Isaiah where we're told

all of us like sheep have strayed away.

We have left God's paths to follow our own.

Yet the Lord laid on him the sins of us all, all of us. 1 of

this one of the main prophecies of, of the Messiah in the Old

Testament, Isaiah chapter 53. And right in the heart of that,

Isaiah 53 · chapter mention

as God is talking about why the Messiah is coming, why this King

is coming, We are told that all of us, like sheep have strayed

away. Being called like sheep, though,

by the way, not a compliment, not a compliment at all.

If you know sheep, you know no one really strives to be a

sheep. All of us, like sheep, have

strayed away. All of us have left God's path

to follow our own way. Yes, the Lord God laid our sins

on him, on Jesus, on Jesus. The the the cheat code in all of

this is who are the wicked we are all of us are.

This is one of the most controversial things about

Christianity is the statement of I'm not going to be, I'm not

going to step back and throw stones at the wicked people

because I'm one of the wicked people.

It's self interested in some respects, which in some ways is

the is the closest we can get to God's compassion.

Here is this self interested compassion.

I'm not going to throw stones because I'm one of the wicked.

We're all one of the wicked. And while the world wants to

divide us into these camps and these groups and to say those

are the really bad people and those are the really good

people. And we can sort that out and we

can sort all of those things and divide that all up on our on our

own. We know darn well who the good

are and who the wicked are. All we have to do is look at how

you vote, or all we have to do is look at what you tweet, or

all we have to do is look at what you post.

All we have to do is look at where you go on Sunday morning

or don't go on so we can sort these things out pretty easily

ourselves. You're in jail.

Yeah, you're one of the bad guys.

Not in jail. You're going all right.

Bible takes all of that away from us and says we're all off

course. We're like sheep.

We've fallen into the ditch again, we've gotten lost again,

we're off course again. And we don't get to throw stones

at other people who have to, who happen to have gone off course,

just in a different direction, a lot of different ways to get off

the path. All of us have been there and in

some respects all of us are always there because none of us

gets it perfect. So are the wicked.

We are. All of us are all of us.

We have that cheat code. Told you that was out of order.

Here's the thing though, this season of Christmas, the season

of Advent, season of Christmas, is a time to celebrate the world

altering truth that God mourns the wicked.

It is such good news that God mourns the wicked because God's

mourning of the wicked is why we have Christmas to begin with.

God's grief and compassion for the wicked is what motivated

Jesus's messianic mission. He came to set the captive free,

to give sight to the blind, to free those possessed and

ensnared and enslaved by demonic forces, spiritual forces beyond

their control. He came not to judge, not to

condemn, but to free to show compassion, to show mercy, and

to show love. It's the fact that God mourns

the wicked. That's why Jesus came, because

God was grieving for us. All of us who like sheep, have

gotten off track. And so he came to us as one of

us, born as a child among us, to show us compassion and restore

us to the way and bring us back into the fold.

That passage, I didn't put that, OK.

That passage from Hosea and the passage from Matthew, they share

that phrase out of Egypt. I have called my son.

Remember that and Aubrey read that earlier that that after you

know, Herod found out about Jesus the Messiah being born and

he was going to had the wise men come back and report to him.

The wise men didn't come back and report to him where he was.

So he just decided to kill all of the two year old and under

baby boys in the region of Bethlehem.

And God warned, God warned Joseph in a dream, take Mary and

the baby flee to Egypt. And then we get this quote.

This fulfills what the prophet said out of Egypt.

I have called my son. There's one way to read these

kind of New Testament prophecy fulfillment things.

And that's like the writers of the New Testament are just kind

of cherry picking. So Jesus had to flee to Egypt

and God brought him back from Egypt.

So this fulfills the prophecy that Hosea made when God says

out of Egypt, I have called my son.

That's a really shallow way of looking at it.

Those prophecies and fulfillments are in there to

show us how Jesus story fits within the story that God has

already been telling and already been doing.

And, and when, when Matthew's ties Jesus's birth, the

incarnation of Jesus himself, to this passage that begins without

of Egypt, I've called my son, Matthew is tying Jesus's mission

and ministry to that whole chapter.

God's coming with compassion, not with anger.

God's coming with grace. His heart has changed.

He's seen the wickedness. He understands the sin.

He knows how bad we've messed up.

But instead of coming to destroy, God is coming to save,

even at the cost of his own life, even at the cost of his

own dignity, even at the cost of his own Son.

It is such a good thing for all of us that God mourns the

wicked, that God does not celebrate the death and

destruction of wicked people. God mourns and grieves the

wicked because that's what motivated him to come to us, to

save us. And he invites us to share his

heart in this way that we too mourn and grieve those others

who like us are off track, even if they're off track in a

different way. Maybe we fell off the left or

the right and they fell off the right or the left.

Maybe they've fallen behind. Maybe they've tried to go ahead.

Doesn't really matter whether how you got off track or where

you went off track. If you're off track and God says

join me in this, have my heart in this, in Jesus name, Amen,

Amen.