[sermon audio above]
Scriptures: Mark 11:1-10 & Mark 14:1-15
The year is 1977. I am nine years old. I am waiting in line to see Star Wars on the massive screen of Woodfield 1 in Schaumburg. The Star Wars phenomenon is consistently depicted by TV coverage of long lines in places far, far away from the northwest suburbs of Chicago. I am standing in line with hundreds of other people, young and old, shuffling slowly to the box office to get a ticket and to be one of 1075 people to sit in the massive theater and, finally, experience this cultural spectacle.
I am not disappointed. The story is full of impetuous youth, wise old shaman-like mentors, heroes (female and male), mysterious family backstories, rural and urban landscapes, lightsabers, tractor beams, a “Death” Star, annihilation of an entire planet, and, of course, good and evil … and, perhaps most important, religious themes that do not oversimplify the distinctions between good and evil.
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