Play Doh Formation

Here is my message from Sunday. The text was

Today we begin a new worship series that will take us to Lent looking at what toys can teach us about leadership and life. I wasn’t really sure what I was going to be doing for the beginning of the year, and so was talking with Phillip if there was something that would be helpful for our faith development activities, and he said that we might look at our goals. One of our goals is to build up our leadership, and I had in my list of potential worship series ideas a note about a book I read a long time ago called Toy Box Leadership, and to let you know how long ago, they use Blockbuster Video as an example of a company facing a leadership challenges, and they say that the decisions they make will decide if they survive or not, and we now all know how that ended. And so, I am indebted to that book and its authors Ron Hunter and Michael Waddell for providing the inspiration. And with that, today we begin with one of the staples of childhood, Play-Doh®, which was inducted in the inaugural class into the National Play Hall of Fame, whose museum in Rochester, NY, is absolutely fabulous if you ever get up that way to visit.

Now I have to say that of all the toys we will look at, Play-Doh®, is my least favorite, at least as an adult. When our children get Play-Doh®, which they invariably do, I sort of bow my head and think, oh great, thanks. Not because Play-Doh® isn’t great, because it is and I enjoyed it as a child, but it’s the fact that we end of with little pieces of dried Play-Doh® that end up all over the house, which then have to be cleaned up and invariably I’m still finding it in strange places days later. And so, I guess, it’s sort of ironic then that that is exactly the thing with which we are starting because of what Play-Doh® and baptism and leadership all sort of have in common with each other, and I bet you never thought of that combination before.

Books I Read in 2023

These are the books I read in 2023. I would recommend most, and the one I would definately not is marked as such. (This is more for my records than anything.

• 1776 by David McCullough
• A Bookshop in Berlin by Francoise Frenkel
• A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain
• A Disability History of the United States by Kim E. Nielsen
• A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan's Plot to Take Over America and the Woman Who Stopped Them by Timothy Egan
• A Pilgrimage to Eternity: From Canterbury to Rome in Search of a Faith by Timothy Egan
• A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson
• Advent Conspiracy: Making Christmas Meaningful by Rick McKinley
• After You by Jojo Moyes
• American Gun: The True Story of the AR-15 by Cameron McWhirter
• American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and Martin Sherman
• Angrynomics by Eric Lonergan
• Armageddon: What the Bible Really Says About the End by Bart Ehrman
• Books by Larry McMurtry
• Breaking the Code by Bruce Metzger
• Can I Get a Witness: Reading Revelation Through African American Culture by Brian K. Blount
• Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko
• Chocolat by Joanne Harris
• Church and Orwell: The Fight for Freedom by Thomas E. Ricks
• Commander in Cheat: How Golf Explains Trump by Rick Reilly
• Decoding Greatness: How the Best in the World Reverse Engineer Success by Ron Friedman
• Dolly Parton, Songteller: My Life in Lyrics by Dolly Parton
• Dress Grey by Lucian K. Truscott IV
• Earning the Rockies: How Geography Shapes America's Role in the World by Robert D. Kaplan
• Eleanor and Hick: The Love Affair that Shaped a First Lady by Susan Quinn
• Empire Falls by Richard Russo
• Eruption: The Untold Story of Mount St. Helens by Steve Olson
• Escape from the Land of Snows: The Young Dalai Lama's Harrowing Flight to freedom and the Making of a Spiritual Hero by Stephan Talty
• Everybody's Fool by Richard Russo
• Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant by Curtis Chin
• Experiencing Forgiveness by Charles Stanley
• Facing the Mountain: A true Story of Japanese American Heroes in World War II by Daniel James Brown
• Fatal North: Murder and Survival on the First North Pole Expedition by Bruce Henderson
• Finding God in a Galaxy Far, Far Away: A Spiritual Exploration of the Star Wars Saga by Timothy Paul Jones
• Finding Me by Viola Davis
• Forgive for Good: A Proven Proscription for Health and Happiness by Fred Luskin
• Forgive for Love: The Missing Ingredient for a Healthy and Lasting Relationship by Fred Luskin
• Forgive: How Can I and Why Should I? by Timothy J. Keller
• Forgiveness: A Lenten Study by Marjorie J. Thompson
• Forgiveness: Finding Peace Through Letting Go by Adam Hamilton
• Full Dress Grey by Lucian K. Truscott IV
• G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century by Beverly Gage
• God's Ex-Girlfriend: A Memoir About Loving and Leaving the Evangelical Jesus by Gloria Beth Amodeo
• Headhunters on My Doorstep: A True Treasure Island Ghost Story by Maarten J. Troost
• How to Think About God: A Guide for the 20th Century Pagan by Mortimer J. Adler
• Into the Canyon: Seven Years in Navajo Country by Lucy Moore
• Julia: A Retelling of Orwell's 1984 by Sandra Newman
• Lafayette in the Somewhat United States by Sarah Vowell
• Lead Like it Matters: 7 Leadership Principles for a Church that Lasts by Craig Groeschel
• Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
• Lost Horizon by James Hilton
• Magic Hour by Kristin Hannah
• Me Before You by Jojo Moyes
• Mecca by Susan Straight
• Midnight Sun by James Dommek, Jr.
• Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes: Removing Cultural Blinders to Better Understand the Bible by Randolph E. Richards
• Myth America: Historians Take on the Biggest Legends and Lies About Our Past edited by Kevin Kruse and Julian E. Zelizer
• Nagasaki: Life After Nuclear War by Susan Southward
• Nobody's Fool by Richard Russo
• Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century by Jessica Bruder
• Not in it to Win It: Why Choosing Sides Sidelines the Church by Andy Stanley
• Party Out of Bounds: The B-52s, R.E.M. and the Kids Who Rocked Athens, Georgia by Roger Brown
• Poverty, By America by Matthew Desmond
• Profiles in Ignorance: How America's Politicians got Dumber and Dumber by Andy Borowitz
• Reading Revelation Responsibly: Uncivil Worship and Witness by Michael J. Gorman
• Return of the Jedi: From a Certain Point of View by Various
• Revelation and the End of All Things by Craig R. Koester
• Revelation: Visions, Prophecy and Politics in the Book of Revelation by Elaine Pagels
• Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man's First Journey to the Moon by Robert Kurson
• Secrets Kids Know… That Adults Outta Learn by Allen Klein
• Small Mercies by Dennis Lehane
• Somebody's Fool by Richard Russo
• Somewhere We Are Human: Authentic Voices on Migration, Survival and New Beginnings edited by Reyna Grande
• Stallion Gate by Martin Cruz Smith
• Still Me by Jojo Moyes
• Streets of Laredo by Larry McMurtry
• Strength in Numbers: How Polls Work and Why We Need Them by Elliott G. Morris
• Suder: A Novel by Percival Everett
• Tastes Like War by Grace M. Cho
• Th Heartless Stone: A Journey Through the World by Diamonds, deceit and Desire by Tom Zoellner
• The Age of Wood: Our Most Useful Material and the Construction of Civilization by Roland Ennos
• The Armor of Light by Ken Follett
• The Art of War by Sun Tzu
• The Bastard Brigade: The True Story of the Renegade Scientists and Spies Who Sabotaged the Nazi Atomic Bomb by Sam Kean
• The Child Who Never Grew by Pearl S. Buck
• The Christmas Train by David Baldacci
• The Collapse of Constitutional Remedies by Aziz Z. Huq
• The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups by Daniel Coyle
• The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters by Thomas M. Nichols
• The Deconstructionists: The Twenty-Five Year Crack-Up of the Republican Party by Dana Millbank
• The Exchange by John Grisham
• The Four Agreements by Miguel Ruiz
• The Google Story: Inside the Hottest Business, Media and Technology Success of our Time by David A. Vise
• The Gospel According to Star Wars: Faith, Hope and the Force by John C. McDowell
• The Great Hurricane: 1938 by Cherie Burns
• The Imaginary Girlfriend by John Irving
• The Last Kind Words Saloon by Larry McMurtry
• The Last Slave Ship: The True Story of How Clotilda was Found, Her Descendants and an Extraordinary Reckoning by Ben Raines
• The Lost City of the Monkey God by Douglas Preston
• The Making of Another Motion Picture Masterpiece by Tom Hanks
• The Man Who Knew the Way to the Moon by Todd Zwillich
• The Manhattan Project Trinity Test: Witnessing the Bomb in New Mexico by Elva K. Osterreich
• The Mind’s Eye by Oliver Sacks
• The Murder of King Tut by James Patterson (do not recommend)
• The Old Man and the Gun: And Other True Tales of Crime by David Grann
• The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America by Andres Resendez
• The Paranoid Style in American Politics by Richard Hofstadter
• The Prodigal Prophet: Jonah and the Mystery of God's Mercy by Timothy Keller
• The Rapture Exposed: The Message of Hope in the Book of Revelation by Barbara R. Rossing
• The Richest Woman in America: Hetty Green in the Gilded Age by Janet Wallach
• The Song of Significance: A New Manifesto for Teams by Seth Godin
• The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life by Mark Manson
• The Trees by Percival Everett
• The Undercover Economist Strikes Back: How to Run or Ruin an Economy by Tim Harford
• The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
• The Wager: A Story of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder by David Grann
• The War on Normal People: The Truth About America's Disappearing Jobs and Why Universal Basic Income is Our Future by Andrew Yang
• The Way of Forgiveness: Letting Go, Easing Stress and Building Strength by D. Patrick Miller
• The White Darkness by David Grann
• The Whites of Their Eyes: The Tea Party's Revolution and the Battle over American History by Jill Lepore
• The World According to Star Wars by Cass Sustein
• Through My Eyes by Ruby Bridges
• Tiger Eyes by Judy Blume
• Toy Box Leader: Leadership Lessons from the Toys Your Loved as a Child by Ron Hunter, Jr. and Michael Waddell
• Train: Riding the Rails that Created the Modern World from the Trans-Siberian to the Southwest Chief by Tom Zoellner
• Travels with Charley: In Search of America by John Steinbeck
• Travels with George: In Search of Washington and His Legacy by Nathaniel Philbrick
• Trust by Hernan Diaz
• Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future by Elizabeth Kolbert
• Upside-Down Apocalypse: Grounding Revelation in the Gospel of Peace by Jeremy Duncan
• Washington and Hamilton: The Alliance that Forged America by Stephen F. Knott
• Waterloo: The True Story of Four Days, Three Armies and Three Battles by Bernard Cornwell
• Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams by Matthew Walker
• Wonder by R.J. Palacio
• You Don’t Own me: The Court Battles That Exposed Barbie's Dark Side by Orly Lobel

United Methodist Hymnal Songs from Revelation

This is a list of songs found in The United Methodist Hymnal (1989) based on passages from Revelation. I don't know that this list is complete as the list at the back does not include hymns like Marching to Zion or Battle Hymn of the Republic, which do refer to passages from Revelation. If you know others I have missed please let me know.

By Hymn Number:
64 – Holy, Holy, Holy (4:8-11)
181 – Ye Servants of God (7:9-12)
325 – Hail Thou Once Despised Jesus (4:2-11)
327 – Crown Him with Many Crowns (19:12)
350 – Come, All of You (22:17)
383 – This is a Day of New Beginnings (21:5)
428 – For the Healing of the Nations (21:1-22:5)
623 – Here, O My Lord, I See Thee (19:6-9)
626 – Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silent (4 -- communion)
655 – Fix Me Jesus (6:11; 7:9-14)
674 – See the Morning Sun Ascending (5:11-14; 7:11-12)
638 – This is the Feast of Victory (5:12-13 – communion)
706 – Soon and Very Soon (21:3-4)
717 – Battle Hymn of the Republic (14:14-20; 19:1, 14-16; 20:11-12)
718 – Lo, He Comes with Clouds Descending (1:7)
719 – My Lord What a Morning (6:12-17)
722 – I Want to be Ready (21:2, 16)
723 – Shall We Gather at the River (22:1-5)
726 – O Holy City, Seen of John (21:1-22:5)
732 – Come We that Love the Lord
733 – Marching to Zion
734 – Canticle of Hope (22:1-6, 23-24; 22:5, 12, 20

Alphabetical:
Battle Hymn of the Republic (14:14-20; 19:1, 14-16; 20:11-12) – 717
Canticle of Hope (22:1-6, 23-24; 22:5, 12, 20) – 734
Come, All of You (22:17) – 350
Come We that Love the Lord – 732
Crown Him with Many Crowns (19:12) – 327
Fix Me Jesus (6:11; 7:9-14) – 655
For the Healing of the Nations (21:1-22:5) – 428
Hail Thou Once Despised Jesus (4:2-11) – 325
Here, O My Lord, I See Thee (19:6-9) – 623
Holy, Holy, Holy (4:8-11) – 64
I Want to be Ready (21:2, 16) – 722
Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silent (4 -- communion) – 626
Lo, He Comes with Clouds Descending (1:7) – 718
My Lord What a Morning (6:12-17) – 719
Marching to Zion – 733
O Holy City, Seen of John (21:1-22:5) – 726
See the Morning Sun Ascending (5:11-14; 7:11-12) – 674
Shall We Gather at the River (22:1-5) – 723
>Soon and Very Soon (21:3-4) – 706
This is a Day of New Beginnings (21:5) – 383
This is the Feast of Victory (5:12-13 – communion) – 638
Ye Servants of God (7:9-12) – 181

By Scripture Reference:
Come We that Love the Lord – 732
Marching to Zion – 733

Lo, He Comes with Clouds Descending (1:7) – 718
Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silent (4 -- communion) – 626
Holy, Holy, Holy (4:8-11) – 64
Hail Thou Once Despised Jesus (4:2-11) – 325
See the Morning Sun Ascending (5:11-14; 7:11-12) – 674
This is the Feast of Victory (5:12-13 – communion) – 638
Fix Me Jesus (6:11; 7:9-14) – 655
My Lord What a Morning (6:12-17) – 719
Ye Servants of God (7:9-12) – 181
Battle Hymn of the Republic (14:14-20; 19:1, 14-16; 20:11-12) – 717
Crown Him with Many Crowns (19:12) – 327
Here, O My Lord, I See Thee (19:6-9) – 623
For the Healing of the Nations (21:1-22:5) – 428
I Want to be Ready (21:2, 16) – 722
O Holy City, Seen of John (21:1-22:5) – 726
Soon and Very Soon (21:3-4) – 706
This is a Day of New Beginnings (21:5) – 383
Canticle of Hope (22:1-6, 23-24; 22:5, 12, 20) – 734
Shall We Gather at the River (22:1-5) – 723
Come, All of You (22:17) – 350

How Do I Pray?

Here is my message from Sunday. The text was Luke 11:1-13:

I remember sitting next to my mother one day during worship. I don’t remember how old I was, but I think I was pretty young, and everyone started saying the Lord’s Prayer and I asked her how she knew it, and she responded with something like “it’s just something you learn.” That memory stands out for me for a couple of reasons. One being that it taught me that there were things that happened in church and you just had to pick them up, through repetition I was guessing. And the second is that it is probably my earliest memory having anything to do with prayer, and in this case a prayer that everyone says together, which is not always what we think about when we talk about prayer. Of course, we do have communal prayers that we do in worship, and then there is the Lord’s Prayer, which we say together each week. But normally when we talk about prayer its about the personal kind, or of someone else saying a prayer that we are listening to. And in that, I’m sure that most of us have probably heard someone praying out loud, and we’ve said “I wish I could pray like that.”

And probably not surprisingly, Jesus was like that. In hearing him praying, which seems to indicate that he was praying out loud, not silently, the disciples come to ask Jesus to teach them to pray. That is, whatever Jesus is doing doesn’t match their own prayer lives, and so they hope to learn something in order to be better. And while we are told many times that Jesus is teaching people things, and he is even called teacher in numerous stories, this is the only time in the gospels in which Jesus is asked to give a specific teaching about how to do something, not just to answer a question. And so that seems to be one of the clues to us not only about the importance of prayer, but also that prayer can be taught, and perhaps that prayer should be taught. That while it may seem to come natural to some people, that if you are not good at praying, or don’t feel comfortable praying, that there is some good news for you, that help, through teaching is available. And because it’s a learned activity that means that you can try new things, question, experiment and even fail and all of that is okay. And so, as we continue in our series entitled How do I…? today that is the topic that we move on to, prayer.

How Do I Read the Bible

Here is my message from Sunday. The text was 2 Timothy 3:14-17:

I want you to think about the first Bible you ever received, or that you can remember having. Who gave it to you? How old where you when receive it? What did it look like? Was it a children’s Bible or a regular Bible? Did it have a special place in your house or room where it was kept? Was it treated like any other book or was it treated special? Did your family have other copies of the Bible? How where they treated and where were they kept? Do you still own that Bible? If not, do you know what happened to it? I want you to think about that Bible, and then turn to someone near you and tell each other about that Bible…. I knew that my first Bible was special in some way, although I don’t remember anyone telling me it was special, it was just sort of conveyed. It was different than other books. I knew the stories where special, although I couldn’t tell you why. I mean if nothing else it’s pretty rare to have a book read in public any more and yet this book is read from every week in worship, and we don’t hear from other books in that way. But no one ever said that we read it differently or treat it differently than other books, but we did, and no one ever said this is how to read the Bible. And I’m willing to guess that’s true for most of you as well. And I’m not talking about Sunday school classes that dealt with stories, because they might have actually made approaching scripture even more troubling or confusing. And so today in our series we are going to be looking at how to read scripture, and please note that I can’t get to everything and so some of this will be a 30,000 foot view of reading scripture.

But let’s start with some basics. The Bible is widely considered the best selling book of all time, and large numbers of people own a copy, besides for being found in hotel rooms, and also report believing what it says to be true. But it might be like Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time. A book that everyone has, but few people actually read, and surveys show us this general sense of misinformation. So, for example, 10% of people say that Joan of Ark was Noah’s wife. Only 1/3 can identify that Jesus delivered the sermon on the mount, and more than that think that Billy Graham gave it. 40% believe that both the old and the new testament were written a few years after Jesus’ death, and a not insignificant percentage believe that it was all written in English. Or as a Texas woman was reported to have said, although it’s probably just apocryphal, “If English was good enough for Jesus, then it’s good enough for me.” It was not written in English, not a word, but instead it’s in Hebrew for the Hebrew Bible, or the Old testament, and Greek for the New Testament.

How do I Worship?

Here is my message from Sunday. The text was Matthew 14:22-33:

In 1940, philosopher and educator Mortimer J. Adler wrote a book entitled How to Read a Book. Now how we read books seems to be sort of self-explanatory. Other then the mechanics of learning to read, and sentence structure, and looking for main themes, and things like that, I’m willing to bet that few, if any of us, where ever taught how to read a book. And yet if you’ve ever read Adler’s book then you will probably came to realize that perhaps you didn’t actually know how to read a book after all. And the purpose of that is to say that there are some things that we do just because we’ve always done them, and we may never have been formally taught how to do them. And this definitely includes some things that we do in the church. And so, for the next four weeks, our worship series is going to be addressing some of these ideas and asking the questions that perhaps you may have asked, or maybe even never even thought to ask, of how do I do x, and we start with the question How do I Worship?

Now just like with learning how to read a book, you might think you don’t need to know the mechanics of worshipping, after all you’ve been doing this worship thing for a very long time. But I’m again willing to guess that no one ever set you down and taught you how to worship, or talked about the mechanics of worship, or how to prepare for worship, or what to do after worship. Now, I’m sure there were some things you were taught when you were a child, like to be quiet and not to squirm in your seat. And other things you picked up, like when to sit and when to stand, and how to pretend like you’re singing when you’re not, things like that. But even though worship is this extremely important thing we do, few were taught what it takes to worship, or what we should do to worship. So, what are we called to do in worship, and are there things to help us give more to worship and get more out of worship? And the answer is a most definitive yes.

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.