You Were Right

Here is my message from Sunday. The text was Luke 19:1-10 and the movie was Return of the Jedi.

When people are named to ask the best movie villain of all time, Darth Vader routinely makes that list. For quite a few years Vader was actually at the top of the list. He has now moved down to number three. But Vader seems a little different from Hannibal Lecter and Norman Bates, who are number one and two, because as we have seen is that Vader does not seem to be mentally unstable, like those two. Now I am not arguing that he is hero. He is not, for example, Atticus Finch from To Kill a Mockingbird, who is number one on the list of best movie heroes. He seems more like Nurse Ratched from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest or Mr. Potter from It’s a Wonderful Life, number 5 and 6 on the list, in that  rather than having a mental illness, they are just mean and nasty, although perhaps that’s even worse. Because at least with those with mental issues we can give some reasoning for their behavior. And yet we are probably right to ask whether, as our metaphor, Vader’s behavior moves him beyond the grace of God? Does forgiveness apply to Vader, or has he, and others like him, moved beyond what we can forgive, or that God can forgive? Is redemption possible? And so that is the topic that we turn to as we look at what the was the conclusion to the original Star Wars trilogy Return of the Jedi, which happens to be my favorite film.

Return was released in 1983, and so this year is the 40th anniversary, and the reason we are doing this series now. Originally it was entitled Revenge of the Jedi. Does anyone know why they changed it to return? Because Jedi don’t seek revenge, revenge is something sought by those who follow the dark side, thus Revenge of the Sith. But, Return has the empire working on rebuilding a new death star. Han Solo is encased in carbonite and shipped off to Jabba the Hutt, who is Godfather like head of a crime syndicate, which leads Leia, Luke and Chewbacca on a rescue mission. Leia kills Jabba, before most of them fly off the moon of Endor, where they encounter a teddy-bear like group of inhabitants known as Ewoks, who will help the rebels battle the empire. Meanwhile, Luke goes back to receive more training with Yoda, who dies, but not before telling Luke that Leia is actually his sister and that to truly become a Jedi that he must confront Darth Vader. Luke eventually joins them all on Endor, voluntarily surrendering to the imperial troops so he can meet with Vader, who takes him to the emperor. Vader and Luke again engage in a lightsaber duel, but Luke puts his weapon away because he will not kill his father and so the emperor then seeks to kill Luke, but that’s jumping too far ahead.

I Hate You

Here is my message from Sunday. The text was 1 John 4:7-21 and the movie was Revenge of the Sith:

One of the big questions that gets posed around all of the Star Wars films, as there are now 11 feature films, is in what order you should view them. Probably the most recommended is to see them in the order that they were released. So, start, as we did, with Star Wars, watch the rest of the original trilogy, then what the prequels, which are episodes 1-3, then go to episodes 7-9, which are sometimes called the sequels, and then onto Rogue One and Solo. Without putting a lot of thought into them, that would be the order I would recommend. But, another recommendation is to watch them in chronological order, which would be to start with episode 1, adding in Rogue One and Solo at the end of the prequels, then move into the original trilogy and the sequels to complete it. I can see some logic in that, except that doing it in that order removes the reveal in Empire, which was the last movie we covered, that Darth Vader is actually Luke’s father, as well as the reveal that Leia is his sister as we learn all of those things at the end of Revenge of the Sith, which is the film we cover today. Now maybe since those reveals happened 43 and 40 years ago, respectively they don’t matter, but I still think cinematically that they do, which is also the reason that I started with the first two films and then jumped backward to episode three which then, in my reasoning, and I will argue that my reasoning is correct here, for where we end up next week in moving on to Return of the Jedi, which is my particular favorite of the films for many reasons.

Now I do have to admit that Revenge of the Sith is the only Star Wars film that I never saw originally in the theater. In fact, I had never seen it on the big screen until we showed it there on Monday. And the reason I didn’t see it was because I was in the midst of seminary and I was so disappointed in Episode 2, Attack of the Clones, that I actually wasn’t interested in seeing Lucas make the franchise even worse. I will admit that I was mistaken, and while it is not what the originals were, it’s not as bad as I originally imagined, and it’s grown on me and is usually ranked as the best of the prequels, and is even as high as number four on some lists of the best, with the original trilogy occupying the top three. But that’s more nerdy filler. Two weeks ago, when we talked about The Empire Strikes back, we talked about the choices that Luke is presented with and has to make to follow the way of the Jedi or to follow the pull to turn to the dark side like Vader. And I said those choices are presented to all of us and that what Luke comes to discover is that what separates him from his father is not that he father was evil and he is good, but the choices that his father made that led him there. And we’ll save whether those choices are permanent or not for where we move to next week. But Revenge of the Sith sets up how and why Anakin Skywalker, who becomes Darth Vader, makes those choices. And in seeing them you can have some sympathy for him and understand his reasoning. He is trying to do the best that he can and trying to protect the people and the things that he loves, and in doing so he ends up destroying those same things. But he is not evil, it’s as they say that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and Anakin ends up fighting Obi-Wan Kenobi at the end of the film in what might be seen as a metaphor for hell, but that’s jumping ahead of the story.

Choose You Must

Here is my message from Sunday. The text was Romans 7:15-25a  and the movie was The Empire Strikes Back.

On Thursday, Linda and I celebrated our 21st anniversary, and we had a very nice dinner together reminiscing about the favorite house we’ve lived in, as we’ve had 8 in the past 21 years, favorite job, favorite car, favorite child, you know all the usual. But it was sort of a reflection on the different ways that we might have imagined going differently, sometimes because of decisions that we had little say over and sometimes because of decisions that we make. While we often act as if our lives, and the lives of others, are direct lines of one point leading directly to the other, but we know that’s not really how it works. That while it might not exactly be a choose your own adventure novel, that there are definitely choices that we get to, or have to make, sometimes large, sometimes small, that end up making a huge difference in the direction that our lives take and that also affect the lives of others as well. And that’s where we turn today as we continue in our series on the gospel in Star Wars looking at the second movie in the series. Released in 1980,  The Empire Strikes Back is widely considered the greatest of all the films.

After the rebel alliance had destroyed the death star at the battle of Yavin at the end of the first film, the empire strikes back, as the title says, and seeks out to find and destroy the rebels who are now hiding from the empire. After their base on the ice planet of Hoth is attacked, they retreat again, with Luke Skywalker going to the Dagobah system to receive instruction from Yoda, the last remaining Jedi Master, and put in a different order, his words are, therefore making him sound super smart. Meanwhile, Han, Chewie and Leia are being pursued by the evil Darth Vader when the hyperdrive on their ship won’t work and so they retreat to the cloud city of Bespin, controlled by an old friend of Han’s, Lando Calrissian. Calrissian betrays them to Vader who uses them as a trap to get Luke to come to their rescue, where he and Vader engage in a lightsaber battle, with Luke losing his hand, and where Vader reveals, and I hope this isn’t a surprise to anyone any longer, that Luke’s father was not killed by Vader as he had been told, but that Vader himself is his father, and along the way Luke learns somethings about the force and himself. But one of the things that gets bantied about in the films is this idea of choice, against questions of whether those decisions are predetermined or if we have freewill.

Faith and Fear

Here is my message from Sunday. The text was  Matthew 28:16-20 and the movie was Star Wars.

It’s said that there are two types of people in the world: Those who love Star Wars and those who are wrong. That’s a joke. I know that Star Wars is not for everyone, and that’s fine. But, someone told me they weren’t really into Star Wars, and when I asked if they had seen Star Wars on the big screen, and they said no, and I said “well there’s your problem” because the opening scene of the original movie, after the crawl explaining what’s happening, when the imperial star destroyer comes from the top of the screen into the scene is one of the greatest moments in cinema history and changed movies forever. Like what can be said of the most influential films, there is a pre-Star Wars and there is after Star Wars. Even if it had not been anywhere as close to as successful as it was, it still would have given us the special effects company of Industrial Light and Magic and Skywalker Sound, which are monumental. Pixar Animation also comes out of Lucas Films, although that’s a few years later. And while the movies are noted for their stilted language, it’s said that Alec Guinness, who plays Jedi knight Obi-Wan Kenobi asked to be killed off early so that he wouldn’t have to keep saying more lines. But we also tend to forget that it was nominated for 10 Academy Awards, won six of them, and was given two additional awards for sound editing and for the creation of a new motion picture camera. What Lucas did was truly revolutionary which we forget form a distance because so much of what he did is now so common, and also noting that what we see as Star Wars now is not what was released in 1977, because Lucas upgraded then in the 90s, and the originals are no longer available, and apparently will never be released again as they originally were.

And so, with that long-winded introduction, we move onto our new series the gospel in Star Wars. And I say this every year in our movie series, but please note that it is not the gospel according to Star Wars, because we have four gospels, and George Lucas did not write any of them, but instead we will look for what we can see in the movies that can help us in our faith, and there is so much. And I will warn you that my Star Wars geek will come out and so some of you may think to yourselves, “I have a bad feeling about this, “ but let me just say that “this is the worship series you are looking for.” And if you don’t know Star Wars you have no idea what I just said.