Rogue One, May The Force Be With You

Here is my message from Sunday. The text was John 15:9-17  and the movie was Rogue One.

Sports fans in Philadelphia are known to be particularly passionate about their teams, and their passion sometimes leads to downright hostility, and this is not just directed at visiting players and fans, but even to their own players. These are fans who might be best known for throwing snowballs at and booing Santa Clause. I mean, who boos Santa? People who want coal in their stockings is who. Now this hostility sort of stands in direct contrast for being known as the city of brotherly love, which of course has nothing whatsoever to do with the people who live there, and no offense to anyone here from Philly, I love your sandwiches. But their nickname comes from the meaning of the word Philadelphia, which literally means brotherly love in Greek. And some may remember that there are actually four words in Greek for love. One is the word eros, which is a passionate, physical love, and it never appears in the New Testament. Another, much rarer, is storge, which is the feeling that people in families have for each other, or we might familial love. Then there is Philia, which is brotherly love, with brother here being a much broader category linking with people not related by blood, and we could also certainly include sisters in this. Love for BFFs. Then there is agape, which is much more common. Iit is the word used to describe God’s love for us, but this is, again, not a feeling, but a doing a way of being. It’s also a sacrificial giving love, which is why this word is sometimes used to describe a parents love for a child. It’s giving of yourself for someone else, and so as we conclude our series on The Gospel in Star Wars by looking at the film Rogue One, I want you to keep those understandings of philia and agape in mind because they become important.

Rogue One was released in 2016 and was the first of the live action stand-alone Star Wars movies, also sometimes referred to as the unnumbered films. Rogue One takes place immediately before the original Star Wars film, by a few weeks, and thus brings us full circle back to where we started. The main story line tells us about Jyn Erso, the daughter of Galen Erso, the man who is forced to design the Death Star. As a young girl, Jyn watches her father get taken by the empire and her mother killed, and then she is rescued by Saw Gerrera, a militant rebel leader. Rather than resisting the empire and being killed, her father Galen, designs a flaw into the Death Star so that with one shot it might be destroyed, which explains the end of Star Wars. Galen gets an imperial shuttle pilot to defect with a message for Jyn, which he takes the city of Jedha, the home of a former Jedi temple and a mine for Kyber crystals which not only power lightsabers but is also what powers the death star’s weapon. Captured by the rebels to help them get the plans, Jyn travels with the rebel Cassian, who is shown to do whatever he thinks is necessary for the rebel cause, and K2SO a reprogrammed imperial droid. While on Jedha, they encounter the blind seer Chirrut Imwe, the coolest force user we’ve met in a while, whose personal mantra and breath prayer is “I am one with the force and the force is with me.” We are told that Chirrut is a guardian of the whills, which is an ode to Lucas’ original story idea before he came up with the force, and he is accompanied by Baze who helps protect Chirrut. Although Jyn thinks of herself as being totally independent, of not being able to trust anyone and making it on her own, we get an early indication of who she is when she and Cassian are caught in a street fight between the empire and Saw Gerrera’s followers. (Video)

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.

Pride Versus the Poor in Spirit and the Meek

 Here is my sermon from Sunday. The text was Luke 18:9-14:

In Star Wars, Luke Skywalker is shown two different ways to live. He can live with the force, and we might say live in the light, or he can choose the dark side, and he has two masters, Obi Wan Kenobi and Darth Vader, showing him their particular way and seeking to get him to follow, even enticing him or telling him that it is his destiny. But it is up to Luke to decide which he is going to choose, while also seeing that choosing one over the other does not necessarily mean its forever, as best demonstrated by Darth Vader who first chooses the dark side, but, 40 year-old spoiler alert, is later redeemed and saved and brought back into the light. Two ways of living in the world, and two ways that are opposite of each other and lead to radically different ways of living and two different results. 

I thought that was an appropriate analogy for us today as we begin a new worship series in which we are going to be looking at the seven deadly sins and comparing them against the Beatitudes, which are two different ways of living, as I said in the worship intro on Friday, it’s sort of comparing the ways of the world against the ways of the Kingdom of God, and we do indeed get to choose which to follow. Or another way to think of it as we drop into the final weeks of the political campaigns is that they are two different platforms being presented to us to for us to choose who we will follow and which way we would like to see the world run. Now this idea came from a book entitled Seven by Jeff Cook, in which he compares the Beatitudes and the Seven Deadly Sins, which I first read several years ago and so he deserves the credit for the idea. I don’t follow his set-up of comparisons, and I’ve seen others who have done the same sense, and so whether they took his idea and did it as well, or it was done before, I don’t know, but he did inspire me.

Giving All You've Got

Here is my sermon from Sunday. The scripture was John 15:12-17 and based on Star Wars: Rogue One.

When we think of the word love and when we talk about love, the most common reference is that of romantic love or the love we feel for our families. The love that’s expressed in Hallmark cards and Lifetime movies. It’s not necessarily physical love, but it does make us feel something different than what we feel for other people, and thus when we hear that we are to love everyone, or that, as the Beatles prophetically said, all we need is love, and we realize how difficult or impossible it is we begin to despair thinking that perhaps we aren’t worthy. That perhaps there are people who are capable of doing this, but we aren’t, and are thus failures. It’s as Father Zosima said in Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, “The more I love humanity in general, the less I love man in particular.” Or worse, we begin to think that maybe Jesus wasn’t actually being serious about this, that it was hyperbole, just as he said that we should rip out our eye or cut off our hand if it causes us to sin. It’s there to help us to understand the seriousness of the command, but to understand that it’s not really what he is saying to do.

Now there are multiple different words in Greek that are translated as love. One of those words is eros, from which we get the word erotic, that touchy feely love, but that is not the word that is translated here that Jesus is using. Instead, the word here is agape, which when translated into Latin was caritas, from which we get words like charity. That is that this is not a feeling that we are supposed to have for one another, this is a doing, a way of being. So, while we can have eros for a few people, we can have agape for everyone. And I think it’s crucial to pay attention to the fact that Jesus does not say this is a recommendation, or even just come out and say love one another. Instead, what does he say? Let’s read it together. “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. And no one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” This is a commandment. The reason why the Thursday of Holy Week is called Maundy Thursday is because this passage is read, and Maundy comes from the Latin word Mandantum, meaning commandment. Jesus commands us to love one another, just as we have first been loved. And so, we are going to be looking at that idea as we conclude our all too brief sermon series on the gospel in Star Wars, although perhaps some think it’s been too long, by looking at the last of the Star Wars films to come out which was Rogue One.

Redemption

Here is my sermon from Sunday. It was based on Romans 8:31b-39 and Star Wars: Return of the Jedi.

When people are asked to name the best villains in movie history, Darth Vader is consistently near the top of the list. He is easily responsible for hundreds of deaths, and that’s before we begin to talk about the entire destruction of the planet alderon. But one of the things that separates Vader from the other top movie villains, people such as Hannibal Lecter or Norman Bates, is that he is not psychotic, or at least to me Vader doesn’t appear to be psychotic. Now I could be wrong on that, and I’m not saying he’s a good guy. He’s not, for example, Atticus Finch, from To Kill a Mockingbird, who tops the list of the 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, who are not mentally ill, they are just mean and nasty people. Perhaps that’s even worse because it means that they intentionally chose to be the people they were, and they are not people you want to invite over for a dinner party. But the question we have to ask ourselves, and the question we will seek to answer today is whether these nasty people, these villains, because of the choices they have made in their life have moved beyond God’s grace and redemption, and we will do so by looking at the film that completed the original Star Wars trilogy Return of the Jedi, which is my personal favorite film.

Released in 1983, Return of the Jedi has the empire working to rebuild the death star, but it begins in the palace of Jabba the Hutt, sort of the Godfather of a crime syndicate, who has Han Solo encased in carbon and hanging on his wall, and so Luke, Chewbacca, Leia and Lando Calrisian undertake a rescue operation that eventually leads to Jabba’s death at the hands of Leia. Intelligence, and a trap set by the emperor, then leads the rebels to the forest moon of Endor where the new death star is being built and is protected by a shield being generated on the moon’s surface. While Han, Leia and Chewie make their way to Endor, where they encounter the Ewoks, a race of small teddy bear like creatures who will help them in their battle with the empire, Luke goes for some final training with Yoda, who dies, but not before revealing that Princes Leia is Luke’s twin sister, and thus the daughter of 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 he finally realizes Yoda’s lessons about violence and the dark side, and when he refuses to fight, the emperor then seeks to kill Luke himself, but I don’t want to give away the ending just yet, as it works into the understanding of redemption. But two issues to point out.

You Must Choose

Here is my sermon from Sunday. It was based on Genesis 4:1-9 and the movie Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back.

Today we continue in our series on the Gospel in Star Wars by looking at the Empire Strikes Back. Released in 1980, it is widely considered the best of the Star Wars films, although it is not my personal favorite. 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 Calrisian. Calrisian 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 that turn out to be important as well, and we are going to use this is a way to discuss the issue of predestination versus free will and our relationship with sin and the dark side.

Now the Star Wars movies play both sides of the card when it comes to whether things are predestined or not. In the later prequels, when Qui Gon Jinn meets the young Anakin Skywalker for the first time, Anakin makes a remark about how fortunate that they had to land where they did to get their ship repaired, and Jinn says “Our meeting was not a coincidence. Nothing happens by accident.” And then of course there is both Vader and the Emperor, known by his Sith name as Darth Sidious, who tell Luke that it is his destiny that he join the dark side and rule the galaxy. Of course, that doesn’t happen, putting a question about whether everything is in fact destiny, and then there is what Yoda has to say. Now I think we could do an entire sermon series on the wisdom of Yoda, who really does have some of the best lines, like Size matters not, do or do not, there is no try, and better yet, fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate and hate leads to suffering, but about destinies, Yoda says that the future is impossible to see, or as he says in the Empire Strikes Back, always in motion the future is. That means we can’t predict the future because there are too many variables, too many choices that people can make, to be able to determine the future outcomes. So, which do we believe?

Zephaniah: A Celebration

Here is my sermon from Sunday. The text was Zephaniah 3:14-20:

In Star Wars: Rogue One, the lead female character Jyn Erso says about the rebellion, “We have hope. Rebellions are built on hope.” Of course, we have known that all along because what we know as the original Star Wars was later retitled Star Wars: A New Hope, but this was the first time that phrase had really been uttered in the movies about its necessity for the rebellion. If they didn’t have hope for the future, no one would join the rebellion, no one would dare to take on the empire, no one would risk their lives for something bigger than themselves because what would be the point? If there was no hope, why do anything? Why not just slink back into the woodwork, just keep on keeping on, seeking just to live one more day, and then the day after that. If there is no sense that things will get better, if there is no sense that things can get better, then there is no need to do anything. Thus, saying that rebellions are built on hope says that things not only can, but they must get better, that there is something better out there even if we cannot see it, even if it seems impossible, it’s still there.

Of course, long before we had the wisdom of George Lucas, we also heard the same thing from Paul who tells us “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God… For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.” (Romans 8:18-25) That is also part of the message that we get with Zephaniah, that although he gives a prophetic claim not just of the coming destruction of Judah, but of the surrounding nations, that he closes with this truly remarkable message about God and about hope that we heard this morning.

Gabriel's Message

Here is my Christmas Eve sermon.  The text was Luke 2:1-20:

I had a really hard time coming up with what I was going to say for this message.  Normally I have something roughly planned out for Christmas Eve by the time we hit Halloween, but this year nothing was coming to me and as we got closer and closer I finally did the smart thing and asked my wife what she thought I should preach on.  She asked what I had covered the past two years, see she’s not paying attention either, and I said two years ago I had talked about Joseph and the importance that people play in each other’s lives, and last year I had talked about the shepherds and the fact that they didn’t come up with excuses about why they couldn’t go see the baby, but instead followed God’s commands.  She said that it seemed like I had a little theme going, even if I hadn’t planned it, of covering the characters in the Christmas story and so she thought I should preach on Mary.  So following her advice, I decided to preach on the angels.  I don’t think I’m going to get a very good present this year.

Angels are a familiar part of the Christmas story.  There is the archangel Gabriel who makes first makes the announcement to Zechariah and Elizabeth about the coming birth of John the Baptist, and then makes the announcement to Mary that she will bear a child.  There are the angels who make the announcement to the shepherds in the fields, and we cannot forget angel second class, Clarence Odbody, in Frank Capra’s classic It’s a Wonderful Life.  I think my favorite portrayal of an angel is not in a Christmas story, but instead was done by John Travolta who portrayed that archangel Michael, in the movie of the same name.  A smoking, hard drinking, hard living, slob, with a rather colorful vocabulary.  Someone no one would ever believe was an angel if it weren’t for the two wings growing out of his back.  And you know that John Travolta is a really good actor when he, a scientologist, can play the leading messenger for God.

We actually don’t know very much about angels from the Bible.  Most of what people think about them, or think they know about them, comes from extra-biblical sources, some of them quite modern, and we could talk about them but then we’d have to end up talking about how many angels can dance on the head of a pine.  But that is not to say that angels aren’t found in scripture because they are.  The first time we hear of an angel is after Adam and Eve are expelled from the Garden of Eden, the entrance is guarded by cherubim who has a flaming sword, think of it as the world’s first light saber.  The cherubim are winged creatures who act sort of as guardians, and if you remember Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark correctly, they are the images formed onto the top of the ark of the covenant.  Later we will also hear about seraphim, who are winged creatures said to be found guarding God’s seat inside the Temple in the Holy of Holies.  If I remember correctly, it’s the cherubim that hang from the ceiling and the seraphim that come up from the floor, or maybe it’s reversed, I often get it wrong.  But while they are angelic like creatures, outside of the wings, these are not really angels as we typically understand them or think of them, or as they are found in the rest of scripture.