Presented to Warehouse 614, 03 June 2018 and Alberni Valley Ministries, 05 May 2024, by Captain (Major) Michael Ramsay
This is the 2024 BC Version; to view the 2018 Toronto version, click here:
https://sheepspeaks.blogspot.com/2018/06/matthew-543-38-181-5-and-hosea-121-23.html
Yesterday
was May the fourth. You know what May the Fourth has become known as in recent
years? Star Wars Day!... “May the Forth be with you” is, of course, a play on a
famous phrase from those movies. I think my oldest two daughters and I have
seen all the movies that were released in the theatres (at least the ones since
they have been born) – so has my mom. We haven’t watched all the spin off
series and everything. But yesterday as it was May the Fourth and Susan had
gone to see Rebecca, Heather and I watch a Star Wars film or two. And today I
will share with you some lessons that we can learn from the Star Wars franchise.
I did really
like the original movies from the 70s and 80s and a couple of the others. One
of the other much later ones that the older girls and I saw in the theatres was
SOLO. It was the back story of one of the main characters of Star Wars, Han Solo.
SOLO, was
a good movie. It can be seen as a stand-alone action-adventure show. You don’t
need to be a Star Wars fan to enjoy the movie. There was one scene in the film
that stuck in my mind. Han, the main character, was emigrating from his home
planet and a customs official asked him for his name and he said, ‘Han’; then the
official asked Han who his people were so he that could assign him a last name.
Han replied that he didn't have any people; so, after the customs official
thought for a while, the surname 'Solo' was awarded to him. Thus, we have the
name ‘Han Solo’. And that brings us to the first of three lessons from Star
Wars that we are going to look at today.
LESSON
1: WHO ARE MY PEOPLE?
Hosea 1: 21-23:
“In that day I will respond,”
declares the Lord—
“I will respond to the skies,
and they will respond to the earth;
22 and the earth will respond to the grain,
the new wine and the olive oil,
and they will respond to Jezreel.
23 I will plant her for myself in the land;
I will show my love to the one
I called ‘Not my loved one.’
I will say to those called ‘Not my
people,’ ‘You are my people’;
and they will say, ‘You are my God.’”
Who
are your people? When I was studying restorative justice at Simon Fraser
University a few years ago now, my instructor asked us the same question for
one of our papers. I pondered this for a while and wrote a long essay claiming
many people as my people: my family, the people I grew up with, those in The
Salvation Army, those in the community in which I lived at the time and all the
communities in which I had lived previously, people in the courts and people in
the prisons where I was ministering at the time and previously; my colleagues,
associates, friends, clients, neighbours; anyone I could think of I claimed as
my people. And now, of course, if I were asked that same question, ‘who are my
people?’ It would be many people in town here who are part of the groups I am a
part of, the people we work with on the streets, our friends at the Bread of
Life; the first thing to come to my mind, however, when asked ‘who are my
people?’ would, of course, be all of you. You are my people. You are my
friends.
I am
your people. Furthermore, as we submit to the Lord, we are all His people. We
are part of the family of God. Even if at one point in our lives we were not
part of God's family, He wants us to be part of His people and when we accept
Him as Father we join his family. When we accept Him as Lord we become one of
His people. When this is the case, we are no longer solo but we always have the
Lord to turn to and to lean on in times of crisis; therefore, if you haven't
already, I invite you to accept the LORD's invitation to be one of His people
today.
When
we do become his people, He will transform us from darkness to light, from
secrets to honestly and from hatred to love.
LESSON
2: LOVELY LIGHT SABERS
Matthew 5:43-48:
“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbour and hate
your enemy.’ 44 But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who
persecute you, 45 that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes
his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and
the unrighteous. 46 If you love those who love you, what reward will you get?
Are not even the tax collectors doing that? 47 And if you greet only your own
people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? 48 Be
perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
These
days we see a lot of hatred in the news and in social media. People hate this
person. People hate that person. People hate this person for hating that person
and people hate those people because they all hate these people. So much hatred!
There
is a pivotal moment in the original movie franchise, where the main bad guy,
the antagonist, Darth Vader is trying to turn our hero, Luke from good to bad,
from truth to secrecy, from the Light to the Darkness; He wants to convert him
from good to bad; how does he try to do this? He tries to do this by enticing
him to hate. He tells Luke that only his hatred can destroy his enemy: this is
a lie of Darth Vader and this is also a lie of our enemy, the Enemy, the devil.
In the real world, hate cannot defeat evil; hate can only become evil. Hate is
what turns a good person, bad; it is love, Jesus’ love, which redeems us. As
soon as we give into the temptation to hate someone, we have given into the
Enemy: we have become his prey.
Martin
Luther King Jr said, “Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it. Hatred confuses
life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illuminates it.” “Let no
man pull you so low as to hate him.” “I have decided to stick to love...Hate is
too great a burden to bear.”
‘Do
you know what the stupidest expression in the world is?’ - a firefighter once
asked me - ‘fight fire with fire;’ ‘you don’t fight fire with fire; that just
causes a bigger fire!’ It is the same with hate. Hate cannot drive out hate.
Only love can do that. If I get drawn into hating someone because they hate
something or someone than I have just caused love to shrink and hate to grow.
If on the other hand we love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us,
then even we may be called children of our Father in heaven. If we love more
than just those who love us then indeed we may even be perfect as our heavenly
Father is perfect. Therefore let us resolve to love one another and let us wish
each other well - even those who may wish us ill.
LESSON
3: NEW REVISED EDITION
Matthew 18:1-5:
At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, “Who, then,
is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?”
2 He called a little child to
him, and placed the child among them. 3 And he said: “Truly I tell you, unless
you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of
heaven. 4 Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the
greatest in the kingdom of heaven. 5 And whoever welcomes one such child in my
name welcomes me.
Our
life can't be edited. It can be changed. I remember watching the original Star
Wars in the theatre in 1977. In 1981 one of my friends had this neat new
machine: a VCR. It was really quite something. We could actually pause shows
and even rewind parts of them and watch them over and over again. I saw Star
Wars and The Empire Strikes back more than once or twice.
Many
years later, early on in this century, a friend lent me DVDs of the trilogy. I
couldn't believe it. The movies had actually changed! They weren’t the same
movies that I saw in 70s and 80s. I was sort of in shock: Why was Jabba the
Hutt in Star Wars? Who was this new Darth Vader at the end of Return of the
Jedi? I don't remember Storm Troopers on lizards, and I am pretty sure that Han
shot first in that very famous bar scene. I asked my friend why the movies were
different from when I first saw them; he replied that he hoped that the changes
didn't ruin the movies for me.
A
while later, when I was able to look on-line for movies, I looked for copies of
the Star Wars movies as I would have seen them in the 1970s or 1980s. I
couldn't find them anywhere. I tired every way I could think of to find them,
but I could only find the revised versions of these movies. The originals are
forever in my memory and have made an impression on me; the original versions
of the movies have left significant impressions on many people. The movies,
however, are no longer like that.
This
is like our life. There are things that some of us may have done that we wish
we had never done. Maybe our actions have caused someone physical injury that
has not healed. Maybe our actions have caused someone emotional or
psychological pain that has not healed. Maybe our actions have changed
circumstances in such a way as nothing will ever be the same again. There is
now a new normal. The repercussions of past actions may stick with us and
others like the memory of an original version of a movie or an old song that we
cannot find anymore. We cannot change what has happened or how it has affected
us.
However,
we can be changed so that these things from the past never happen again. God
can take all the bad things in our life and make sure that they never replay
again. God can change us even more than George Lucas can change his movies. God
can forgive our sins, transform our stories, and make us brand new today. He
can take out the parts that hurt and hinder us and rewrite our script so that
we are a blessing to others. So, to that end today, if there is anything that
we want rewritten in our story, if we haven't offered our life up to the Lord
for changing yet, I invite us to do so this very day.
Let us
pray.
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