Wicked, Good, Or Both?

What if the line between wicked and good isn’t a line at all, but a question we keep asking until power loses its grip on appearances? We take Oz’s yellow brick road in a new direction, following Wicked’s reimagining of Elphaba to explore how cultures equate beauty with virtue, power with righteousness, and compliance with moral worth—and how those shortcuts fail the people who most need justice.

We start with L. Frank Baum’s political DNA in the original Oz and how early Hollywood narrowed women into rigid archetypes. Then we shift into Gregory Maguire’s Oz, where Elphaba’s green skin marks her as other, setting the stage for a life of exclusion that strangely becomes the wellspring of empathy. Education gives her a platform, but conscience gives her purpose: to defend sentient Animals, confront a stage-managed Wizard, and expose systems more invested in order than goodness. That revelation is familiar—like Dorothy’s unveiling of the man behind the curtain—but here it’s sharper, aimed at our age of spectacle.

The heart of the conversation lands on sacrifice and leadership. Elphaba recognizes that nuance rarely wins a crowd. Her decision to absorb fear and hatred so Glinda can move reforms forward is a risky, strategic act of love. We connect that arc to Philippians 2, where Christ empties himself, choosing humility over display and solidarity over supremacy. Humility in this frame is not weakness; it is disciplined strength that lays down hubris to make room for mercy, justice, and shared courage. Along the way we ask hard questions: Who benefits from our obedience to appearances? Which cages do we ignore because the system feels safe? And where might our own wounds be the doorway to deeper compassion?

If you’re wrestling with polarized labels, disillusioned by shiny authority, or longing for a grounded path toward justice, this conversation offers language, story, and scripture that meet in one place: humble strength that serves the oppressed. Listen, share with someone who loves Oz or loves hard questions, and leave a review so more seekers can find the show.

Chapters

• 0:00 Setting Up Wicked And Oz
• 2:35 From Baum To Technicolor
• 5:00 Female Archetypes Deconstructed
• 7:10 Gregory Maguire’s World Of Contrasts
• 10:20 Elphaba’s Outsider Status
• 12:05 Visit To The Wizard And Disillusion
• 14:10 Christian Themes Of Justice
• 16:15 Sacrifice, Fear, And Leadership
• 18:20 Philippians 2 And Humility
• 22:14 Choosing The Path Of Humility

Transcript

Pastor Darren: 0:00

We've been in a uh movie series of late, and I hope you have enjoyed that. Sometimes I think you get a special treat that I like movies, and sometimes I feel like you get punished because I like movies. Hopefully, we'll just keep that a balance that goes all the while. But uh we've landed here on the last one. It's uh a film called Wicked for Good. Uh it they did, it was actually, well, there's a whole history of it, but this iteration was actually a single stage show that they put into two movies. Uh the first half got all the awards and accolades and all that, and the second half didn't get so many. So my goal was, oh, the the likely Academy Award nominations. Well, Wicked for Good didn't get as many nominations as the part one did. So uh I don't know if that bothers anybody, but I just wanted to acknowledge it because that is what happened. So it's called Wicked for Good, but you'll notice I wrote Wicked for Good with a question mark. Because I feel like uh this is um some of the theme that the story is getting into. We live in such a polarized age where we'll even wrestle over what the definition of good is. And uh so I feel like this story kind of dives into the complexity of that question. So again, just some ramp up into this thing. Some of you know this, some of you don't. Uh, but the original Wizard of Oz story that Wicked is written from is uh, you know, an age-old story written back uh around 1900 by the author L. Frank Baum. He was looking to create a children's story, but it had, now everybody recognizes this, uh, a fair amount of political commentary amidst the story itself. Uh there's a subtle message to the populace within the story uh that he felt, well, that people he felt like they were lacking brains, they were lacking heart, and they were lacking courage. Familiar to anyone? You're seeing the ties that are going on there, right? So they in the story, most of us I think know the story, they make this journey to Oz, looking for this thing that they lack. And what they ultimately come to find is the wizard is kind of just a fake, it's all a facade, and uh, maybe more interestingly, they already had all these things that they were looking for. And they didn't need to come to Oz this entity that they had given all this power to to find out that they had that. They had it all along. So that's some of the sort of subplot that maybe you uh picked up in the original Wizard of Oz story. Now, the first film, which many of you remember, that commentary kind of gets lost. There's this focus on the technical wizardry of the movie, right? The thing that was most eye-catching was how it starts in black and white, and then you remember it gets all colorized, and everybody goes, oh it was one of the earliest colorized films, right? So this was something that was really, really magical. Uh, and it had uh this wondrous tale with these memorable characters. I pulled a picture. See if you remember these folks right here. Do you remember them? Yeah? Anyone getting wistful? Ah, that's back when they made stories good. Ah, yes. With little uh Dorothy there, right? And then we, of course, we can't forget this other character. Don't get scared. James is looking at me, I'm looking at James. Oh, oh, oh! Just a witch, it's an actress. Settle down. I don't know. If you were like eight-year-old Darren, you were scared right now. I this this was the one for me. Like, you know, when you have those images of who's haunting your room, it was this one right here. I I'm not even sure I finished the film until I was, you know, in my 40s. Because I wasn't really, I didn't need to know what happened here. Uh, you know, you see her get the water on her, right? And then I'm out, right? And and and then I learned that was pretty much the end of the movie. I read I I just had to hold out five more minutes. But uh in any case, what happens with the in the film version is that it kind of leans into this uh uh uh a contrast of female archetypes, right? This this challenge or that we had with our cultures and our culture and our stories of women needing to choose, are you gonna be the witch or are you gonna be the innocent pure one? And those were the choices. Uh and um with men largely in control of the stories that got written, uh, this is kind of how it played out for a long time, especially in early Hollywood. Uh now we've spent some time now kind of deconstructing that and recognizing that there's many, many ways to be a female in our world and not just these two. And so women watching our stories and our films have more options for models to kind of uh help define themselves. And this is in general, we think, a positive thing. Uh in fact, I might argue that the next job we have is to figure out how to help the men live in this new reality where women are able to make some choices, even if those choices land on those two polarities or archetypes. We still want to figure out how we teach men, to still have the values that they honor in a way that creates space for that evolution of how we see women. But that's a whole other sermon. And it's 1048 already. So finally, we get to Wicked the Book, right? The book that the play was built on, that the movie uh was made from. Uh, first of all, I want to point out it is a story that was released in 1993, right? So this is a relatively old story, you know, and I just think it's worth mentioning how long ago it was. Uh, the author Gregory McGuire decides to play with that archetype uh uh contrast. He's doing that deconstruction work a little bit of helping uh develop more sort of models for what a woman can be. And the way he does this is he asks the question why is the wicked witch wicked? How'd she end up in this place? So here's how he tackles this question. First, he creates a world in which the qualifications for being socially affirmed or accepted are really, really narrow. Right? I put up some contrasts up here that you can look at. Yeah, so in this world in Oz, what we come to realize is that being beautiful is good. Less beautiful, less good. Right? And the same with powerful. Being powerful is good in Oz. Being less powerful is less good in Oz. All right, it's sort of making sense. We sort of wrestle with some of these in our own society today. Uh, in this kind of world where they're trying to uh um maybe do uh some keep people in certain places and certain understandings. The socially cooperative person is good, and the less cooperative person less good, right? This is how it is in Oz. Here's an interesting one in the story. Remember, it is kind of a magical story. Humans are good, but animals are not good. If you've seen the movie, you'll see that the animals actually were kind of evolved until we started putting them in cages and boxes and they move backwards in that evolution. Then finally, wizards are good. They get to run Oz. Witches, not so good. You know, and maybe that has to do with the fact that this particular witch actually had some powers. Well, the wizard did not. I don't know. Maybe that was that maybe that was part of it. But hopefully you're getting a sense of this is the world uh that Maguire creates in order to start asking this question of why the wicked witch is as wicked as she is. Uh, and uh, so you'll see some of these contrasts, again, similar a little bit to what we have in our own world, other than the humans and animals and wizards and witches, other, you know, but the other stuff, uh, at the same time, the contrasts are much more strong in a story, right? It's a it's a story after all. Finally, we have Alphaba, the name that Maguire gives to this wicked witch, who evidently didn't have a name before that, right? And I think I even got a picture of the initial Alphabet that was on stage. Any Adenaman Zell fans? All right. If you're not an Adenaman Zell fan, you are wrong. All right. She has uh um, what do they say, created, I think, three different roles on Broadway that are like landmark roles. So she is playing Alphabet over here. You can see her in the green. Uh you get Christian Chennewith on the right. She plays Glinda the Good Witch. Anybody get to see that on? I'm sure you saw the the stage show, right? What is wrong with you people? We're gonna do a field trip. Holy smoke. All right, you we are gonna go see the we see stuff. What's a this is a really, really good show, and actually some really good voices. So this is the original uh uh version, right? And and this is the name, alphabet, that he gives to this woman. We learn that her greenish skin color in Oz is accepted, but not necessarily appreciated or honored in any way, right? She's in many ways kind of shunned by society, given harsher treatment in society. All right. Um, this is partly why we picked uh that scripture from 1 Samuel, uh, uh where the Lord says to Samuel, do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. Here's the key phrase: For the Lord does not see as mortals see, they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart. A simple little message from the Old Testament that still rings true and is lived out here in wicked for good. But in Maguire's story, he maps out how for Alphaba, her life is a little bit oppressed, or a lot of bit oppressed, even by her own family, with her father blaming her for her his uh other daughters, her Alphabet sister's uh ailment that she has. Uh but despite all of this, she ends up in this privileged school where she's able to find herself. And not only is she able to kind of find herself, but she starts realizing this calling to social justice, this calling to undermine the oppression that uh Oz has. Uh and so moving quickly through the story, Elphaba gets her chance to go visit the uh wizard, just like Dorothy and uh the scarecrow and the tin man and the and the lion get to. Uh, and uh her hope is to be able to undermine, get help undermining some of these oppressive societal roles. She has especially concerns about her professor who was a goat, and uh, but he was moving into this oppressive situation, being caged up and becoming less and less the goat that he was created to be. Ultimately, Alphaba learns, just like Dorothy learned, that the wizard isn't what he says he is. In fact, any power he has seems to be used just to appease the people and to keep them all at bay. She also learns that he is actually kind of invested in this oppressive world because it keeps everybody in the structure uh in place with him at the top. Right? So that wizard he doesn't really want to take any of that down. This comes as an awakening for Alphaba, just in the same way that Dorothy and her friends get this awakening uh that uh um really the wizard is just a fake. There's nothing up there. So I'm gonna save the ending for right now because I want to take a jump into the Christian themes that I found that were uh living and breathing through this. I know some of you are like, why is he talking about a movie? He keeps talking about a movie. I'm here on a Sunday morning and it's 1055. Shouldn't he be talking about Christianity here somewhere along the line? Yes, here it is. Sop it up. First, that heart for the poor and oppressed. Hopefully you were making those connections. It wasn't that difficult to see what's being done there. The fact that uh she's being oppressed for her skin color, well, we've been wrestling with that as a species forever. We've been wrestling with it as a country since we've been a country. So hopefully you're seeing that uh that connection as it's uh uh being made to our own life right now. Um if you are not concerned for the poor and oppressed, then you're probably not being a scripturally correct Christian. If you're reading your Bible, there is no way around that mandate. We are supposed to be in the favor of the poor and in favor of the oppressed. It's just in there. Interesting that you could argue that for Alphaba, the trait that gets her oppressed, her skin color, right, it is what opens the door for her empathy to everyone else. Because she gets to feel that oppression. She knows the pain, she knows the disappointment, she knows the injustice of that, and that's what opens that up inside of her. We might ask ourselves how it's often our own weakness or our own uh less accepted traits, our vulnerabilities that lead us to do our good work for others. It's that peace that opens up a window into empathy and allows us to see the divine in all of us and be committed to the justice being served for all of God's children. And given this too, hopefully we can see how tragic tragic it is when we try to hide or even condemn those unique traits that God has given us, given us to help us understand the world, help us to understand ourselves and others. Finally, a second Christian theme, and this is the one that plays out uh with the the film uh Wicked for Good Part 2. The Value for Sacrifice. This is when I spoil the film. Uh I think I got one more pick, don't I? I might be able to show that up there. Yeah, okay. Oh, I didn't get close enough. So this is the newest version of Glinda and Alphabah, right? And uh hopefully you're uh um I we should zoom in a little bit more. I think it would be appropriate to mention, especially giving these themes, that in this case they uh cast an African American Alphaba, hopefully helping to resonate with that social justice theme. I well, I'd like to think that's why they did it. But I'm gonna spoil the film a little bit. Alphabet, she looks to unite the masses to try to deconstruct the oppression. She's gonna try and make some good, right? And what that she ultimately realizes is that the masses have a little bit of difficulty dealing with, I guess we would say, the nuances of life. Often we people, we humans, we want to put things in their boxes, but this is good and this is bad. Right? And Alpha realizes this is going to be true. They are not going to be able to uh help her to do this social justice work. I'm gonna remind you once more, this is a 30-year-old story. A 30-year-old story. And I know some of you are like, well, that's not very old, but it's important for us to recognize this is before cell phones, this is before social media, all these advancements that we have that have made it maybe even more difficult for the masses to understand good versus bad. Thirty years ago, he's anticipating that this is going to be a problem. And uh some of us would say, uh, so when I say uh that we have trouble recognizing good versus bad, we should be willing to admit we know something about that. But Elphaba, she soon realizes that despite her heart for others, despite her heart for justice, she won't be able to get the people to follow her. They are not going to follow her to create that justice. In fact, it's the opposite. It will be the fear and hatred that they have for her that enables them to follow her friend, the good witch, Glinda, and to do the right thing. It's a complex kind of twisting thing there, but Glinda and Alphaba have become very, very tight. They are both recognizing the good that needs to be done, but they're also recognizing, at least Alphaba recognizes, that they're not gonna let her do it. That their hate, their fear isn't gonna allow them to follow. But if she can carry their hate in their fear and take it on her shoulders, then Glinda can be the one, because she trusts her to do the right thing, to do the good. So Alphaba, she allows the people to see her, I will say, ended, so I'm not fully spoiling anything, trusting that the good will it leaves Glinda will be used appropriately. She allows herself to die in a way that carries their fear and their hate, leaving a halo of trust around Glinda. Hopefully, you can hear the Christ-like references that are being made here. She takes on the inadequacies, she takes on the sins of the people, knowing that this is what will open up their heads, this is what will open up their hearts. Can you see why we're focused on Philippians 2 this morning? In this passage, I hear the world is the world is the world, is the world is the world, is the world is the world. It is what it is. But we need to be like Christ. It's a beautiful, beautiful place, but it is a broken place as well. A place of of human imperfection. In that reality, we are called to be like Christ. But in this really specific way, at least in Philippians, it's through our humility. For Paul, this meant an emptying of himself, an emptying of his divinity in order to be like us, in order to be human, to make that connection with. Us. It wasn't a show of power, but it was to be a model, a model of the pathway to life, to a blessed life, not just for us, but for all. And it's a pathway that is grounded in humility and sacrifice for others. In the case of Christ and of Alphabet, to a certain extent, it meant the sacrifice of their lives. They had to give up their life. I don't believe that that's what we are being called to in the same way. We aren't being asked to give up our life. I think what he's likely speaking of here, Paul in this case, is the death of our hubris, the death of our arrogance, the death of our desire to be Jesus or to be God. This isn't a good place for us Christians, this place of arrogance and hubris. We are as imperfect as others, charmed by the world's temptations, just like anyone else, sometimes even rationalizing less good actions, telling ourselves that it's God's will. The story of Wicked, the Wizard of Oz of Christ, is here to tell us. Maybe it's in this humility that we can come to know God better. Maybe it's in this humility that we can come to understand the challenges and nuances of being a human better. Maybe it's in this humility that we can come to know the good better. Amen.