Pastor Darren: I am counting on everybody having mastered a memory of the life of Alexander Hamilton from Sophomore American History.
Pastor Darren: Can we all agree we're on the same page there?
Pastor Darren: We have it pretty well locked in.
Pastor Darren: How many of you remembered it just long enough to take the test?
Pastor Darren: Right?
Pastor Darren: And it's been gone ever since.
Pastor Darren: Well, one of the fun parts of this particular show is that it is uh based in uh our own American history and some of our more important American history.
Pastor Darren: Uh and so uh um that's kind of cool.
Pastor Darren: There there's some uh read-ins as far as personalities and things like that, but for the most part, it's a historical musical uh that um it's pretty impressive.
Pastor Darren: I don't know how many of you have actually got to see it on the stage.
Pastor Darren: Yeah?
Pastor Darren: Oh, good for you guys.
Pastor Darren: And was it worth it?
Pastor Darren: I remember thinking to myself, we're mixing rap and musical theater.
Pastor Darren: How's that gonna go?
Pastor Darren: Right?
Pastor Darren: And then I left there amazed.
Pastor Darren: I thought this was such a good show.
Pastor Darren: I really enjoyed it.
Pastor Darren: Uh and have those of others of you seen it, uh uh the video version, right?
Pastor Darren: Seeing the they they taped a stage version.
Pastor Darren: So some of us have seen it that way too.
Pastor Darren: So many of us have seen it, which is cool.
Pastor Darren: Uh, those of you who've already seen it, as well as those who haven't, I encourage you to come join us on the 28th, Friday night, our next movie night.
Pastor Darren: We'll be watching that off the Disney Network.
Pastor Darren: Uh, and you can sign up for us because we try to have some dinner for everybody.
Pastor Darren: It's nice to have a number.
Pastor Darren: Um, but let's go.
Pastor Darren: Uh uh starting with the story of the musical itself.
Pastor Darren: Again, most of it is just the history.
Pastor Darren: Uh, it shows uh Alexander Hamilton's life really in two acts.
Pastor Darren: He is a young man who grew up as an orphan, but through his wits, his brains, its capabilities, he ends up getting into uh uh some of the most significant parts of our government functioning, especially around the American Revolutionary War, and was even ready to go lead battalions and really uh go to war for real.
Pastor Darren: But he was kind of drawn up by the leaders of the time because he showed such capability to leadership at even higher levels.
Pastor Darren: And so he moved into those levels and was actually able to be uh part of the founding father's action, working uh uh alongside some of those other founding fathers to win independence.
Pastor Darren: Uh, some of the ones he was closest with, Marquis de Lafayette and John Lawrence, uh, helped him uh um navigate a lot of that, give verbiage to a lot of that, but also he gets really tight with a guy named George Washington.
Pastor Darren: Did you remember that part of American history?
Pastor Darren: Right, that guy you got.
Pastor Darren: All right.
Pastor Darren: He was Apple Tree, right?
Pastor Darren: I cannot tell a lie.
Pastor Darren: Of course, that one's a fake story, too, isn't it?
Pastor Darren: Yeah, what are you gonna do?
Pastor Darren: All right, in the second act, he starts to really get even more influence in the establishment of our government.
Pastor Darren: Uh, we were a new kind of entity as a democracy, at least uh new in that age.
Pastor Darren: And uh so there was a lot of work to figure out what that was gonna look like, and he was really key in getting that organized.
Pastor Darren: Also very key in developing our financial system early on.
Pastor Darren: But in along the way, he develops these rivals and he's in these battles.
Pastor Darren: Uh, one with Thomas Jefferson uh um and others with Aaron Burr, which we'll hear more about that story.
Pastor Darren: Uh, but probably most significant is he starts facing some personal scandal in his life.
Pastor Darren: Uh, and that plays out in those two acts.
Pastor Darren: But the real rivalry that drives everything in this story is the one with Aaron Burr.
Pastor Darren: He is a fellow politician, he is a lifelong rival.
Pastor Darren: Hamilton, kind of driven by his constant urgency to make his mark.
Pastor Darren: Right?
Pastor Darren: Remember the song I'm not throwing away my Yeah.
Pastor Darren: See, some of you remember it.
Pastor Darren: Some of you were just scared to sing it.
Pastor Darren: Yeah, not throwing, it's one of the bigger lines in the movie, and a lot of us walk away, kind of thinking that in our head.
Pastor Darren: Burr is more of a hesitator.
Pastor Darren: He's more, he's gonna play his cards a little bit slower, a little more cautious.
Pastor Darren: His song is Wait for It.
Pastor Darren: Uh, so that one we're not singing as much because who wants to wait for it?
Pastor Darren: Am I right?
Pastor Darren: If you're gonna sing a song, it's gonna be not thrown away your shot.
Pastor Darren: But these two styles, they get in the way of each other.
Pastor Darren: They're growing uh political conflict between the two of them.
Pastor Darren: It gets deeper and deeper.
Pastor Darren: Rivalry heats up first when Burr wins out over Hamilton's father-in-law for a Senate seat.
Pastor Darren: So then it starts getting a little thicker.
Pastor Darren: Then it goes a little further, this rivalry, when Hamilton backs Thomas Jefferson and not Aaron Burr for president.
Pastor Darren: And finally, tensions mount to the point that they agree to meet for a duel.
Pastor Darren: We don't know fully the mindset as they approach this.
Pastor Darren: The musical shows Burr thinking a lot about what brought them there, and so he's building up an anger and a concern about what's going to happen.
Pastor Darren: Whereas Hamilton is a lot focused on his legacy as he approaches this moment, at least as the musical lays it out.
Pastor Darren: Then, for reasons we don't fully know, Hamilton, rather than firing at Aaron Burr in the duel, fires upward, Aaron Burr shoots straight, and he actually ends up killing Alexander Hamilton.
Pastor Darren: So there's the main plot, the historical story that we all know and remember from sophomore American history, right?
Pastor Darren: That's the part, or at least the gist of what we knew.
Pastor Darren: What we should know, or what helps with the story, is there is a subplot.
Pastor Darren: Early in his career, Hamilton meets Eliza Schuyler and he marries her.
Pastor Darren: Despite being married to her, he is spending a lot of time working.
Pastor Darren: Right?
Pastor Darren: And maybe justifiably, the things he were doing were significant.
Pastor Darren: You know, he was creating and structuring this new type of nation, and so it might have been justified.
Pastor Darren: Uh, but more problematic is he starts having affairs.
Pastor Darren: We were talking about the scandals that he got involved in.
Pastor Darren: And so this obviously puts a strain on his marriage, and one affair becomes so significant and problematic that his son Philip feels the need to defend his honor.
Pastor Darren: And in doing so, in defending the honor of Alexander Hamilton, his dad, he gets killed.
Pastor Darren: So this is the setting for the song we picked out for today, as well as for the scripture that we picked out for today.
Pastor Darren: We probably all pray that we or really anyone that nobody would have to go through this kind of tragedy in their life to have their son killed, especially killed defending your honor after mistakes that you have made.
Pastor Darren: Many of you know this story of Alexander Hamilton, we know how it ends, but this this is probably the key uh part of his life, at least personally.
Pastor Darren: This is the tragedy of Hamilton's life.
Pastor Darren: His son's death, defending him.
Pastor Darren: And I think we'd all agree this is pain uh that um this pain is only something we could know having gone through it.
Pastor Darren: I'm trying to be very careful.
Pastor Darren: I'm trying to tiptoe through uh um some of the story and and uh uh potentially uh I don't want to minimize the pain that this situation would bring to somebody, but at the same time I feel like Paul in his second letter to the church in Corinth is lighting a pathway to healing even in a situation like this, when there is deep, deep suffering, that there's a pathway that's open to us when we are ready to take it.
Pastor Darren: So in Paul, in 2 Corinthians uh chapter 1, this is verses 3 through 7, he talks about suffering.
Pastor Darren: It's probably worth mentioning that it it there is an acceptance of suffering in our world.
Pastor Darren: There's not a pretense, he's not pretending that our faith protects us from pain.
Pastor Darren: And what it amounts to, his teaching, is pointing to a different way of understanding our suffering.
Pastor Darren: You might even argue he's pointing to a different way of understanding all suffering.
Pastor Darren: His point is it isn't that we uh don't suffer, but that our suffering can open us to God's presence.
Pastor Darren: In other words, uh when we are suffering, there's potentially an experience of consolation as God offers it to us in difficult times.
Pastor Darren: Oftentimes the effect of suffering is to make us feel victimized, right?
Pastor Darren: This world is unfair, this world has cheated me, everyone around me is bad, right?
Pastor Darren: That's oftentimes the effect of our our suffering rather than looking at it as simply being a reality of our mortal life.
Pastor Darren: We are humans.
Pastor Darren: We live, we die, we have joy, we have pain, just that normal cycle of life.
Pastor Darren: Rather than recognizing that, we start to feel cheated often.
Pastor Darren: What Paul is doing is he's encouraging us to do uh to uh in this process to be looking for God's presence.
Pastor Darren: When we are suffering, he's encouraging us to look for where consolation comes from.
Pastor Darren: Family, friends, church.
Pastor Darren: He's inviting us to look for where grace is evident, where we feel the unconditional love of God, where it becomes real even in the midst of the tragedy.
Pastor Darren: He's inviting us to look for where forgiveness for others, but also for ourselves, where that forgiveness becomes that pathway back to something more whole, something more holy.
Pastor Darren: Paul even goes one step further.
Pastor Darren: He would say, when we walk that journey well, when we are able to work our way through that suffering, we actually become part of the presence, that consoling presence that God offers to the world.
Pastor Darren: With an understanding of that godly healing presence in tough times, we gain a capacity to be that presence for others.
Pastor Darren: So Alexander Hamilton and his wife Eliza, they are walking that pathway of suffering and of grief.
Pastor Darren: And we see it play out in the song called It's Quiet Uptown.
Pastor Darren: At this point, the couple has moved out of the city to grief.
Pastor Darren: And what they immediately begin to feel is the quiet.
Pastor Darren: Right?
Pastor Darren: Often quiet is the last thing that you want to hear when you're having tough times.
Pastor Darren: You want distractions, not quiet.
Pastor Darren: And they talk a lot about dealing with what's called the unimaginable.
Pastor Darren: The unimaginable thing that happens, that deep, deep tragedy that tears the heart apart.
Pastor Darren: This morning, you are being invited to listen for that pathway of suffering to healing.
Pastor Darren: And it plays out in the story itself.
Pastor Darren: The song comes in three parts, three parts of a story.
Pastor Darren: The first part talks about the depth of grief that we can feel.
Pastor Darren: The depth of grief in this particular situation.
Pastor Darren: The lyrics describe a pain so deep that words cannot reach it.
Pastor Darren: The unimaginable.
Pastor Darren: This is the depth of his grief.
Pastor Darren: From there, the song moves into a rebuilding of the marriage between Alexander and his wife Eliza.
Pastor Darren: He begs for forgiveness for his past mistakes.
Pastor Darren: He begs for forgiveness for the pain that he has caused.
Pastor Darren: He even wishes he could trade his life for his son's life.
Pastor Darren: But finally, as we reach the end of the song, we start moving towards some forgiveness.
Pastor Darren: Eliza slowly takes Alexander's hand in the garden.
Pastor Darren: And the rest of the company, the company being the rest of the actors, the singers, they reflect on the grace, the survival, and the power of forgiveness after such a tragedy.
Pastor Darren: So I'm gonna invite a couple of New Kirks to come up and to share that song.
Pastor Darren: It's Quiet Uptown.
Pastor Darren: In this particular instance, Alexander Hamilton is actually singing with his sister-in-law, his wife's sister, who has built a connection with both of the couple and is now talking about kind of walking them through that journey.
SPEAKER_01: There are moments that the words don't reach.
SPEAKER_01: There is suffering too terrible to name.
SPEAKER_01: You hold your child as tight as you can and push away the unimaginable.
SPEAKER_01: The moments when you're in so deep, it feels easier to just swim down.
SPEAKER_03: Spend hours in the garden.
SPEAKER_03: I walk alone to the store.
SPEAKER_03: And it's quiet up town.
SPEAKER_03: Never liked the quiet before.
SPEAKER_03: I take the children to church on Sunday.
SPEAKER_03: Look at where we started.
SPEAKER_03: I know I don't deserve you, Eliza, but hear me out.
SPEAKER_03: That would be enough.
SPEAKER_03: If I could spare his life, if I could trade his life for mine, he'd be standing here right now, and you would smile, and that would be enough.
SPEAKER_03: I don't pretend to know the challenges we're facing.
SPEAKER_03: I know there's no replacing what we've lost, and you need time, but I'm not afraid.
SPEAKER_03: I know who I married.
SPEAKER_03: Just let me stay here by your side.
SPEAKER_03: That would be enough.
SPEAKER_01: There are moments that the words don't reach.
SPEAKER_01: There's a grace too powerful to name.
SPEAKER_01: We push away what we can never understand.
SPEAKER_01: We push away the unimaginable.
SPEAKER_01: We are standing in the garden.
SPEAKER_01: Alexander by lies aside.
SPEAKER_01: She takes his hand.
SPEAKER_01: It's quite uptime.