Advent Sunday 4 Is the Universal "Christ" the True Skywalker? Love Rises & Seeks to be United to All

Dec 22

Written By Swedenborgian Community

Today's message can be found below.

All Are Welcome

Love Changes Everything Honeymoon Suite

Star Wars Christmas Medley

Opening Readings

From Biblical & Hebrew Scripture

Matthew 2:1-15

After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Mag from the east came to Jerusalem and asked, “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.”

When King Herod heard this he was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him. When he had called together all the people’s chief priests and teachers of the law, he asked them where the Messiah was to be born. “In Bethlehem in Judea,” they replied, “for this is what the prophet has written:

“‘But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah,
are by no means least among the rulers of Judah;
for out of you will come a ruler
who will shepherd my people Israel.’”

Then Herod called the Magi secretly and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared. He sent them to Bethlehem and said, “Go and search carefully for the child. As soon as you find him, report to me, so that I too may go and worship him.”

After they had heard the king, they went on their way, and the star they had seen when it rose went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw the star, they were overjoyed. On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. And having been warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to their country by another route.

When they had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. “Get up,” he said, “take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.”

So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt, where he stayed until the death of Herod. And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet: “Out of Egypt I called my son.”

Isaiah 9:6

For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

Is the Universal "Christ" the True Skywalker? How Love Rises & Seeks to be United to All Rev. Cory Bradford-Watts

In the newest Star Wars movie (no spoilers), The Rise of Skywalker, there’s a real emphasis on the true empowerment that the characters can gain from the generations that came before them. And not the power of only their ancestors, but from those who share in their line of love – whether evil (Sith) or good (Jedi). Spiritually - at least in the Star Wars universe, and this movie in particular - there’s something about a shared love that mutually empowers them according to that love, that allows them to connect with each other across space, time, as well as the trappings of isolation or dimension. And we see this shared empowerment through the union of love bring those characters hope, peace, empowerment, and ultimately, joy.

Of course, in this interfaith community (grounded in a mystical Christianity called Swedenborgianism) we typically believe much the same for everyone! Indeed, an open and symbolic interpretation of Jesus’ birth may point to how the great creating and unifying force of Divine Love seeks to be born and rise in our lives, no matter our tradition, through a transformation of our hearts toward goodness, of our minds toward wisdom, and of our actions toward justice. Unfortunately, often our traditions and personal perspectives can get caught up in dogma and exclusionism (“you must believe that Jesus was born 2000 years ago and is your Lord & Master, or hell is in your future”), which I believe is entirely at odds with Christ’s own ministry of openness and his insistence that we “turn” toward love, with acceptance and support for the outcasts and the downtrodden.

The word “Christ” ultimately means savior and the force of Divine Love that works for our salvation from oppression and hurt (which is the Sith), and we’re told that it seeks to do that saving (Jedi) work in all of our hearts no matter our faith or belief in the historical Jesus Christ.

We can see this saving ministry of the God of Love in the symbolism and actuality of Jesus’ birth, as well as in the symbolism (intentional or not) of the journey of the Skywalkers in Star Wars as they work against evil to further justice and the power of goodness and connection in the universe. Further, we’re told that it is Divine Love itself that drove God’s choice to create the universe, and it also drives his insistent work to uplift justice, life, and the union of love, while also allowing us freedom to follow our own type of love for goodness or evil.

God’s rescue mission of incarnating humbly in a manger as a baby and rising as the Christ is also similarly symbolic to how God seeks to rise in our hearts, empowering us one step at a time from humility toward greater love, goodness and life. Like the good side of the force, God further empowers us if we’re willing to follow in some part of God’s infinite, Divine Love: what we might call God’s lineage.

Moreover, like Christ, the Skywalkers in Star Wars also have humble beginnings, and like Christ, due to their love for others they work against evil forces to establish a legacy of love and justice in the universe. The term “Star Wars” refers to this work, the battle of good and evil, and funny enough, our theological inspiration, Emanuel Swedenborg, believed that the wars described in the Old Testament were symbolic of this too – the battle of helping us further connect our hearts with God’s.

The 18^th century mystic Swedenborg wrote, “Truly, the essence of all love is to be found in union, in the life of love that we call joy, delight, pleasure, sweetness, blessedness, contentment, and happiness. The essence of love is that what is ours should belong to someone else. Feeling the joy of someone else as joy within ourselves – that is loving.

“That is how the Lord loves us, and His only desire is to have us receive his love more fully so we can be joined with Him and brought into the greatest happiness. If we think of that in terms of ourselves as patterns in the fabric of spiritual reality, it would be aligning that pattern with the grain of that fabric.”

Further, Swedenborg wrote that these wars are symbolic and spiritually descriptive of the inner temptations and battles that Christ was ultimately born to overcome in his own earthly life, which helped him further establish the reign of Divine Love and spiritual freedom in the universe. Like the Skywalkers, Christ was ordained and prophesied to enter an epic Star Wars, choosing to walk with the stars in order to more greatly empower and inspire the universe toward life, toward a loving union with him and others. And similar to the Skywalkers, scriptures even say that he came to bring a sword, one that strikes down falsity and hurtfulness.

Matthew 2:1-15 is another example of the spiritual truth of God’s Star Wars against evil in story form, whether literal or not. We’re told that after the Christ is born, the reigning King Herod (“Herod” meaning warrior) seeks to destroy this threat to his dominating, warrior power. And the story describes how it’s not until Herod's death that Christ can more freely enter his walk and ministry of love in the holy land.

Just this small section of the story alone carries so much symbolic truth for us doesn’t it? We each have both a Herod, dominating and sometimes murderous side, as well as a Christ-like, loving-justice side, empowered by God. And like the Bible story, if we allow God to take root in our humility (the stable and the manger), nurtured by our receptive love for goodness and truth (mother Mary), the Herod within us will eventually fall from complete power, allowing God’s love to more fully work within our spirits and lives towards even greater transformation, connection and healing.

And like the Bible and Star Wars stories, the growing advent of the Skywalker into our lives is just the beginning; God’s salvation takes root through many stages, ups and downs, generations of death and resurrection. As we allow her to, God will continue to work against our Sith-side or dark-side to establish greater love, light, union and justice in our lives, even if it takes 9 episodes for Skywalker to truly rise within and to completely overthrow the Emperor.

Funny, isn’t it? But that’s what it’s all about: the God of Love loving us so much and wanting to share that love that he creates us, and then comes into being in history, in our stories, and in our hearts (see John 3:16). The Divine God(dess) is the source of our humanity - as Genesis says, both man and woman are made in her image - and transcends any one image or story that we tell of her. Indeed, the Gospel’s advent story is so real and transcendent that we can’t help but talk about it all the time! We repeatedly tell the tale of God’s birth into our lives and his work of salvation in our various religions, our movies, tv, and stories, even when we don’t recognize that’s what we’re doing.

I think that this is one of the reasons Star Wars captivates our hearts as it does, we can’t help but respond to symbolic stories of Divine Love itself working for our salvation, working to resurrect our loves. It’s not a cheap salvation - it takes internal battles, it takes real change, and it’s more universal than we often give it credit for. May we lean into our own walk with Divinity and allow the love of the True Skywalker rise in our lives, casting away the Sith. The mystic Swedenborg believed that this is the point of creation, this is the point of God’s Advent, scripture, and our heroic stories: to further and share the love of God: the Divine force that empowers all things. May the force be with us.

The First Noel Lumen Choir