Sermon for February 1st, 2015
Contents
Psalm 147:2-6
2The Lord builds up Jerusalem; he gathers the outcasts of Israel. 3He heals the brokenhearted, and binds up their wounds. 4He determines the number of the stars; he gives to all of them their names. 5Great is our Lord, and abundant in power; his understanding is beyond measure. 6The Lord lifts up the downtrodden; he casts the wicked to the ground.
John 15:13-16
13No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 14You are my friends if you do what I command you. 15I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. 16You did not choose me but I chose you.
Faith & Film III: Guardians of the Galaxy
- Film Clip #1: Trailer
Three Minute Plot Summary
There are a lot of characters to keep track of in this film. But the central character, the first one we meet, is Peter Quill. Peter is a young boy, maybe about ten years old, on earth in the year 1988. We find him in a hospital waiting room, listening to a mix-tape on his Sony Walkman--a cassette tape his mother made for him of her favorite songs from the 70s and 80s. The songs from this tape provide the backdrop of the entire movie, and Wednesday night when we were all watching it together in the Robert Young Centre, you could really tell who remembered the 70s and 80s!
Unfortunately for Peter, his mother is dying of cancer. She gives him a wrapped present, and tells him how much she loves him, and when she dies, Peter sprints out of the hospital in tears. He is immediately beamed up into a spaceship and whisked away into the stars.
Twenty-six years later, we meet Peter again. Now, he goes by the nickname Star Lord, and he is somewhat of an intergalactic playboy, mercenary, scavenger, and all-around-rogue. We find him tracking down an ancient orb with mysterious powers that he intends to sell to the highest bidder.
There are several people (mostly bad guys) who are also looking for this orb. One is Ronan, a religious fanatic and sci-fi terrorist who wants to use the orb to destroy an entire planet and all its people.
Peter Quill (Star Lord) beats the others to the orb and barely escapes with it to the planet Xandar.
Ronan dispatches his top assasin, the beautiful but deadly Gamora, to take out Star Lord and retrieve the orb. A pair of bounty hunters also find him: A boisterous, racoon-like creature named Rocket and his walking tree of a companion named Groot. Rocket is a talker, while Groot only seems to know three words for any occasion: I am Groot.
Gamora goes after the orb, Rocket and Groot go after Star Lord, and in the process all of them (including Star Lord) get arrested by the Xandarian police and thrown in an interstellar prison. There, they meet Drax the Destroyer, a musclebound walking thesaurus who takes everything literally. Drax is the sworn enemy of Ronan, who killed his wife and daughter.
Somehow, the five of them--Drax, Rocket, Groot, Gamora, and Star Lord--manage to escape together from the prison, with the orb, and they form an unlikely partnership (the Guardians of the Galaxy) intent on selling the orb, or, at least keeping it out of the hands of Ronan. But when Ronan finally catches up to them, his forces brutally defeat the Guardians, he takes the orb from them, and proceeds back to the planet Xandar, which he intends to destroy using his newfound power.
The Guardians regroup, form some new allies, and even manage to secure the help of the Xandarian government that had previously thrown them in prison. In a climactic final showdown, Ronan is defeated, the orb is recovered and given to the Xandarians for safekeeping, the Guardians of the Galaxy are pardoned and accorded the status of heroes for their role in saving the planet.
