Sermon Notes — July 20, 2025
“Defying Gravity”
Ephesians 2:1-10 and Proverbs 3:5-6
Rev. Dr. Mary Beth Bernheisel
July 20, 2025
I learned something interesting this week. Well, actually I learned a lot of things this week. But besides everything I learned about Fish Fry I learned about Everett Rogers. Everett Rogers was a communications theorist and sociologist. He is probably best known for diffusion of innovations theory. He’s the guy that coined the term early adopter. Does that sound familiar? Well, his diffusion of innovations theory divides people into five categories based on how quickly they adopt new innovations. Those who adopt quickly are called innovators. My friend Jereme is an innovator. The second he finds out that Apple is set to release some new gadget or technology he’s already trying to figure out how he can get his hands on it as soon as possible. The next set to adopt a new innovation is called the early adopters, which is the term that I’m most familiar with. They are followed by the group called the early majority and then the late majority. And perhaps you’re wondering why I’m telling you all this and it’s because I learned this week which category I think I fall into, and let me tell you that Dr. Everett Rogers could have chosen a less judgmental term. The last category of people to adopt a new innovation are called the
Laggards.
Unfortunately, I think that’s me. I had a manual word processor when I went to college in 1992 – I don’t think I ever took it out of the box – when everyone else came with those cute little Macs that looked like brown boxes. When I was in seminary and everyone else had iMacs I was still using a hand-me-down computer from – and get this – a hand-me down computer from Jay’s grandfather that ran on MS-DOS.
I might be able to claim the label late majority, but I really think I’m a laggard. And it’s not just technology – I didn’t start reading Harry Potter books until the fifth book was published, a lag time of six years. By the time I started reading them, my grandpa knew more about the plot than I did. I never saw the movie Titanic until my dad bought the VHS boxed set for me for Christmas years after it was released in the theater.
So it probably won’t surprise you that I knew absolutely nothing about Wicked until I found out that Stella was going to be singing its most famous song today. I wasn’t completely ignorant – I knew that Wicked was the creative prequel to The Wizard of Oz and that one of the characters was green. And that’s just about it.
So a few weeks ago, as soon as we got the internet hooked up at the parsonage, Jay, Clare, and I finally watched Wicked. Now if you’re a laggard like me, you might not know this. But the movie that was released last November with Ariana Grande and Cynthia Ervio only tells the first half of the story. If you see the musical on Broadway, it will take you 2 hours and 45 minutes to get the whole story. But if you watch the movie, it will take the same amount of time to get only the first half of the story. Also, I feel like the fact that it only took me eight months to see the movie may get me bumped up to early majority.
So thank you, Stella, for sharing your beautiful gift with us today. It was absolutely breathtaking and motivated me to see a movie I should have seen months ago.
Will you pray with me and for me?
Here’s the basic plot – at least the first half, because that’s all I know. Galinda and Elphaba, who both live in the Land of Oz, meet each other on move-in day at Shiz University. Galinda is beginning her first year, but Elphaba has only come with her family to drop off her younger sister, Nessarose. But as the students mix and mingle, and as Galinda shares her hope of studying Sorcery under the famous Madame Morrible, it is Elphaba who attracts Madame Morrible’s attention by accidentally revealing her magical abilities. Madame Morrible decides then and there to take on Elphaba as her only Sorcery student, but as Elphaba was not previously enrolled in Shiz University, she does not have a place to stay. And so, as you might imagine, she is assigned to room with Galinda. Without getting too much into it, first they’re enemies and then they’re friends, and what I think it most commendable about their friendship is that each in scene after scene they both unapologetically show up as themselves and neither judges the other. Elphaba remains dedicated to justice and equality, and Galinda remains dedicated to getting ahead in the world by all means necessary.
And the movie ends with the moment that they each choose their paths – Galinda choosing to remain at Shiz University and Elphaba choosing to Defy Gravity.
Wicked was not written to be Christian allegory, and so we have to be careful not to try to impose Christian theology on it, but at its heart there is a message that I think reflects the last verse of the text that Dave read for us this morning from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians…
for we are what he has made us.
I grew up on Ephesians 2:8-9 – it was probably one of the first scriptures that I memorized after John 3:16. Not only did I memorize them, but I understood their importance. We cannot save ourselves. Salvation is a gift of God and we cannot work for it or earn it – we are saved by grace through faith.
Well, about fifteen years ago a colleague of mine was serving a rural church in West Tennessee and it was time for her church’s revival. Are y’all familiar with revival? Revivals are three or four night events held at a local church. Each night there’s a worship service, usually with a guest preacher and guest musicians to lead the music, and the whole point is to get everybody fired up about Jesus and fired up about coming to church.
Well, my friend’s church was planning their revival and she asked me to be one of the guest preachers. And I said “Yes” because she was my friend and it was the right thing to do, but let’s be honest with each other, I am just not a revival preacher. It’s just not my style. And I wasn’t sure what to preach about because it was just one night in a four-night series and I didn’t know the church or their context or their style, and I just find it really hard to preach under those circumstances. And so I had this thought. And I asked myself, I wonder what John Wesley preached on after he had his Aldersgate experience. You remember that? His heart was strangely warmed? Poor John Wesley had prayed for years and years for assurance that he really was a Christian and then one night when he was feeling like a real failure he went to a meeting of the Moravians–a sect of German Christians–and he heard someone reading Martin Luther’s preface to the Book of Romans–can you imagine being converted by listening to someone read the introduction to Romans? It just goes to show that God will find a way to reach all of us. But for Wesley that was what he needed to hear to feel assurance that he did trust only in Christ for salvation and that Christ had taken away his sins. He said that he felt his heart strangely warmed. So I wanted to know what Wesley’s next sermon was about after his “Aldersgate experience.” What was the next thing that he preached about?
Wesley’s Aldersgate experience took place on May 24, 1738, and the next sermon that we know about was his sermon titled “Salvation by Faith,” preached on June 7 of the same year. And that sermon is based on Ephesians 2:8. So that’s where I went. I knew the verse by heart, but I went there anyway. I read the verse and then I kept reading and then I ran right into Ephesians 2:10. For all the times that I had read, recited, pondered, and considered Ephesians 2:8 and Ephesians 2:9, Ephesians 2:10 had never grabbed me until that day.
And I’m going to share four translations with you, because I don’t think just one can do it justice.
For we are are what we has made us (NRSV)
We are God’s accomplishment (CEB)
We are God’s masterpiece (NLT)
We are his workmanship (KJV)
Created in Christ Jesus for good works (NRSV)
Which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life (NRSV)
I was so familiar with the two preceding verses – for by grace are you saved through faith, and that not of yourselves it is a gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast – that I took them for granted, never bothering to wonder what might come next.
Imagine being so focused on human limitations – we can’t save ourselves – that we miss what else God says about us. That we are God’s masterpiece, God’s accomplishment, and while our good works can’t and won’t earn us salvation, God’s plan for us still includes good works, which God made to be our way of life.
Good works don’t earn us salvation – they are a result of our salvation. They flow out of our salvation.
But let’s go back to that first phrase in verse 10 that I love so much. We are God’s masterpiece, God’s workmanship, God’s accomplishment. While there is no God per se in the setting of Oz – the Wizard puts himself in the role of God despite his absolute impotence – there is a sense in which Elphaba, even from the beginning, even when she is an outcast at Shiz University, even when her choices make no sense even to her best friend, there is a sense in which she understands that she is who she is not by accident, and that she has a purpose and a place in the world. And with that understanding of self and place, she is able to step out into the absolute unknown, leave everything that she knows, and, as we learn in the opening number of the first movie, earn her the label, wicked.
There are voices in the world and in our lives that will gladly tell us who we are – or even who we aren’t – based on any number of things. There are a whole lot of labels that the world may try to put on us depending on our stage of life, our interests, our health, our allegiances. And this feels more true than ever. Our divided world wants so badly for each of us to wear a label declaring where we stand – Democrat or Republican, blue or red, vouchers or no vouchers, could we go on for days? These attempts at labels sometimes so consume our conversations that even we followers of Jesus forget that our primary allegiance isn’t to any political party or ideology or set of policies – our primary allegiance is to Christ and his Kingdom, and whatever it is that makes the world look more like what God wants it to look like, and we are never going to find that in a political party or set of policies.
But I digress – here’s the point. We live in a world that is so broken that we thrive on divisions and labels and judgments, but the truth is here. The only label that matters to us is masterpiece, workmanship, accomplishment. And when Paul uses we he isn’t just talking about a collection of individuals; not just you and you and you: he’s talking about the church, the body of Christ, the embodiment of Christ in the world–and that is what we are. That is the only label that matters. Put here, brought together, not accidentally, but to be part of the work that God is doing to reconcile the world to himself.
And here’s where I want to land this morning…this work that God is inviting us into as God’s people, God’s masterpiece, will often require us to leave behind our own wisdom and turn to God’s wisdom instead, which is what Dave read for us from Proverbs – trust in God with all your heart and do not rely on your own insight. And that takes acknowledging that God is God and we are not, that our wisdom is insufficient, and then going where God leads us. I’ve heard so many stories already about how Bethlehem United Methodist Church has done that over and over again in its life together, and I look forward to all the places where God is going to call us and send us in the future.
We are humans. We are not limitless. But thanks be to God that we serve a God who is limitless and saved us when we couldn’t save ourselves, not because we deserved it but because God is good and generous and kind, and gave us work to do that is our way of life. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.