Jedis and Disciples June 3

Series Title: JEDIS AND DISCIPLES: the hero’s journey
Anchor: JEDIS AND DISCIPLES: the hero’s journey
Thread: clips from Star Wars
June 3 -Wk#1 – introduction to myth; entertaining the inner life;

1 Corinthians 1:18-25

For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written,

‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,

   and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.’

Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling-block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.

Joseph Campbell, Star Wars, and Jesus Christ: this is the cast of players in our upcoming drama. Campbell’s deep sensitivity to the genre and function of myth comes as a deep challenge to traditional modes of operating. Interestingly enough, Campbell (who died in 1987) foretold much of the Great Emergence and transformation that Diana Butler Bass, Phyllis Tickle, and other are now proclaiming. Campbell said: “We live in a period of the terminal moraine of mythology… Mythologies that built civilization and are no longer working that way are in rubble all around us.” He also clarifies the Creation vs. Evolution” debate as succinctly as anyone I’ve come across:  “Myth has to deal with the cosmology of today and it’s no good when it is based on a cosmology that is out of date. Religion has to accept the science of the day and penetrate it to the mystery. The conflict is between the science of 2000 B.C. and the science of 2000 A.D.”

So our task is to discover and engage today’s mythology. And our particular task in the studio (and I think the great challenge of this series) is to move this past an intellectual exercise into something visceral and experiential. So maybe our underlying question for this series is, “How to we experience the transformative and sustaining power of myth?” Campbell again posits this in a compelling way: “God is the metaphor (myth) for a mystery that absolutely transcends all human categories of thought, even the categories of being and non-being.” He goes on to say that the myth that is essential and functional is the one that puts you in touch with the mystery that is the ground of your being.

Human beings have been story-tellers likely from the time we developed language (maybe it was the desire to tell our stories that drove us to develop language?). I don’t know what those first stories were, but I suspect they were more than just an attempt to report on the latest hunt. Those stories might have been an attempt to express the gratitude of having meat to eat, or the escape from a predator, or the mysterious connection to some greater Spirit. The images so artfully drawn on the walls of ancient caves convey a desire engage those essential metaphors of life.

An insane twist has occurred in recent generations, though. Somehow we have lost the appreciation of myth and storytelling. To be direct, our society considers myths to be lies, untruths, flights of fancy. We instruct our imaginative children to stop telling ‘stories’, by which we mean lies.

We have forgotten that telling these stories, living in dynamic myths, is how we make sense of life and connect ourselves to the electric mystery that is life. The stories of the Exodus, the Exile, and Jesus’ death and resurrection are exactly these kind of stories. The challenge of our day is whether the story of the cross and the empty tomb still connect us to the Mystery, or if they need to be recast and retold, or if their cosmology is too outdated to speak essentially anymore.

The apostle Paul lived in the same kind of time, and he was telling a new story. Living in an age of rampant death, the ever-present Roman Empire, and an oddly cosmopolitan mixing of cultures he offers a symbol of agonizing death as a metaphor of vibrant life. At face value, this makes no sense at all. The cross was a tool of torture, intimidation and oppression. How could the cross be a metaphor of life? Yet that is exactly what Paul and other Christians experienced. He told a new story for a changing age.

In many ways (though not with the pervasive depth of the gospels), George Lucas told a story that captured the imagination of the late 20^th century. Star Wars has become part of our cultural vocabulary, even for those who might never have seen the films. The story speaks to our longing to battle the Empire of our lives (however we encounter that), to discover and claim our inner power, to find the community that welcomes us and upholds us.

Engaging myth is telling stories, but not just any stories. We are seeking stories that matter, stories that transform, stories that connect us with the Mystery and the energy of life. What are the great stories that arise from our own age and cosmology? Those will be the stories that will become the gospel of our times.