Pastor Darren: Well, like I said, we have started our uh we call it our Broadway series because we're dealing with uh Broadway musicals, uh, especially some recent ones, maybe the last 20 or so years, and um introducing some new songs maybe to some of you.
Pastor Darren: Well, especially when I asked how many saw The Waitress, I didn't see a lot of hands there.
Pastor Darren: You're missing a good one there.
Pastor Darren: So uh the movie or or the musical, The Waitress, actually started as a film first.
Pastor Darren: A lot of times things go back the other way, but you can see this is the poster for the movie with Carrie Russell.
Pastor Darren: Uh, and it was, again, kind of a small picture, but a very human picture and and uh uh um uh really well acted and appreciated.
Pastor Darren: Well, it uh inspired amongst some people, including uh a uh musician named Sarah Barielis, to create a musical around this.
Pastor Darren: So it started off with this is uh Jesse Mueller was the one who originated the role, uh, and uh she touched a lot of hearts with her performance in this uh uh in the musical.
Pastor Darren: Uh but then Sarah Barielis herself actually took on uh the red the main role for a while too.
Pastor Darren: I think we even have a poster of that, or maybe we didn't get that one.
Pastor Darren: All right, we didn't get that one, but it was uh um uh uh got a lot of Tony nominations in 2016, uh, and even won one along the way, so it was uh much appreciated.
Pastor Darren: So, some of the story of waitress.
Pastor Darren: You have Jenna Hunterson, right?
Pastor Darren: And she works at a diner with her close friends Becky and Dawn.
Pastor Darren: What she is known for in this community is making these very special pies.
Pastor Darren: And she would dress them up in really special ways, uh, and then she would give them names, and uh, the name would be reflected in the kind of the taste of that pie, but also what it was reflecting on in her life and what was uh uh going on was reflected inside that pie.
Pastor Darren: So this was a big part of the fun of the of the uh uh story itself.
Pastor Darren: Well, so Jenna finds out she is pregnant with her husband's baby Earl, uh, but this is not something she wants because Earl is not the best husband, not necessarily kind, maybe even abusive, and not really ambitious in the way you might hope somebody would be when they're taking care of a family.
Pastor Darren: Then to make matters worse, Jenna visits her new obstetrician, Dr.
Pastor Darren: Jim Pometer.
Pastor Darren: I think I said it right, and the two start an unexpected and intense romance.
Pastor Darren: An affair.
Pastor Darren: All right, so she's makes uh bad kind of go to worse.
Pastor Darren: So she starts developing her plan to figure out how she's gonna work her way out of all of this.
Pastor Darren: Uh, and her plan as this great pie baker is that she's gonna save up prize money from a bunch of these regional pie contests, and then she's gonna fund herself to be able to move on to a new life.
Pastor Darren: That is the plan, and the setback happens when that husband Earl he finds that hidden, saved money, and takes it, forcing Jenna to confront this reality that um she's about to have a baby and she has no resources to be able to set out and and find the life that is going to be more rewarding for her and for her baby.
Pastor Darren: So as we come to the end of the story as it flourishes, uh by the way, you've had 10 years to know the story, so I get to spoil.
Pastor Darren: All right.
Pastor Darren: Next week, I think we're doing uh um Hamilton.
Pastor Darren: So go ahead and watch it, then you can't get spoiled.
Pastor Darren: Actually, I think we're gonna screen Hamilton on the 28th here.
Pastor Darren: We'll have fun on a movie night.
Pastor Darren: In any case, Jenna has her baby named Lulu, a little girl named Lulu, and then looking at her daughter, she finds the inner strength to leave Earl for good, to reject the affair that she had started, and to take ownership of her own life.
Pastor Darren: So hopefully it sounds to you like kind of one of our regular American stories of tough things going on and then figuring it out and everybody being able to uh feel good about that figuring it out.
Pastor Darren: Uh, because it it's a story about reclaiming her life.
Pastor Darren: Really, that's a lot of what's going on here as she's trying to reclaim her life.
Pastor Darren: And I imagine that's not too unfamiliar an experience for people in the room.
Pastor Darren: I think to varying degrees, we've probably been in positions and times where we were uh needing to reclaim our life in some way, right?
Pastor Darren: For some of us, maybe it was an important life pivot because life sent you a couple of curve balls and you had to figure it out.
Pastor Darren: Maybe for others it was something a little more dark.
Pastor Darren: You know, maybe somebody done you wrong and you had to figure that out, or maybe, also common, you did yourself wrong in some way.
Pastor Darren: But I think we all can probably relate to a story of restart and reclaiming who you are and who you want to be.
Pastor Darren: And this is the story for Jenna Hunterson, the waitress, right?
Pastor Darren: It it becomes this story about her self-worth and her ability to reclaim that self-worth.
Pastor Darren: And what makes it interesting, now that we're on this journey of Broadway musicals in church, is to talk about something like self-worth in the church.
Pastor Darren: You ever had that conversation about whether or not we're allowed to feel prideful as Christians?
Pastor Darren: I've heard y'all say it when I'm talking to you.
Pastor Darren: Oh, I'm not sure I'm supposed to be proud of this, but uh, you know, we did this, and you know, it worked out pretty good.
Pastor Darren: And so we're hedging just a little bit.
Pastor Darren: We're not supposed to be prideful, we hear, and we know why.
Pastor Darren: You know, often pride it becomes that that first step to to an overconfidence, that first step to feeling like we don't really need God, or or that we don't need to do what we are doing or reach the goals we are trying to reach in godly ways and doing godly things.
Pastor Darren: Often uh our pride is what begins the journey into those places.
Pastor Darren: At the same time, though, we know the value, we know the importance of liking ourselves, right?
Pastor Darren: We know psychologically how important it is to have some pride.
Pastor Darren: So we get stuck sometimes in this Christian conundrum.
Pastor Darren: Are we allowed to feel good when we do the right thing?
Pastor Darren: How many feel like we're allowed to feel good when we do the right thing?
Pastor Darren: Yeah, yeah?
Pastor Darren: How many feel like nope, nope, nope, slippery slope?
Pastor Darren: Ah, you're in the right church.
Pastor Darren: All right, so we're gonna make our our solution for ourselves.
Pastor Darren: We're gonna create some semantic rules, right?
Pastor Darren: Rules for words.
Pastor Darren: Here are our rules.
Pastor Darren: We are going to call pride the good stuff.
Pastor Darren: You did the right thing, well done.
Pastor Darren: You and God working in step, you're blessing the world together.
Pastor Darren: This is awesome.
Pastor Darren: That's pride.
Pastor Darren: The bad stuff, let's call that, you know, this overconfidence, this not needing God.
Pastor Darren: Why don't we call that ego?
Pastor Darren: I don't know if Oxford Dictionary has it lined up that way, but for purposes of this conversation that we're having, let's use the words that way, because it allows us to talk about Christian pride.
Pastor Darren: It allows us to get our brains around how we're uh enabled to be able to feel good about ourselves.
Pastor Darren: And it takes me to Psalm 139.
Pastor Darren: Our source of our pride as Christians, right, is our sense of our sense of worthiness, our sense of purpose.
Pastor Darren: It comes from our understanding that we are created by God in God's image.
Pastor Darren: The source of all that is good also made us.
Pastor Darren: Therefore, making us good too at base.
Pastor Darren: And this is the grounding in our passage in Psalm 139.
Pastor Darren: Some of you might know it already.
Pastor Darren: Is this one of your favorites?
Pastor Darren: Anyone in the room?
Pastor Darren: Yeah, for some of us, it's been a very meaningful passage.
Pastor Darren: Uh uh, there's a pastor, Jason Bayassi.
Pastor Darren: He was uh writing in uh workingpreacher.com.
Pastor Darren: He wrote, Psalm 139 is one of the most beloved of the Psalms.
Pastor Darren: You might have it in Needlepoint somewhere.
Pastor Darren: Donna, is it in needlepoint?
Pastor Darren: No.
Pastor Darren: In music?
Pastor Darren: Oh, very good.
Pastor Darren: All right.
Pastor Darren: Well, we'll call that second best.
Pastor Darren: But I'll check in next week.
Pastor Darren: I want a needlepoint.
Pastor Darren: Oh, I'm teasing a little bit.
Pastor Darren: You might see it in needlepoint somewhere.
Pastor Darren: You hem me in behind and before.
Pastor Darren: Wonderful are your works.
Pastor Darren: It was you who formed my inward parts.
Pastor Darren: How weighty are your thoughts of me, oh God.
Pastor Darren: They are more than the sand.
Pastor Darren: Right?
Pastor Darren: It doesn't take too much sentiment sentimentality to come to some emotions there with some of those phrases.
Pastor Darren: And I'm sure many of us have lived life in a way we've landed where those phrases were so important, reshaped our hearts, got us back, and going again.
Pastor Darren: The passage two talks a bit about how futile it is to run from this understanding of God.
Pastor Darren: You know, the the thought of this deep level of intimacy with God.
Pastor Darren: God made us, knows all parts of us.
Pastor Darren: What we're going to do, what we are doing.
Pastor Darren: For some of us, there might be this tendency to want to move away from that, to run away from it, or even deny it.
Pastor Darren: Jason uh uh byannise, he also points to the kid's book, The Runaway Bunny.
Pastor Darren: Have any of you read The Runaway Bunny?
Pastor Darren: If you worked with kids, you probably read The Runaway Bunny.
Pastor Darren: It's a really cute story.
Pastor Darren: This baby bunny tells his mother he plans to run away.
Pastor Darren: The thing is, his mom, the older bunny, she can go to extraordinary lengths to find him.
Pastor Darren: So if he becomes a fish in a stream, well, she can become a fisher and fish for him.
Pastor Darren: If he becomes a bird, she will be uh she will be a tree in which he can land.
Pastor Darren: If he becomes a little boy, she will be that maternal presence that he comes home to, that he returns to.
Pastor Darren: Finally, the baby bunny says, Shucks, I might just as well stay here and be your little bunny.
Pastor Darren: And mom says, have a carrot.
Pastor Darren: That connection, right?
Pastor Darren: That intimacy, it's our source of life as Christians, this uh understanding of a God that knows us so completely and has all capacity to be able to maintain that connection.
Pastor Darren: That is our source of worth.
Pastor Darren: It's our source of purpose, it's uh our source of understanding who we are.
Pastor Darren: And it comes from this sense of being created fearfully and wonderfully by God.
Pastor Darren: This is what leads me to our song for today.
Pastor Darren: The song, despite my uh pastor title here, is called She Used to Be Mine.
Pastor Darren: I should let you know the place for this song in the story is that she has officially hit bottom.
Pastor Darren: She is in uh uh the hospital bed recognizing she's about to give birth very, very soon.
Pastor Darren: She's realized that her husband has taken that money that she was saving to be able to go start life anew.
Pastor Darren: So it's gone.
Pastor Darren: And she's feeling very, very hopeless.
Pastor Darren: And in that hopelessness, as she's sitting there, she starts to reflect on how her life at one time projected very, very differently.
Pastor Darren: Right when she was younger, right?
Pastor Darren: She looks back, this old that old line, it wasn't supposed to be like this.
Pastor Darren: Part of why I like the song too, is because she doesn't describe herself as perfect.
Pastor Darren: You'll hear in the lyrics, there's the good sides and the not so good sides, but it was her.
Pastor Darren: It was her, an honest assessment of herself.
Pastor Darren: But she's in there too, recognizing that this is not where she intended to be.
Pastor Darren: I used to be this person.
Pastor Darren: You know, the obvious lyric to it would have been, she used to be me.
Pastor Darren: Not mine.
Pastor Darren: She used to be me.
Pastor Darren: I loved that Sarah Bariellis took it that one step further.
Pastor Darren: No, no, she used to be mine.
Pastor Darren: That's the life I used to own, that life I used to control that was in my grasp.
Pastor Darren: I wonder what we think uh would be the Christian version of such a song.
Pastor Darren: We wouldn't generally say, I used to be mine, right?
Pastor Darren: God plays too big a role in our creation and and hopefully in our life, our whole sense of ourselves.
Pastor Darren: God needs to be in that equation.
Pastor Darren: We might say something like, I was supposed to be him.
Pastor Darren: I was supposed to be her.
Pastor Darren: This is who God created me to be, the role I'm supposed to fill.
Pastor Darren: God, what what God formed inside of me, what God knit in knitting me together in my mother's womb.
Pastor Darren: This is how God made me fearfully and wonderfully.
Pastor Darren: I'm supposed to be this.
Pastor Darren: The hope as we hear this song is that you will feel not only the the weight of that moment for her, but you might also recognize the joy as that epiphany comes to her of who she's supposed to be, or how we would say it, who God was intending her to be, who God gifted her to be.
Pastor Darren: I think this is the realization, uh, it's just like our Psalm 139 of recognizing that that essence of ourself.
Pastor Darren: After this moment, she will go on to leave her husband, she will reject the affair and start her life and get this.
Pastor Darren: Her life includes opening a pie shop.
Pastor Darren: So, friends, I'm gonna invite you to hear uh the word of God and she used to be mine.
SPEAKER_01: It's not simple to say most days I don't recognize me with these shoes and this apron, that place and its patrons has taken more than I gave them.
SPEAKER_01: It's not easy to know I'm not anything like I used to be, although it's true I was never attention sweet centre.
SPEAKER_01: I still remember that girl.
SPEAKER_01: She's imperfect but she tries.
SPEAKER_01: She is good but she lies, she is hot on herself.
SPEAKER_01: She is broken and wanna ask for help.
SPEAKER_01: She is messy but she's kind.
SPEAKER_01: She is lovely most of the time she's all of this mixed up and baked in a beautiful pie.
SPEAKER_01: She is gone, but she used to be my asked for.
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes life just slips in through back door and carves out a person and makes you believe it's all true.
SPEAKER_01: And now I've got you, and you're not what I asked for.
SPEAKER_01: If I'm honest, I know I would give it all back for a chance to start over and rewrite an ending or two.
SPEAKER_01: For the girl that I knew who'd be reckless just enough, who'd get hurt, but who learns how to toughen up when she's bruised, and gets used by a man who can't love.
SPEAKER_01: And then she gets stuck and be scared of the life that's inside her, growing stronger each day, and finally reminds her to fight just a lot and bring back the sight that's been kind and used to be mine used to be my She is messy, but she's kind She is lonely most of the time she's all of this mixed up and baked in a beautiful pie.
SPEAKER_01: She's gone, but she used to be my