First in a series, Jesus and the Jedi : Faith and Film

Romans 1:16-17 May the Force Be With You 19 June 2011 John 16:4b-15 First Presbyterian Church, Birmingham, AL Trinity J. Shannon Webster First in a series, Jesus and the Jedi : Faith and Film A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, which is a way of saying, Once upon a time, indicates that a story is coming, and not just any story but an important one one that has been passed down repeatedly since that time. So began George Lucas movie Star Wars : A New Hope, first made of 6 films in the saga, which began in 1977. And lest it seems a presumptuous beginning, remember that for 20 years it held the title of being the largest-grossing movie of all time until Titanic surpassed it in 1998. Today begins the first of our summer preaching series on Faith and Film, which we have titled, Jesus and the Jedi. And Star Wars is the first film we will be in theological conversation with. So a bit of introduction to this summer s project might be in order. The movies are not our text, the scripture is. But since, as Science Fiction writer Orson Scott Card remarked, Hardly anybody can answer the easy Bible questions on Jeopardy anymore, but almost everybody can tell you about Obi-Wan Kenobi, Darth Vader, Yoda and the Force, 1 it is probably important to have the ability to think about popular culture in terms of our faith. Some of you know that I regularly teach a course on Theology and Country Music, where I do the same thing, and one can and should be able to do that with TV or novels or any aspect of popular culture that purports to carry meaning. There has always been a rich exchange between religion and literature, and those who study cinema make a good case that film is the literature of our times. Canadian theologian Douglas John Hall puts it this way: To be a Christian theologian is, surely, to open oneself or more accurately, to find oneself being opened to everything: every testimony to transcendence, every thought and experience of the species, every wonder of the natural order, every reminiscence of the history of the planet, every work of art of literature, every motion picture, every object of beauty and pathos everything under the sun, and the sun too. 2 There will be those who may see this as a bit frivolous, even for summer fun, or see movies only as entertainment and therefore without any real spiritual value, or think Hollywood should learn from the church and not the other way around. That s a defensible position. What has Athens to do with Jerusalem? But as Presbyterian minister and film critic Edward McNulty points out, the movie Field of Dreams struck a chord so deep thousands go to Iowa every year to see the preserved baseball field in a corn field. 3 We better find out what that is about. God refuses to stay cooped up in our liturgies and our sanctuaries. Star Wars has some real significance. You know a lot about it even if you never saw it. Bryan Stone writes: Rarely do films enter the collective self-understanding of a culture the way Star Wars has. 4 Garrett Seminary professor Robert Jewett agrees: it reveals the formative values of the culture, and to some degree forms those values as well. 5 Back in 1997, when the movie was 20 years old, Newsweek (1-20-97) declared Star Wars 1

part of the culture in an article announcing that the Smithsonian was preparing an exhibit on the movie s mythology and social themes, whose musical score was a hymn, the plot a parable. For those who haven t seen it in a long time, or have forgotten, a quick recap of the story (figuring spoilers are irrelevant for this film): A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, almost the entire galaxy is under the heel of the evil Galactic Empire. The Emperor is named Palpatine and his storm troopers are organized in legions, wearing Nazi SS-style uniforms, evoking images of evil empires past. As the film opens, a farmboy on a dusty, backwater planet, Luke Skywalker, recovers two lost Droids (robots R2D2 and C3PO) that contain secret information. The information is: a) the plans to the Death Star, an invincible planet-killing battleship aimed at the resistance, and b) the location where Princess Leia, leader of the Rebel Alliance, is being held captive. A holograph of the Princess inspires young Skywalker to attempt her rescue, but he is restrained by wiser heads, namely aging mystic Obi-Wan Kenobi. Obi-Wan convinces him he is not yet ready for this quest. Obi-Wan Kenobi turns out to be one of the last of the Jedi Knights, a legendary band of warrior-priests with a belief in and devotion to a mysterious power known as the Force. The Jedi s previous role had been the peace and security of the galaxy, until the evil empire had destroyed them or chased them into hiding. Obi-Wan sends Luke to a swamp planet to train under another aging Jedi warrior, Yoda, who is a 2-foot tall, green-skinned gnome of a being who looks suspiciously like Albert Einstein. Yoda is wise and powerful though, and teaches Luke to access the power of the Force. The rest of the movie is the quest and the battle. It takes a large cast to save the universe, and many adventures. At the center of it all is the Force. It turns out the Force can be used by adepts on both sides of this conflict. The most significant figure on the side of the Galactic Empire is Darth Vader, a Black Knight who is strong in his use of the Force. The good knight, Obi-Wan Kenobi, describes the force as that which is around us, pervades us, and holds the universe together. (Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence? Psalm 139:7) It is that which gives the Jedi his power, says Obi-Wan. When the Black Knight, Lord Vader, speaks of the Force he calls it the dark side of the Force, or simply, the dark side. So what is the Force, in this movie? Neither theologians nor movie critics agree which delights me, because that must mean there is some substance in the mythology that Director George Lucas has created. Bryan Stone sees the Force as a Zen-like philosophy, or perhaps more like the Chinese Tao, the underlying essence of the universe. 6 Many others see in the Force a clear parallel to the Holy Spirit. And that is easy enough to do. In our text from the Gospel of John, when Jesus was preparing his disciples for life without him, he promised to send them the Paraclete, or Advocate, who will teach the world about sin and righteousness, right and wrong. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth, for he will not speak on his own... and declare to you the things that are to come. The Holy Spirit is the power and essence of God, is how we experience God day to day. 2

The Holy Spirit is that which sustains the church, leads, teaches, gives dreams and visions, binds all things together. Jesus point to the disciples was that righteousness no longer came by birth but by faith. God s promise (in Abraham and Sarah) to bless the whole world was coming true. The first Christians experience was that the Holy Spirit was like a force that dwelled within them. Like the Jedi. Do you not know that you are God s temple and that God s Spirit dwells in you? Paul asks in 1 Corinthians 3:16. And in Romans 8:16, he says: It is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God. As the prophet Joel promised: Then afterwards I will pour out my spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions. As to the movie, because the Force can be used for the dark side as well as for good, Seattle Pacific professor Dick Staub sees the Force as something separate from God, over which God rules - the Lord of the Force, as he says. No matter how powerful the Jedi were, they knew they could not be omnipotent. So it is with Christians whose training begins by recognizing limitations namely, there is a Lord of the Force, and you are not it! 7 Edinburgh theologian John McDowell disagrees, and says the Force is the movies God. 8 He points out that the Force is called the Force when it is being used for good. The film refers to the dark side of the Force when it is being used otherwise; that is the only time it requires a descriptor. Belief in the Force, or faith in God, requires decisions for an ethical life how you will live, for what and for whom you will live. Obi-Wan Kenobi says of the Jedi: We speak of the will of the force as someone ignorant of gravity might say it is the will of the river to flow to the ocean: it is a metaphor that describes our ignorance. 9 And that is true for us as well. How can we describe with finite tongues an infinite God that defies description, that us beyond and above all personality? We can only do that with metaphor, and there have been worse metaphors than the Force. When President Reagan attempted this language, back in the days when he instituted the Star Wars missile defense initiative, he mis-used the metaphor, saying the force is with us. It is May the force be with you it is a wish for others, a blessing. The life of the Jedi is other-directed. As Obi-Wan said, Remember, Luke, the suffering of one man (sic) is the suffering of all. Distances are irrelevant to injustice. Obi-Wan becomes a Christ-figure in the movie when, in a light-saber duel with Darth Vader, he crosses his arms and willingly gives his life for others, distracting attention from the escaping spaceship that carries his disciples. Darth Vader is an example of what happens when you misuse the force. Not only does his soul become weak, but his body as well, until he is more machine than human, pale as wasted under his helmet, even though a spark of good yet remains. To abuse God s salvation, to imagine God is other than who God is, brings terrible consequences. It removes from our life the Lordship of grace and love and replaces it with submission to something unworthy. And what we usually take as Lord, in place of God, is our own selves and the darkness of our own desires, striking out at all who would get in the way. 3

Oh yes, how does it end? In the first chapter of Romans, the Apostle Paul writes that he is not ashamed of the gospel; it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith the one who is righteous will live by faith. The heart trusts in the grace of God. It is not faith that gives power, in Paul s cause-and-effect here, but the power of God that makes faith possible. Here s how the movie ends: The Rebels pore over the stolen diagrams of the Death Star until they find a weakness in an exhaust pipe that can only be struck by a small single-piloted fighter craft. In the ensuing battle at Yavin IV no pilot succeeds in getting to that vulnerable, small space until Luke Skywalker, racing his X-wing fighter down a narrow seam, hears the otherworldly voice of Obi-Wan Kenobi telling him to turn off his targeting computer, and trust the Force. One shot does it, and the liberated Princess Leia gives medals to Luke and his ally Han Solo. The Force has prevailed. McDowell admits that Star Wars does not offer a coherent philosophy of life or a sustained theology, yet it does keep drawing us back to the ethical questions, what are we to do with evil, and how do we identify it? 10 In the end it is just a story, but a good story. And some films take us out of ourselves and our world enough to get a better look at ourselves. Some show us the evil human beings are capable of, and some show us the glory. Perhaps this one shows what is possible when we trust the Force, that is, when we let our faith claim the power of God for salvation, for justice, for good. Saint Augustine wrote 1600 years ago, Faith is believing what you do not see; the reward of faith is to see what you believe. 11 4

1 Card, Orson Scott. Star Wars Our Public Religion, USA Today, March 17, 1997. 2 Hall, Douglas John. Theology Today 59, Bound and Free. Princeton Seminary, 2002, p.421. 3 McNulty, Edward, Faith and Film, Westminster/John Knox Press, Louisville, 2007, p.5. 4 Stone, Bryan, Faith and Film : Theological Themes at the Cinema, Chalice Press, St. Louis, 2000, p. 133. 5 Jewett, Robert. St. Paul at the Movies, Westminster/John Knox Press, Louisville, 1993, p. 20 6 Stone, pp 134-135. 7 Staub, Dick. Christian Wisdom of the Jedi Masters, Jossey-Bass, 2005, p. 101. 8 McDowell, John C. The Gospel According to Star Wars, Westminster/John Knox, Louisville, 2007 p. 16ff. 9 ibid, p. 33 10 ibid, p. 36 11 Augustine, Tractate XL, Chapter VIII, 28-32