May the Force be With You

Epiphany 1

Isaiah 43:1-7 and Luke 3

 My family watched The Force Awakens on the IMAX screen at the Air and Space Museum over Christmas.  (Don’t worry - no spoilers for the new movie, in case you haven’t seen it yet.)  But before we saw the new one, we prepared the kids by watching the original three movies.  These are of course now numbered 4,5, and 6, just to confuse the older generations.

I’d seen the originals only once before, in high school, when my friend Eric was aghast that I had missed that very important part of culture and sat me down to watch all of the movies that then existed in one fell swoop.

I’m not sure I thought much about it then, but as I watched the movies again recently, I kept thinking of all the great sermon fodder.  There is so much theology in these movies.  The hero’s journey.  Good and evil, darkness and light.  Fall and redemption.  

And there is so much of the Christian story in particular.  Self-giving love even to the point of death.  The sense of resurrection and communion of saints from the characters that remain part of the story even after death.  And I’m reminded of the unpredictable disciples by the rag tag bunch that is doing the work of the Force - smugglers and black-marketeers, Ewoks and droids. 

I am obviously not the first person to notice these kinds of things.  There is an Episcopal curriculum for teens called Rite 13 that starts out with the kids binge watching the 3 original Star Wars movies.  Someone even wrote a book called The Gospel According to Star Wars.  Christianity Today magazine had a 5-part series on all these Christian connections.

What surprised me was that the religious connection was actually intended by George Lucas.  In an interview with Bill Moyers, Lucas said, “Ultimately the Force is the larger mystery of the universe.”  “That is what that ‘Use the Force’ is, a leap of faith.”  “I put the Force into the movie in order to try to awaken a certain kind of spirituality in young people — more a belief in God than a belief in any particular religious system.  I wanted to make it so that young people would begin to ask questions about the mystery.”  “Not to say, ‘Here's the answer.’ It's to say, ‘Think about this for a second. Is there a God? What does God look like? What does God sound like? What does God feel like? How do we relate to God?’”

Our readings today bring us face to face with George Lucas’ questions, I think.  In the movie, Luke discovers his true identity and then he goes on to live into it by learning to use the Force and become a Jedi.  Our readings encourage us to discover our true identity as people of God and then go on to live into that identity.

Our Old Testament reading from Isaiah is directed to a people living a long time ago, in a galaxy far far away, or so it sometimes feels to us modern readers.  These people had been conquered and thrown into exile.  They lived in fear, with their future in doubt.  The ground they walked on had shifted so much that they no longer knew where they stood.  Their faith was threadbare.  They were indeed in the midst of overwhelming waters and burning flames.  And the prophet Isaiah reminded them who they were and whose they were, despite everything going on around them and even within them.  They were people created and formed by a loving God who is always with them.  And neither God’s love nor their identity rested on their own strength or wisdom or holiness.  Our experiences of overwhelming waters and burning flames may take different forms, but the assurance of God’s presence and love for us is no less certain.  This Force isn’t reserved for Jedi knights; it’s for all of us.

And our Gospel reading from Luke gives us Jesus’ baptism, the moment in Luke’s Gospel when Jesus really seems to realize fully who he is.  We only get one glimpse of Jesus in the Bible between his birth and his baptism - the teenager-in-the-temple story.  The rest of his childhood, teen-hood and young adulthood were lived, it seems, in relative obscurity and uneventfulness and ordinariness.  Then at his baptism, everything changes as God dramatically claims him.

Our own baptisms may not have caused they sky to break open.  We may not have heard voices from heaven or had birds land on us.  We almost certainly haven’t seen encouraging holograms of Obi-Wan Kenobi.  But the message is the same.  Our baptisms announce that we are God’s children, beloved by God.  The core of our being is that we are people marked as Christ’s own forever.  Everything else is secondary.

Now, that doesn’t mean it’s going to be easy to live into this identity of ours.  In Star Wars, even after Luke discovered his true identity and calling, it took a lot of work to live into it.  In order to use the Force, Luke had to spend time with Yoda in the swamp; he had to conquer his doubts and fears and selfish desires; he had to learn how to love unselfishly; he almost lost his life.

For Jesus, living into his identity didn’t seem easy or automatic either.  After his baptism, Jesus headed into the wilderness for 40 days and 40 nights to fast and pray before beginning his ministry in earnest.  And again and again we see him needing time to pray and question God.

And the same is true for us.  Even after we discover our true identity as God’s beloved, it takes a lot of practice as we learn to live that out.  Some possibilities for this practice come recommended both by Yoda and by our baptismal promises.

Just as Yoda used meditation techniques to feel the Force all around him, we connect to God as we continue in the apostles' teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of the bread, and in the prayers. 

Yoda insisted Luke practice with his light saber, saying “Ready are you? What know you of ready?”  We are always in the process of learning how to shine the light of God in the dark places in the world, proclaiming by word and example the Good News of God in Christ.

Just as Yoda saw all people as “luminous beings,” we see and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbors as ourselves.

And we keep renouncing everything that draws us from the love of God, because as Yoda put it, “Fear is the path to the dark side.  Fear leads to anger.  Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.”

We are marked as Christ’s own forever.  “Do or do not.  There is no try.”

May the Force be with you.  Amen.