Dear St. Luke’s,

As I write this to you it is May the Fourth. Many of you are probably aware that Star Wars fans are interjecting “May the Fourth be with you” wherever possible. This is a play on the common greeting of the heroes of the franchise, “May the Force be with you”, and every year I get a kick out of the pun, and by the time May the Fifth comes along, I am ready for the joke to be over for another year, and thankful that Cinco de Mayo creates a hard stop to this annual tradition. For Episcopalians and other like-minded Christians, this season resonates with our commonly used phrase to begin a prayer, “The Lord be with you!” or how we begin the peace, “The Peace of the Lord be always with you!”

You may have also noticed a picture of Obi Wan Kenobi in the vesting room. If you are unaware, Obi Wan is one of the many characters in the Star Wars Universe, and is easily recognizable to anyone who grew up watching the Star Wars films and TV shows. You can find images of Star Wars characters in other nearby Episcopal establishments as well. The National Cathedral famously has a grotesque that intentionally looks like Darth Vader. Why has Star Wars invaded our Church vernacular? Or, why has Church invaded the Star Wars Universe? Is there some sort of real connection between the Episcopal Church and Star Wars, or is this just some sort of weird thing that keeps popping up. As with everything else in the Church world, the answer is simultaneously, “yes, absolutely”, “probably not” and “I don’t really know.”

Yes, absolutely. George Lucas (creator of Star Wars) grew up Methodist, and has occasionally identified has a Methodist Buddhist hybrid, but it is not clear if he was practicing either faith any time recently. The phrase we hear in our worship every Sunday, “The Lord be with you” has ancient origins, and can be found in the Book of Ruth. The Christian influence in Star Wars is undeniable, but if you look at it as a mix with Buddhism then it makes a bit more sense. There is clearly a connection, but I think it is super important to not look into this too much. George Lucas’s primary motivation was to be a good story teller, and did not intend to create a new way of perceiving religion. George Lucas had to draw on something to create an entire world with its own culture, religion and customs, and he drew on what he knew. Yes, the connection is there, and sometimes using the stories in Star Wars as a teaching tool can be helpful, but I wouldn’t look too much into it.

Probably not. A story circulated on social media a number of years ago of someone’s grandmother who went to the thrift store and found a painting of Jesus. She purchased the painting and hung it up in a prominent place in her home. The problem was that it was not a painting of Jesus, but Obi Wan Kenobi from Star Wars. I bet this story was made up, but I thought it was hilarious. If you look at the picture of Obi Wan, and the painting “Head of Christ” by Warner Sallman, then you can definitely see the resemblance, and would understand the connection. There is some connection. Once again, George Lucas had to draw his inspiration from somewhere, and Obi Wan is meant to be a benevolent mentor to the protagonist, so why not make him look like Jesus. So why is Obi Wan in the vesting room. I put him there to make the acolytes laugh, and like a lot of my attempt of humor it is meant to poke fun at religious stuff, but also have an opportunity to learn something. The real Jesus did not look anything like Obi Wan Kenobi, or how Jesus appeared in Sallman’s painting. Obi Wan in the vesting room can teach us about the force, and that it is important to worship God, and not our idea of what God looks like, because the latter will always fall short.

I don’t really know. Darth Vader is very much officially part of the National Cathedral as a grotesque, which is a statue that is meant to draw water away from the supports of the Cathedral…. or something like that. We don’t have them, so I don’t’ worry about them too much. Either way, when the Cathedral was being designed there was a contest for children to design four grotesques and Darth Vader got third place. The other winners include a girl with braces, a man with an umbrella and a raccoon. People like to say a mason snuck it in there, which is just an urban legend that makes the story a bit better. I doubt the children made a profound connection between Darth Vader and the religious building he would adorn, but who knows?

Star Wars and Christianity are huge parts of our culture, and there is no surprise that we see plenty of connections. Some of those are intentional and meaningful, while others are simply there. If you read through scripture, you see vestiges of similar things that have been largely lost to time. Go through the psalms and try to imagine how the original audience would have perceived the world. Leviathan comes up a ton, and if you were not raised in the Church you’d probably assume some watery sea dragon plays a big part in our faith, and there has got to be some explanation to Psalm 74:14 that describes God killing the leviathan by hitting over the head and giving it’s meat to the creatures/people in the wilderness. We are thousands of years out from when those words were written, and the significance of the Leviathan can be inferred but there is no longer the cultural knowledge to give it the same meaning. As to the bit about God bashing in it’s head, we will never know.

Thousands of years from now some Christian historian will write a thesis about the Darth Vader grotesque and the connection between Obi Wan and the very European looking Jesus that we see in Sallman’s work, but they simply won’t get it in the same way that many of us do, because it is part of our culture now. Faith and religion never exist in a silo. There is no pure faith, only the desire for it, so don’t be surprised when you see echos of Church in the world around you.

Blessings,

Nick