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Is everybody waiting expectantly for the new Star Wars film? You must be. I know I am. Even if it’s pants, the concept of a nation full of people going “vvvvvvvzroum! Shzzzvrummmmmm!” all summer, as they wield their imaginary lightsabres, is attractive enough. But that’s not quite what I wanted to rant on about. This is …
I was watching a programme on television the other evening whilst wondering if I was hungry enough to match wits with the mysterious and dangerous art of boiling pasta — as you do — when an item on this programme compared the way the new film has been created with the process behind the creation of the Gospels.
This may sound a little odd. OK, very odd. But what they were arguing was that the idea of the ‘prequel’ — giving added interest, depth and explanation to an already recognised story — is exactly how the explanations we have preserved from the early church of the origins of Jesus would have started to circulate. The type of factual account preserved in Matthew and Luke, and the theological explanation that survives in John, would only have really started circulating among the churches after the story of Jesus’ ministry, death and resurrection was known. Only then would people seek background and further explanation as to who Jesus was, and what he did.
This is only natural. Human beings always seek to explain the present through the past. But as Christians, if we are to become whole human beings, it matters that we invest effort and honesty into the issue of whether or not such ‘myths of origins’ are true, both in facts and interpretation of those facts. This goes not just for the stories of beginnings that underpin our faith, such as Jesus’ birth, death and resurrection, but for those that explain ourselves, personally. Who are you? Where do you come from and what makes you what you are today? Can you answer those questions with the whole truth, before both God and others? I’m not sure I can …
And one last thing. If Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection was a sort of Star Wars / Return of the Jedi / Empire Strikes Back sequence (to extend the analogy to breaking point), and his Nativity part of the prequels, we must be at some point in the three films planned to come after. So can I have a lightsabre, please?
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Last modified: 25th November 2005
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