July 8 Worship: "Dark Shadows"

On Sunday we gathered for worship, at the end of a rather ridiculously warm holiday week.  Despite the weather, our worship was joyous and faithful.  We were blessed by a wonderful solo from Tom Rebecchi, among other things.

The sermon was the first of this year's "Summer Blockbuster Sermon Series," exploring some of the religious themes in some of this summer's big movie releases.  We considered the time-bending aspects of Tim Burton's comic vampire story, "Dark Shadows."  We looked at the central figure, Barnabas Collins (Johnny Depp), who tries to bring his 18th century sensibility to his dysfunctional descendants.  This attempt to take the lessons of the past and apply them to the (then) present of the 1970s is similar to religious reform movements, including the first one described in the Bible, King Josiah's reform.  Such things are especially interesting for Disciples given our denomination's/movement's birth as part of the reform movement known as Restorationism in the early 1800s.

If you missed the sermon, if you'd like to listen to it again, or if you'd like to share it with someone (perhaps a Johnny Depp fan or a Tim Burton nut), you can find the audio recording here.