Just over two years ago, just before Covid, I found myself weeping in a theatre. The movie, The Rise of Skywalker, was part of the Star Wars franchise. 

            Why the tears? The movie, was not, after all, high art. It’s a cartoon drawn with live actors and full of especially silly effects.

Luke, Leia, and Han!

            A bit of background. The Rise of Skywalker’s plot is much the same as that of every Star Wars movie. The Resistance—good guys and gals—is once again down on its luck and hiding. The evil Emperor Palpatine is back with a new fleet of planet destroyers. The last and most beautiful Jedi knight, Rey, is the chosen one to save the universe. After several light-saber duels and gun battles; after jumping from one moving space ship to another; after sailing a tiny boat across a raging sea; after dying and rising from the dead; Rey Palpatine—for it turns out that she is the evil emperor’s granddaughter—Rey Palpatine defeats the evil emperor and decides to change her name to Rey Skywalker (the good). The universe is saved. The end.

            Silly? Yes. Cartoonish? Absolutely. 

            And yet. watching a The Rise of Skywalker matinee at Yorkdale theatre in Toronto, I wept. Not just a bit around the edges, but big tears rolled down my face. Why?

            Nostalgia. I saw the first Star Wars movie in the summer of 1977. I was 20. I went with three other guys, days before we all hopped in a car and drove across Canada and back on ten dollars a day. I was so carefree back then. I wasn’t taking my studies seriously. I had an uncomplicated relationship with church and faith that fed me. I wasn’t thinking about the future or my dreams. I had a loving family. Life was good.

            But now, as I watched the latest Star Wars movie and remembered the first, I realized that of the four of us who went on that road trip, two have already died untimely deaths. So right off, sitting in that theatre, I’m thinking both about how good life can be, but also how brief and full of loss it can be. You know. Several family members have died. My church and faith life have become hugely problematic. And all of it choked me up.

            We’ve come a way since the Psalmist said we might live to be seventy—or eighty if our strength endured. Many of us will actually live to 90 or even 100. Still, I won’t live forever, and my life, like yours, is now full of cares and concerns, as well as joys and satisfaction, that I could not have imaged when I was 20. Watching Rise of Skywalker triggered memories of my first Star Wars movie and homesickness for carefree times. Those were the days, my friends. 

            Once, a few years ago, before my tears, I wrote a sermon critical of nostalgia. I said that nostalgia has a sweet aroma, but we too often weaponize it. For example, we may unrealistically remember the past as nothing but a time of surpassing blessing and think less of the present by way of comparison. This sort of nostalgia that inspires slogans like, “Make America Great Again.” But if you think about it, “great” like when? When Ronald Reagan was president? But his campaign slogan was also “Make America Great Again.” So great like when? Like the pre-civil-rights era? Great like the Great Depression? Great like during the slavery or reconstruction eras? Great like when Sir John A. McDonald and other Fathers of Confederation conspired to cultural – and physical -- genocide by setting up Residential Schools and using hunger as a political tool?

           Nostalgia can also be weaponized by using true memories to beat on the present. This happens in churches, a lot. Why don’t we have two hundred kids in Sunday School anymore? Why is church empty compared to thirty years ago? Why is there so much strife and anger in our denomination compared to when I was a kid? 

            But nostalgia doesn’t have to be weaponized. As with other human emotions, nostalgia can also build us up. Nostalgia can inform our hopes and dreams for the future, even if we’re in trouble now. 

           

            Constantine Sedikides recounts how concentration camp sustained themselves by telling stories about past meals and gatherings, before the Nazis came. “This is what we did,” one survivor said. “We used our memories to temporarily alter our perception of the state we were in. It was not a solution, but the temporary change in perception allowed you to persevere just a bit longer. And that could be crucial.” Nostalgia insists on emotionally monetizing the past, even when it wasn’t perfect.

            Nostalgia, then—tears at a Star Wars movie—doesn’t have to be a sign of weakness. On that day nostalgia was mostly a harbinger for tomorrow’s possibilities. There will be more road trips, more friends, more loving family, and more carefree days—along with disappointments, too.

            But I will face these disappointments with gratitude rather than bitterness. Nostalgia’s sweetness—in spite of difficult memories mixed in—is an invitation to new adventures rather than a setting down one’s roots in the land of loss. 

            It’s very exciting. I could almost cry. Which I did. At the Star Wars movie.

The Myth of Jesus' Return

            When Jesus walked from Galilee to Golgotha, he and his followers hoped that the end of the world was just around the corner. That is, they believed that God would one day soon tear open the heavens, come on down, judge both the living and the dead, and bring history as we know it to an end. Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place” (Mark 13:28-31).

            Of course, Jesus got it wrong. Perhaps sensing that Jesus’ words were a bit bold, years later the writer of the Gospel of Mark has Jesus temper hopes for his speedy return by having Jesus add, “But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father” (13:32).

            Nevertheless, the earliest Christians continued to hope that Jesus would soon return. To give one of the more humorous Biblical examples, the Apostle Paul wrote to the Corinthians concerning virgins considering marriage, “in view of the impending crisis, it is well for you to remain as you are . . . for the present form of this world is passing away” (1 Cor. 7:25-31). Unfortunately, his advice probably made for some very old bachelors and maidens. Jesus did not return in those virgins’ lifetimes.

            The last 150 years have seen a huge upsurge in predictions about the immanence of Jesus’ return. The largest wing of Christian Fundamentalism, Premillennial Dispensationalism, is committed to reading the Bible and newspaper headlines about the Middle-east as if they were secret codebooks that reveal how Jesus will return any minute now.

            Of course, all of such predictions, whether they are found in the Bible or are being made by TV preachers, are wrong. For all their Bible studies on Revelation and their adding and subtracting of millenniums to dates for the State of Israel; for all their book, TV and Christian radio warnings of the end-time battles at Armageddon or Aleppo, for all their Left Behind novels and YouTube movies of Jesus floating down from the clouds, so far, Jesus has not returned.

It is no wonder, really, that from day one Christians hoped for Jesus’ return. Life was tough. From job loss to imprisonment, from slavery to—in some cases—being fed to the lions, choosing Christianity meant choosing for membership in the bottom rung of society. So early Christians directed their hopes towards escape by means of a deus ex machina—the god who sometimes suddenly appeared on a crane at the end of Greek dramas to save the hero. Early Christians hoped for a similar sudden, liberating reappearance of Jesus.

            And many people still hope for Jesus to save them from the trials and tribulations of this world. In a way, we understand. Terrorism. Crime. Taxes. Deficits. The chaos of the Arab Spring, North Korea and Afghanistan. New public values when it comes to sex, being gay, abortion, and on and on—no wonder the world seems out of control to some people. They put their hope in a belief that Jesus will return on the clouds and save them from all this. Soon! Maybe this year!

            The trouble with putting your hope in a miraculous return of Jesus to earth is that instead of trying to do something here and now to make the world a better place, you are mightily tempted to wait for Jesus to do it for you. If Jesus is going to return to judge the world and cleanse it from all evil, then why should we bother to do anything ourselves? The kind of Christianity that focuses on Jesus’ return makes for a week-kneed Christianity that has no energy for social action, unless it is the sort of social action that calls sinners to repent and be saved before the Day of Judgment.

But all such hope for the future is vain, based on wishful readings of the Bible. Whatever mysterious way Divinity works with and among us to make the world a better place, it won’t be Jesus returning on the clouds that seals it. Like the story of Adam and Eve, Biblical texts about Jesus’ return, whether in the gospels or Revelation, are all written in the language of myth. They're important texts, full of meaning and insight, but they're nothing like history.

            So what ought we base our hope on? Well, according to 1 Corinthians 13:13, "And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.” What this text suggests is that we’ll never really understand hope until we understand that love is the greatest. Hope is love's legitimate child.

I don’t mean to be simplistic here. I’m offering a sort of “think global, act local” solution to our feelings of hopelessness. Our hope for overcoming this world’s woes is, naturally, partly rooted in the mysterious presence of God in and among us. But if God is present, much of the mystery of God has to do with how God inspires us against our baser instincts to nevertheless root our lives in love for neighbor. Whether you are a parent, a pastoral care worker, a money manager, a nurse, a CEO of a company that produces useful widgets, each of us can find ways appropriate to our position for putting our neighbors—our children, fellow church members, customers—in a better place tomorrow than today.

It is as the Apostle Paul said, more wisely than with his words of advice for virgins: “If I have prophetic powers, and understand all the mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing . . . Love never ends. But as for prophecies they will come to an end . . . for now we see in a mirror, dimly. And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.”

(For more on this theme, see the entry for June 4, 2011, "The End of the World." Feel free to leave a comment, too!)

Style and Class

 It is getting awfully close to Canada Day. And that reminds me that I'm of Dutch heritage, too. A favorite story told by Dutch immigrants to Canada and the United States, retold by Sietze Buning in his book of poetry titled Style and Class, concerns Queen Juliana of the Netherlands. Juliana was the mother of the current Queen, Beatrix. Juliana ruled from 1948 to 1980. 

Early in her reign, in 1952, Queen Juliana made a visit to a college campus where a number of Dutch immigrants taught, and many more attended. Professors in cap and gown lined the sidewalks as an honor guard while the college president escorted the Queen and her husband Prince Bernhard into the chapel for a convocation.

One elderly professor, too deaf to realize how loudly he spoke, stood waiting for the queen to pass by. As she passed, he broke the honorable silence of the royal procession by saying, to nobody in particular: "Wat heeft zij tog dikke benen!" which translated means, "My, what fat legs she's got!"   

Everybody in the procession heard him. Queen Juliana too.

   

The queen stopped, backed up, faced the old professor, smiled, and said to him, with a smile: "Mijnheer, daar moet het hele Oranjehuis op rusten," which translated means, "Sir, these legs need to hold up the whole House of Orange."  Everyone who heard this cheered.

            Now, it seems obvious that most of the dignified professors who stood in cap and gown along the sidewalks had good style. The old professor who spoke too loudly lacked style. But nobody minded, because Queen Juliana had class.

            This little story is a kind of parable about what it takes to be a good Christian—though I’m sure the story could be applied to being a good Jew or Muslim, too. You see, on the whole, people call us Christians because we have a certain style. We dress up and go to church Sundays. We make sure our buildings are attractive to look at, preferably with a steeple or some stained glass. We have councils and synods and presbyteries. We pray before our meals, some of us even in restaurants. We resist the use of foul language. People see our style, and they figure we must be Christians. Big deal.

            We cannot do without this kind of style, of course. But there has to be more to being Christian than just style. Just as Queen Juliana rose above everyday style on account of her being a queen; so too, we Christians must rise above our everyday style. Christians, after all, claim to be ambassadors of reconciliation for the Lord of the Universe. We really ought to have class.

            What we need when it comes to authentic Christianity is faith, hope and love. But the classiest of these is love.