Coming Up Sunday, August 30

The "Summer Blockbuster Sermon Series" continues this week with "Julie & Julia," the recent film based on the best-selling book about a woman who blogs about her experience cooking every recipe in Julia Child's cookbook in one year. Here's the trailer:

The movie, written and directed by Nora Ephron (perhaps most famous for "Sleepless in Seattle," which she wrote and directed), is an odd film that falls outside of typical Hollywood genres. Ephron is famous for her romantic comedies, but this movie is really a twin biography. There are laughs and some romance, but mostly it is about the kinship between two women who never meet.

It seems logical to pair this movie with the book of Ruth, which falls outside of the typical Biblical genres. While it fits into the history of Israel, it is mostly about the kinship of two women, in-laws, who became the backbone of a family.

Ruth famously leaves her own family to continue to live with her mother-in-law, even after her husband dies (and there is no male sibling for her to marry per the custom of the times). She chooses her family. Julie Powell, in the movie, is dissatisfied with her professional identity, so she creates a new one on the Internet, as someone following in the footsteps of Julia Child.

The sermon Sunday will focus on these women's efforts to define their own identities, which is almost as odd a concept today as it was 3000 years ago.