Bye Bye Birdie - The Gospel According to Broadway

Well, since it is Bye Bye Bernie Sunday, I spent some time researching the musical instead of just staying in the scriptures and doing exegesis this past few weeks.

And one thing I learned was that a whole lot of people of all genders had a huge crush on Anne Margaret.

None of you?

None of you remember her from that?

There were quite a few that told me that was what you remembered most from Bye-Beye Birdie was your crush on Anne Margaret.

And the other thing I learned was that a lot of us really know the movie version of Bye Bye Birdie.

I do.

I had never seen the musical before.

And I was amazed at some of the differences between the Broadway production and the movie that most of us know.

And just like in life, there are things we know, there are things we don't know, and then there are those things that we don't know we don't know.

When I was in junior high and high school, I had a beloved English teacher.

She always told us fun stories, and she tried to instill in us the importance of pronouncing words correctly.

Because she said, one day you're going to be embarrassed if you don't.

And she told us a story of being in college, and she was sharing a beloved story from her childhood, and she learned accidentally and embarrassingly that most people didn't call hickory nuts hickerns.

So she thought it was important for us to know they are called hickory nuts.

And I bet you either know still today or grew up with people that needed to learn that there was an additional R in library.

I was one of those people, I think.

And if you know me very well at all, you know that I am directionally challenged, geographically challenged.

And if you're giving me directions to meet you, please don't use cardinal directions.

And don't say drive three-tenths of a mile.

I don't understand those concepts.

And when I was younger, I'm gonna say about this high, when I would look at a map or a globe or even a compass, North always faced this way.

The way I was facing.

So I believed that every way I faced was North.

Until somebody educated me that and told me it was a good thing I never got lost in the woods.

So sometimes what we don't know is harmless.

Sometimes it's silly or even embarrassing.

But sometimes, but what we don't know shapes our understanding of ourselves, of our nation, of our church, and even God.

Oscar Wilde famously said that life imitates art more than art imitates life.

And whether or not he is correct, and we could debate that, art does have a way of revealing truths that we might otherwise miss.

So in Bye Bye Birdie, the movie, some of those social commentary that was a bigger piece of the Broadway play were softened a little to make it more family friendly.

It became more of a palatable or a PG version for the masses.

Our scripture today is about telling the next generation the whole story, not just that curated version for social media, not just victories, not just miracles, and not just happy endings.

Israel tells about God's faithfulness and Israel's repeated failures.

And hope comes because the truth is told, not because the truth is edited.

We don't know what we don't know until someone tells the story, until we read scripture more carefully, until we listen to someone else's experiences, until we discover the parts that were left out.

Our psalmist today shines the light on teaching our children well by teaching them the unvarnished truth.

Psalm 78 is our second longest psalm that we have in our Old Testament, and it is meant to be sung, and it was a teaching psalm geared towards teaching the generations their history so they would know who they are.

And in Broadway fashion, we're gonna hear some scripture along with our song, broken out into some acts with titles.

A call to remember.

Give ear, O my people, to my teaching.

Incline your ears to the words of my mouth.

I will open my mouth in a parable.

I will utter dark sayings from of old, things that we have heard and known, that our ancestors have told us.

We will not hide them from their children, we will tell to them coming generation the glorious deeds of the Lord, and his might and the wonders that he has done.

He established a decree in Jacob, and appointed a law in Israel, which he commanded our ancestors to teach to their children, that the next generation might know them, the children yet unborn, and rise up and tell them to their children, so that they should set their hope in God, and not forget the works of God, but keep his commandments, and that they should not be like their ancestors, a stubborn and rebellious generation, a generation whose heart was not steadfast, whose spirit was not faithful to God.

The Ephraimites, armed with the bow, turned back on the day of battle.

They did not keep God's covenant, and refused to walk according to his law.

They forgot what we what he had done and the miracles that he had shown them.

In the sight of their ancestors he worked marvels in the land of Egypt, in the fields of Zoan.

He divided the sea and let them pass through it, and made the waters stand like a heap.

In the daytime he led them with a cloud, and all night long with a fiery light.

He split rocks open in the wilderness, and gave them drink abundantly as from the deep.

He made steams come out of the rock, and caused waters to flow down like rivers.

Yet they all sinned still more against him, rebelling against the most high in the desert.

They tested God in their heart by demanding the food they craved.

They spoke against God, saying, Can God spread a table in the wilderness?

Even though he struck the rock, so that water gushed out and torrents overflowed, can he also give bread or provide meat for his people?

Therefore, when the Lord heard he was full of rage.

A fire was kindled against Jacob, his anger mounted against Israel, because they had no faith in God, and did not trust his saving power.

Yet he commanded the skies above and opened the doors of heaven.

He rained down on them manna to eat, and gave them the grain of heaven.

Mortals ate of the bread of angels, he sent them food in abundance, he caused the east wind to blow in the heavens, and by his power he led out the south wind.

He rained flesh upon them like dust, winged birds like the sand of the seas.

He led them he let them fall within their camp, all around their dwellings, and they ate and were filled, for he gave them what they craved.

But before they had satisfied their craving, while the food was still in their mouths, the anger of God rose against them, and he killed the strongest of them, and laid low the flower of Israel.

In spite of all this, they still sinned.

They did not believe in his wonders, so he made their days vanish like a breath, and their years in terror.

When he killed them, they searched for him, they repented and sought God earnestly.

They remembered that God was their rock, the most high God, their redeemer.

But they flattered him with their mouths, they lied to him with their tongues, their heart was not steadfast toward him, they were not true to his covenant, yet he, being compassionate, forgave their iniquity and did not destroy them.

Often he restrained his anger and did not stir up all his wrath.

He remembered that they were but flesh, and a wind that passes and does not come again.

How often they rebelled against him in the wilderness, and grieved him in the desert.

They tested God again and again, and provoked the Holy One of Israel.

They did not keep in mind his power or the day when he redeemed them from the foe, when he displayed his signs in Egypt, and his miracles in the fields of Zoan.

He turned their rivers to blood, so that they could not drink of their streams.

He sent among them swarms of flies that devoured them, and frogs that destroyed them.

He gave their crops to the caterpillar, and the fruit of their labor to the locust.

He destroyed their vines with hail and their sycamores with frost.

He gave over their cattle to the hell and their flocks to thunderbolts.

He let loose on them his fierce anger, wrath, indignation, and distress, a company of destroying angels.

He made a path for his anger.

He did not spare them from death, but gave their lives over to the plague.

He struck all the firstborn in Egypt, the first issue of their strength in the tents of Ham.

Then he led out his people like sheep, and guided them in the wilderness like a flock.

He led them in safety so that they were not afraid.

But the sea overwhelmed their enemies, and he brought them to his holy hill, to the mountain that his right hand had won.

He drove out nations before them, he appointed them for a possession, and settled the tribes of Israel in their tents.

Yet they tested the most high God and rebelled against him.

They did not observe his decrees, but turned away, and were faithless like their ancestors.

They twisted like a treacherous bow, for they provoked him to anger with their high places, they moved him to jealousy with their idols.

When God heard he was full of wrath, and he utterly rejected Israel.

He abandoned his dwelling of Shiloh, the tent were his dwelling among mortals, and delivered his power to captivity, his glory to the hand of the foe.

He gave his people to the sword, and vented his wrath on his heritage.

Fire devoured their young men, and their young women had no marriage.

Then the Lord awoke as from sleep, like a warrior shouting because of wine.

He put his adversaries to root, he put them to everlasting disgrace.

He rejected the tent of Joseph.

He did not choose the tribe of Ephraim, but he chose the tribe of Judah, Mount Zion, which he loves.

He built his sanctuary like the high heavens, like the earth, which he has founded forever.

He chose his servant David and took him from the sheepfolds, from teaching the nursing ewes he brought him to the shepherd of his people Jacob, of Israel, his inheritance.

With upright heart he tended them and guided them with skillful hand.

Every generation eventually asks, what is the matter with kids today?

Psalm 78 asks a different question.

What have we failed to teach them?

Many of us grew up learning and reading in our history books about the founding of our great nation, studied about the colonies and oh, the excitement of westward expansion without learning much about the native peoples who suffered and were displaced because of it.

And the word genocide was never mentioned.

My parents are both from Oklahoma, so I grew up learning about that state in particular and its history.

And yet I only learned about Black Wall Street and the Tulsa Massacre just a few years ago.

And I think how embarrassing for me.

The church has her own forgotten chapters.

We celebrate the community of Acts and the birth of our church and how they came together and shared everything that they had.

And we celebrate the diversity that everyone was invited to share at the table, regardless of their gender, their ethnicity, of their social status, that everyone was invited to share and partake and treated with respect.

But we also have to remember the crusades, the divisions, slavery, segregation, and the ways that Christians have sometimes blessed the very systems that harmed people.

And in our own denomination, we've had struggles just recently with disaffiliation.

And even at the very beginning, as the Methodist Church was really forming in the Americas, we struggled with slavery.

John Wesley believed slavery, that slavery was evil.

It was one of the greatest sins of our time, of that time.

And early in the United Methodist Church, members were not allowed to have slaves.

And if you were a current slave owner, you're required to emancipate your slaves.

But then there were people, good people, on both sides, offering plates needed to be passed.

So there was a compromise.

And that triggered splinters within the early United Methodist Church.

And different denominations formed and spread.

And in our own conference, in the South Central jurisdiction of the conference of the United Methodist Church, we have a history of segregation that is a newly formed, recently in our past, conference, because we were segregated before.

Psalm 78 doesn't tell us to pass along a polished version of faith.

It tells us to tell the truth.

Every generation has stumbled, every generation has needed grace, and God is always with us.

God doesn't withhold grace and mercy.

And that's the gospel according to Bye Bye Birdie.

Not that kids today are the problem.

Not that the past was ever perfect.

But that God has never stopped working through imperfect people.

We don't know what we don't know.

So the church must keep learning.

We must keep remembering.

Because when we know better, we do better.

And then we keep telling the truth.

Because hope is always stronger than an edited story.

In every generation, the church is called to remember the whole story.

The good, the bad, the heartbreaking, and even the really embarrassing.

Not so we stay trapped in the past, but so we learn from it to tell the truth.

And place our hope in God, who has remained faithful through it all.

Because we don't know what we don't know.

Amen.