Pastor Darren: Well, we've been doing this movie series and I thought today, since we're finishing it up, I would talk just a sec about the difference between what I would call a scripture sermon, or maybe a lectionary sermon, and a movie sermon, because there is some uniqueness right.
Pastor Darren: With a Bible sermon, what you are generally doing is you find that scripture this is why some of us like lectionary right the calendar that lists scriptures for you to do over a three-year time and so you're handed a scripture and then you just go into a journey with this scripture and then what comes out you pray, is what God was hoping the journey would lead to, and so a lot of people like that.
Pastor Darren: I tend to like that a lot.
Pastor Darren: A movie sermon's different, because you find the movie you want to talk about or you have something to say, and then you go back into the Bible and you find some scripture that agrees with what you want to say, which isn't necessarily terrible, but at the same time you do feel like you're in there controlling it just a touch.
Pastor Darren: So this last week for this movie series, picking this movie and I couldn't find another summer movie that I really felt like motivated to speak about and so we're in Genesis class, which we finally finished 50 chapters of Genesis.
Pastor Darren: Congratulations to the class we got through.
Pastor Darren: Somehow, raiders of the Lost Ark comes up.
Pastor Darren: Somehow, raiders of the Lost Ark comes up and I'm thinking, and I'm thinking well, it is potentially the greatest film ever made and it's got the Ark of the Covenant in it.
Pastor Darren: Maybe I should preach on Raiders of the Lost Ark, Are you with me?
Pastor Darren: Good, because that's what's happening, and if you're not bad news for you, just a little bit of bad news.
Pastor Darren: And I appreciate again that everybody's been up for this journey.
Pastor Darren: In fact, I've been really enjoyed, pleasantly surprised, how people enjoyed this kind of diversion of talking about some pop culture things and how that speaks into our faith and our Christianity.
Pastor Darren: So thank you for appreciating it as well.
Pastor Darren: Obvious to those of us who have watched it is they are really intentionally trying to create the great American hero.
Pastor Darren: Right, this is the great American hero that is doing all the things that we Americans really, really appreciate.
Pastor Darren: And you can tell when you start comparing Indiana Jones to somebody like James Bond, you start seeing a little bit of what we value and distinction to what the English culture values and in some ways it makes us feel really really good and in some ways we're like boy that Indiana Jones he's really winging it.
Pastor Darren: He doesn't always seem to be in control and then we realize, well, isn't that kind of American anyway?
Pastor Darren: We like that winging it, sort of just getting it figured out and ingenuity and all of that stuff.
Pastor Darren: We know that Indiana Jones is highly principled.
Pastor Darren: He is somebody who has these values highly principled.
Pastor Darren: He is somebody who has these values.
Pastor Darren: They are largely archaeology-based, culturally-based, wanting to make sure that parts of the culture are shared with the current culture, that we can continue to learn from them and grow from them, which again part of why he's a hero.
Pastor Darren: What's he hunting down?
Pastor Darren: But his very history, his heritage as an American, hunting down the Ten Commandments, which in the Judeo-Christian faith, leads even onto Christian understandings, and our own great commandments, commandments so you're talking about.
Pastor Darren: He's on the hunt for what's core to American understandings and values.
Pastor Darren: And if you're wondering too, if he's supposed to be an American hero, have you ever looked to see what state is in potentially the most middle of the continental United States?
Pastor Darren: Because I don't think it's Nebraska.
Pastor Darren: It just might be Indiana, right, it just might be.
Pastor Darren: So there's a lot of fun and intention around that and I get a lot out of it too.
Pastor Darren: So just to tell you a bit of the story, in case you haven't seen the story.
Pastor Darren: It opens up with this great scene of Indiana Jones in the jungle and he is trying to find this artifact, an important artifact of history.
Pastor Darren: But it's clear also there are others on the hunt for this.
Pastor Darren: And what is even more clear is that these artifacts have been protected with traps, often dangerous traps.
Pastor Darren: So many of you will remember when he puts the stick down and then the poison dart comes and hits the stick.
Pastor Darren: Do you remember this?
Pastor Darren: And the ball that chases him down the groove and all you know the whole deal.
Pastor Darren: And he's all clever with the sandbag replacing it for the artifact itself, hoping that would save everything.
Pastor Darren: So we learn quickly who he is in this brief scene.
Pastor Darren: It's really a fun, fun scene and I really enjoyed it.
Pastor Darren: But he gets out and as soon as he gets out, the artifact which he managed to recover is taken from him by his nemesis, belak.
Pastor Darren: I like saying that.
Pastor Darren: Like that, belak, because he's a bad guy and they deserve their name to be said in a bad way, belak.
Pastor Darren: He manages to escape Belak and and the natives that Belloq sends after him in a really funny scene as well, ends up back at home.
Pastor Darren: And then he starts the real adventure of the movie.
Pastor Darren: He is learning that they think they have found where the Ten Commandments are buried in the Ark of the Covenant and that they are going to go do this adventure, this quest to go hunt down again our history here as a Judeo-Christian people.
Pastor Darren: His first stop he goes to talk to Marian right, you got to have the?
Pastor Darren: Would that be a femme fatale?
Pastor Darren: Hmm, I would say not.
Pastor Darren: This is a romantic interest, although there's some femme fatale working there.
Pastor Darren: Anyway, he needs from her this medallion that's going to help them find the Ark of the Covenant.
Pastor Darren: She ends up joining him on the journey and then they start hunting and hunting and they get over into the Holy Land and they find that the group there that they are really competing with is digging in the wrong place.
Pastor Darren: They get all excited.
Pastor Darren: They secretly figure out where they're supposed to dig.
Pastor Darren: They go in and they actually find the Ark of the Covenant.
Pastor Darren: They recover it, only for Belloc to take it yet again.
Pastor Darren: Indiana Jones, being who Indiana Jones is, manages to get the Ark of the Covenant back.
Pastor Darren: Do you remember the truck chase scene and the fights in the truck Classic.
Pastor Darren: And the fights in the truck Classic we need to recognize Steven Spielberg taught us how to make an action movie.
Pastor Darren: After he did it, everybody went, oh okay, oh, I see how this works.
Pastor Darren: So amazing scene.
Pastor Darren: He finishes They've got the Ark of the Covenant.
Pastor Darren: They're on a ship back to safety.
Pastor Darren: They've got the Ark of the Covenant, they're on a ship back to safety.
Pastor Darren: And we think, oh yeah, this is when normal movies end, right here, after the greatest chase scene we've seen in a long, long time.
Pastor Darren: Only, no, they find them again.
Pastor Darren: They find the ship that they're transporting the Ark of the Covenant in and they take it.
Pastor Darren: And we think, oh, he's foiled again.
Pastor Darren: Until we see Indiana Jones has swam from the ship over to the submarine, is now going to crawl into the submarine before the villains Nazis in this case.
Pastor Darren: We should remember get away.
Pastor Darren: And you remember when he's walking on that sub and weren't you just like, yes, that's America, right there.
Pastor Darren: We swim from ships to subs as Americans.
Pastor Darren: This is how we do it.
Pastor Darren: Now, final scene, or final biggest scene, the Belloq and the Nazis have decided they want to look inside the Ark to see what they have before they bring it back to Hitler, right?
Pastor Darren: Hitler made his way into this Sunday mornings here this summer, didn't he?
Pastor Darren: I don't know what that's about, anywho, anyway.
Pastor Darren: So they want to look at it first and make sure what the heck's going on.
Pastor Darren: Now you might be asking yourself why do the Nazis care about the Ten Commandments?
Pastor Darren: They seem to be kind of anti-faith.
Pastor Darren: You know there was some certain cooperation with Christianity in what they did, but for the most part they're not a religious movement.
Pastor Darren: Why do they want this?
Pastor Darren: Well, the understanding was the Ten Commandments were going to be a straight pathway, communication with God.
Pastor Darren: And who wouldn't want that?
Pastor Darren: Well, none of y'all, then, I guess.
Pastor Darren: No, all right, well, you've seen the movie?
Pastor Darren: Oh yeah, you were ahead of me.
Pastor Darren: You saw what happened with that direct pathway to God.
Pastor Darren: So they set it all up.
Pastor Darren: They're going to do this ritual, they're going to open up the Ark of the Covenant.
Pastor Darren: They do, and what they find is just sand.
Pastor Darren: It looks like decomposed Ten Commandment tablets just laying.
Pastor Darren: Like decomposed Ten Commandment tablets just laying.
Pastor Darren: It's just sand.
Pastor Darren: And there's this momentary disappointment.
Pastor Darren: And then terror ensues as some strange power starts to take over the whole area there and Indiana Jones, recognizing the problem or potential problem that may be a direct connection to God and communication with God will be too strong for human beings to be able to deal with.
Pastor Darren: And so he and Mary and they closed their eyes.
Pastor Darren: What everybody else does not survive, because they took all that God has in and it was more than a human could take in.
Pastor Darren: So it was this climactic end where we had the classic chase scene, old school style, and then technology took over for a second ending Amazing movie.
Pastor Darren: I won't tell you about the end because it's a little depressing, but super good movie and God was in it.
Pastor Darren: So it counts for a sermon.
Pastor Darren: So you might be asking yourselves all right, where are we going to go with this?
Pastor Darren: Because it has to count for a sermon in some way.
Pastor Darren: And hopefully it's obvious why I picked the passage that I picked.
Pastor Darren: It is the description of what the Ark of the Covenant was supposed to be and to look like and I don't want to read it through to you and get a little bit boring, but you were hearing the explicit way it was described what they were supposed to be building and it was this box that was two cubits by one cubit by one cubit A cubit generally understood to be about this distance right here.
Pastor Darren: It was supposed to be lined in really, really special ways.
Pastor Darren: They were little loops at the bottom of the box so you could put wood in there to make it easier to carry.
Pastor Darren: There was a mercy seat on the top, which is kind of the lid, and then cherubim on the top that are protecting that mercy seat.
Pastor Darren: I mean, it was really really elaborate, this thing that they were asked to create.
Pastor Darren: And let's remember we're to understand this is Moses recording God's words, right.
Pastor Darren: So these aren't just frivolous things that are being said.
Pastor Darren: This is straight from God, with this explicit nature, not flippancy, right, we're supposed to pay attention to this.
Pastor Darren: Right, we could have edited it differently, right, moses could have heard all the thing, or maybe it was even God speaking this way and God from on high says all right, I want you to build a box Better, fancy it up a little bit Going to have the commandments in it.
Pastor Darren: So you want to look a little special.
Pastor Darren: If it's me, I'm going to put loops on the side with some sticks so it's easy to carry.
Pastor Darren: But that's you If that works.
Pastor Darren: I mean, god could have said this kind of thing, right and it could have felt a lot more casual.
Pastor Darren: But no, it's very, very intentional and, as I'm thinking to myself, this is a pathway to God that I think only craftsmen and craftspeople come to understand that value of really thinking something through and doing each and every little piece.
Pastor Darren: If you're a quilter, you know the value of being able to do it just right and having it finished as a product, that you put all that intention in.
Pastor Darren: People who work with wood it's the same kind of thing where you put that craft in and there's something, there's just something about that process that becomes sacred, that becomes holy.
Pastor Darren: In some ways it's helping you become who you are right.
Pastor Darren: In other ways it's a moment in discipline of being able to communicate with larger powers with God, with larger powers with God.
Pastor Darren: I hope I'm connecting on this because this is what I felt I've heard from these craftspeople of the value of that sort of attention.
Pastor Darren: I think this might be our lesson for today.
Pastor Darren: This deep, deep intention is a way of coming to know God better.
Pastor Darren: It is a way of coming to know ourselves better.
Pastor Darren: When I think about Indiana Jones, he is way more out there and aggressive.
Pastor Darren: His craft is adventure, but is he any less devoted, any less intentional about what he's trying to do For Indiana Jones.
Pastor Darren: This is how he is becoming who he is For Indiana Jones.
Pastor Darren: This is how he is becoming who God created in him.
Pastor Darren: It's in that intention that we come to that depth, which is why I think the Ark of the Covenant is so explicit.
Pastor Darren: I think we have an invitation that is being spoken to here about intention in our own lives and intention in our own faith Getting deeper with God, coming to know the comfort, the assurance, coming to have a better understanding of God's peace, God's justice.
Pastor Darren: That generally doesn't happen by coincidence.
Pastor Darren: It happens with some intention.
Pastor Darren: We here at United Methodist Church of Westlake Village, we're starting the Fall.
Pastor Darren: And what happens in the Fall?
Pastor Darren: Lots of new stuff.
Pastor Darren: Many of you probably think well, you know, that's what churches do, that's what pastors do, you know we put stuff out.
Pastor Darren: We might be missing the part of it is.
Pastor Darren: It's for you, when we've got a new Bible study out, this Bible study that might help you to enter into Scripture or re-enter into Scripture, and again in sort of a bite-sized format, that's an opportunity.
Pastor Darren: In sort of a bite-sized format.
Pastor Darren: That's an opportunity for you to own that intention, for you to say.
Pastor Darren: You know what.
Pastor Darren: This is the year I'm going to get a better grip of these stories of faith that have existed, some of them 3,000 years or more.
Pastor Darren: Just ask Stephen, he'll give you the date.
Pastor Darren: I really like teaching with Stephen.
Pastor Darren: We always have fun that way.
Pastor Darren: He's really good at that detail and I am not, which makes us a great team.
Pastor Darren: But you have that opportunity this year.
Pastor Darren: Here's another opportunity we're working on with membership care.
Pastor Darren: We are in a church of people who, many of whom, have been here 30 to 50 years.
Pastor Darren: That is a long time, not only to be in church but to be family together.
Pastor Darren: A long, long time To me.
Pastor Darren: I don't know how we look in the big church mirror of life and not see a group of people who take care of each other, who look out for each other For me and I suggested it to the prayer group.
Pastor Darren: That's why I kind of slowly started changing their name right from in front of their eyes to a care group, because that's really what they do already.
Pastor Darren: They do it in prayer.
Pastor Darren: But we're starting to do other things.
Pastor Darren: We're looking for shepherds.
Pastor Darren: Shepherds who are willing to be people who will take on a flock a flock of people generally will be sort of in your, where you live in, that kind of regionally based.
Pastor Darren: But you're agreeing to keep an eye out for those people, make sure you're seeing them in church, checking in on them every now and again when something goes bad, as they do.
Pastor Darren: You would be somebody connected back to the church so that the church can be able to be helpful in whatever ways we can be helpful.
Pastor Darren: You might even work within your flock to put a meal together or a couple of meals together for someone, or maybe you just haven't seen them in a while and it's important that they get a call, because God loves them all and if we're the extension of God's love, then we better be reaching out with that love.
Pastor Darren: Are you a shepherd?
Pastor Darren: Is that the place where you might be able to grow this year with intention, get closer to God?
Pastor Darren: My last one I'll just put out as a general one.
Pastor Darren: We've got a lot of little bit of layers in this church of different ministry roles and leadership opportunities.
Pastor Darren: We're talking about a craftsman.
Pastor Darren: We have a craftsman back in the tech booth back there.
Pastor Darren: How many of you know Paul really well?
Pastor Darren: You know him well enough.
Pastor Darren: Yeah, he probably deserves a little bit of that.
Pastor Darren: Here's how God cursed Paul.
Pastor Darren: He can see what would be really cool for this church to have, and then he has to do it Right.
Pastor Darren: He is cursed with that because it'll sit and it'll gnaw at him and be like, well, we're only.
Pastor Darren: We're just this far away from this great thing happening.
Pastor Darren: Or if only we learned how to do this then oh, this is why many of you are getting me on instagram over and over and over again blame paul.
Pastor Darren: There's a lot of me out there, more than I'm comfortable with, but we think it's reached some people out in the community, so we're doing it.
Pastor Darren: But but you're talking about, uh, that kind of craftsman role and ways to know God better.
Pastor Darren: There's lots of little ways like that, even within the tech area, that help us to reach out with the love God gave us to share.
Pastor Darren: Is God calling you to that, to that intentionality this year?
Pastor Darren: Is that the growth that God wants for you?
Pastor Darren: I'm going to encourage you on this journey to be the kind of American hero, a hero of faith, that takes spiritual growth seriously and intentionally, and find some way this year that you are going to be in a tighter relationship with God and God's love, god's compassion, god's justice, because that will be a blessing to you and then you'll be a blessing to others, amen, amen.