A sermon preached at Trinity Presbyterian Church, Herndon VA on Sunday, February 8. Here’s the scripture text.

AI, the Epstein files, and the Walk for Peace. A little of everything in this one. Thank you for listening.

Pluribus, Season One!

It’s the mark of a good show that we talked for almost an hour, going deep on a number of themes in the show, and somehow didn’t get to some major plot points, like how the Others get their sustenance. I’ll just leave it at that.

But we did talk about the show as commentary on AI, what makes a human a human, and the appeal of complex characters. Plus: how would we preach this show?

Here’s the podcast episode Ed referenced about the Darien Gap.

We have come to the end of our journey (for now) through Middle Earth! After our first week of “Will it Preach?” and our second week of the “BIG Themes of the Stories” we come to “Category Crowns” - discussing a bit more light-hearted topics like:

* Best/Worst change from books to movies

* Which “villain” do you like the most, and which “hero” annoys you?

* Best music cue

* What meal (or scene?) that we witness would you most want to be a part of?

* Best hair acting (This was put in specifically for MaryAnn to comment on Eowyn’s hair)

* No LOTR actors were nominated for Oscars. Who gets best and best supporting?

And some more fun ones too!

We will be leaving the realms of dwarves, elves, hobbits, humans, ents, and wizards and moving back to sci-fi (of a sort) with AppleTV’s series Pluribus. We’ll be talking on this on Monday, February 9 at 12pm ET. We’d love for you to join us live or you can follow here or via your favorite podcast app! Link to join.

Mae govannen!

Mae govannen, friends!

Haha so… MaryAnn could not see anyone logged in to this conversation due to some quirk of Substack, but they were there! We ran the themes of Lord of the Rings through Ed’s standard signoff on his posts: GPLHJ, or Grace Peace Love Hope Joy.

Book recommendation: Everything Is a Story by Kaitlin Curtice

And here’s the quote MaryAnn read from Return of the King:

But even as hope died in Sam, or seemed to die, it was turned to a new strength. Sam’s plain hobbit-face grew stern, almost grim, as the will hardened in him, and he felt through all his limbs a thrill, as if he was turning into some creature of stone and steel that neither despair nor weariness nor endless barren miles could subdue.

We’ve got one more LOTR episode next Tuesday, February 3 at 1:00 p.m.: Category Crowns! Favorite villain, most annoying hero, and lots more fun. Link to join.

Catch all replays of PCPH at our dedicated Substack page or your favorite podcast app.

The Oscar nominations are out and Sinners dominated, Pluribus continues to confound and intrigue audiences, and we are… spending three episodes talking about movies that came out 25 years ago.

What can we say? The nerdery must flow. And the themes in the Lord of the Rings are RICH.

In honor of the LOTR trilogy’s re-release in theaters, we begin our series with a few rounds of “Will It Preach?” in which our magic wheel chose random scenes we had to wrestle some meaning out of. Tolkien being Tolkien, that wasn’t hard, but the conversation did take us in some unexpected places.

Watch this space for future episodes.

Thanks for joining us this afternoon!

Before we dive in, here’s the audio of Dr. King reading Letter from Birmingham Jail, as Ed referenced. And there’s a lot of videos of Willie Pearl Mackey King telling the story of putting together the letter from the scraps of paper Dr. King had available while in the jail, and her work for civil rights in general. Here’s one.

As for pop culture that was saving our lives (h/t to Barbara Brown Taylor for the question), we came up with quite an eclectic list of things that are keeping us going amid ~gesturing at everything~. Art is sustaining, illuminating, diverting, and more—and you see that full gamut reflected in our choices.

Viewer discretion advised on some of the items below.

MaryAnn’s list:

* Somebody Somewhere, HBOmax

* Hank Green’s comedy special “Pissing Out Cancer”, originally on DropoutTV, now free on YouTube

* “Killing in the Name” by Rage Against the Machine—the louder the better

* A Man on the Inside, Netflix

* Pachinko, Min Jin Lee

Ed’s list:

* The “Time” Quintet by Madeleine L’Engle: A Wrinkle in Time, A Wind in the Door, A Swiftly Tilting Planet, Many Waters, and An Acceptable Time

* Rooted: A Spiritual Memoir of Homecoming, Christy Berghoef (and here’s her Substack)

* The Soundtrack Show (podcast)

* Clair Obscur (video game)

* Sports! (Go Broncos)

What’s saving your life lately? Thanks to viewer Mark who shared the song “This Is My Country” by Don Was and the Pan-Detroit Ensemble.

A sermon from Sunday, January 11, based on Genesis 1, as part of Trinity Presbyterian’s latest worship series based on Michael Adam Beck’s book Never Alone: Sharing the Gift of Community in a Lonely World.

The “seven stuff” I mentioned comes from this source.

Thanks for listening!

If you’re listening on Substack, you can also access the Blue Room from the podcast app of your choice. If you appreciate this program, please rate and review, and consider sharing with others.

Steady on.

Thank you to everyone for tuning into today’s Pop Culture Pastors Hour! What a rich film… We went everywhere from Christian Nationalism to Rick Astley, and there was stuff we didn’t even get to!

A few items referenced:

Christ and Culture (book), H. Richard Niebuhr

Disobedient Women (book), Sarah Stankorb

The Four Shapes of Transformation, Richard Rohr

See you in January, for discussions of Pluribus (AppleTV+) and Lord of the Rings. Please note that moving forward, we’ll be hosting these conversations at our Pop Culture Pastors Hour dedicated feed. Subscribe there for all the latest.