Avoid the Planet Earth at all costs. …Farewell.
Devastation. Destruction. The end of the world. It is against this grim future that Kirk, Spock and the crew of the Enterprise struggle in this film. They are fighting to prevent, as Kirk puts it, “the end of every life on Earth.” Cue intense music, dark villain, violent struggle, lens flare, etc. – this is how one might expect the story to be told. But, no. This is the funny one with the whales.

In my first post for this week, I talked about the missing element that was added to the original cut of Star Trek II – Hope. Certainly, the hope of Spock’s resurrection was enough to lift that film from is sorrowful conclusion. But that hope turns out to be not simply the return of a beloved character, but the salvation of the human race. In Star Trek IV, hope explodes all over the place. It’s a decidedly joyful film that, even as it contains a battle against impossible odds, looks ahead with optimism. In the end, as the whole Enterprise crew is baptized in the San Francisco bay, even Spock smiles.

But, this is Good Friday.

We’re supposed to be contemplating the suffering and death of Jesus. Indeed, we should. And on Sunday, we should celebrate his resurrection. But my hope with this Star Trek Holy Week is that we can look at those events through the lens of the whole gospel.

In Star Trek II, we see an image of the suffering and death of Christ and get a hint of what his death has earned. In Star Trek III, we see his resurrection and the new life given to those who dedicate themselves to him. In Star Trek IV, we see the culmination of salvation history.

Our Christ figure returns on the clouds with his followers to restore what was lost. He undoes the damage caused by human sin and not only saves humankind, but restores order to Creation.

I want to go back a bit to our image of Khan as our sinful selves. He is, metaphorically, Ahab – the whale hunter. In this film, human sin has marred creation. When the probe comes, the damage we have caused results in impending catastrophic death. The villains in this picture, executive producer Harve Bennett says, are the whale hunters. They represent what Gillian calls, “the slaughter of…inoffensive creatures,” the destruction of innocence. “This is mankind’s legacy,” she says.

So, once again, our foe is a whale hunter. But, as always in Star Trek, the external struggle signifies an internal one. The whale hunter lives in all of us and we all share culpability, as evidenced by the words of the president of the UFP “Captain Kirk, You and your crew have saved this planet from its own short-sightedness.” The whole planet is responsible. Earth has earned its end. But we are rescued just the same, even though we do not deserve it.

The grace of God is evident in this film series, and it wears pointed ears. Everything that happens in this film is made possible by Spock. His death has saved the crew. His resurrection has brought them together to be with him. His plan leads to salvation. His return restores Creation.

I also found it interesting this time through the film that Kirk releases the whales. Returning to my analogy of Kirk as the Church, it echoes to me the idea that Christ has chosen his Church – his people, all believers in him – to do the work of bringing his kingdom. Only when he returns will his ultimate rule and reign take hold, but until then, he entrusts his followers with the task of setting loose on the Earth that which he has earned.

After releasing the whales, Kirk says, “Why don’t they answer? Why don’t they sing?” This reminds me that we don’t always see the fruits of our labors right away, that God’s timing is not ours. Like the whales moving into position to sing, there are forces at work that we do not see. It’s not by our hands alone that God’s will is carried out. He works in ways we don’t understand. We may get impatient, but the promised restoration will come.

So, as we head into Good Friday and Easter Sunday, I hope this Star Trek Holy Week can help us to see the cross of Christ as the place where all the work of salvation was finished. When Jesus cried, “It is accomplished!” he did so because he had accomplished something. And, as Nikos Kazantzakis puts it, “It was as though he had said, ‘Everything has begun.’”

When we look at the cross, let’s not just remember the empty tomb, but the restoration of all Creation that is to come. Let’s remember that we are participants in salvation history and that, though it seems to take too long, salvation comes just in time. We don’t deserve it, we cannot earn it, but God gives it by his grace. What an incredible blessing!

I hope this Easter season finds you restored, renewed, with a fresh vision for your “enterprise” – your calling and destiny – whatever that may be. I hope you’ll gather with those you love, with your fellow believers in Christ, at the foot of the cross and say along with Kirk, “My friends, …we’ve come home.”

For more on Spock as a Christ figure in these films, you can read my essays in Spockology. You can even get a signed, personalized copy!

“The Genesis effect has in some way regenerated Captain Spock.”

​It could be argued that talking about the Resurrection midway through Holy Week is a bit like shooting off fireworks on June 29th. But, as I mentioned in the Star Trek III audio commentary, these films are like Scripture jazz. All of the elements are there, but sometimes they’re rearranged.
​
In Star Trek III we have, in many ways, a very different picture of the resurrection from the one depicted in the Gospels. In fact, one YouTube commentator said that the Spock-as-Christ metaphor “falls apart completely” in this film because “Jesus Christ rose from the dead under his own power…whereas Mr. Spock needed a whole lot of help from his friends.”

She’s right, of course, that Spock’s resurrection doesn’t match up with the gospel narrative in some significant ways. But that doesn’t mean the metaphor “falls apart completely,” just that it’s been remixed. There are two events in the film that closely resemble the resurrection narratives in the Gospels – the discovery of McCoy in Spock’s quarters, where the seal has been broken and two guards stand silent and David and Saavik finding Spock’s empty torpedo casket with his grave clothes left behind. It’s as though Biblical imagery is used twice to denote two parts of the resurrection – the spiritual and the physical.

And, in a very real sense, Spock is alive at this point in the film. His body and soul are not joined, but he is alive. Of course, we need some kind of adventure to take the Enterprise crew through another movie and it would be too easy for a sci-fi story to just have Spock show up and say, “Hi.” So, things are remixed. But, since they are, let’s ask what value that might have. If the story in Star Trek III doesn’t directly reflect the events immediately following the resurrection of Christ after a certain point, what does it reflect?

As a mysterious girl called Erin points out in these three videos, the film mirrors where we are now, after the resurrection and ascension of Christ. In my last post, I said that the cross transforms how we deal with both death and life. Star Trek II is about how we deal with death in light of the gospel. Star Trek III is about how we deal with life.

The Genesis effect, in these films and in a Biblical worldview, is “life from lifelessness.” In the same way that this effect, which Kirk calls “the power of God,” has regenerated Spock, so God’s power has regenerated Christ and all those who put their faith in him. The resurrection is the living result of Christ’s sacrifice. But it’s not just something that comes after physical death. It’s a renewal that comes to our hearts right here and now.

Because of Spock’s sacrifice, Kirk and company are now willing to give up everything, even their own lives, in service to him. Spock asks them to do this, but he cannot force them. They must choose for themselves. Similarly, Jesus calls us to obedience, but he does not call us to earn our salvation through our actions. He has won the victory for us and there is nothing we can do to save ourselves. So, it can be easy to decide that it doesn’t matter what we do because Jesus has our sins covered.

But it does matter.

“We love because [Christ] loved us first,” John’s writes in his first epistle, “If anyone says ’I love God’ and yet hates his fellow Christian, he is a liar, because the one who does not love his fellow Christian whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.” How we live is important because it demonstrates where our hearts are oriented. If we truly understand that Christ is our Savior, he will also be our Lord. To live in grateful response to the redemption he has won for us is to, like Kirk and the Enterprise crew, devote ourselves completely to him at the expense of all else, knowing that our truest fulfillment is found in him.

But it’s not something we do to earn a prize or escape punishment. It’s simply the only logical response. As Erin points out in her video: What if, when Admiral Morrow told Kirk that he’d lose everything if he went after Spock, Kirk had capitulated? What if he’d told his crew mates, “Morrow’s right. I can’t risk my career for Spock.” The audience would have been incredulous. Why? Because no one who has received the kind of love that Spock showed would be expected to just walk away. Kirk has to give everything for Spock. He simply has no other alternative.

“What I did,” he tells Sarek, “I had to do.” When Sarek questions Kirk about the cost, including Kirk’s ship and even his son, Kirk replies, “If I hadn’t tried, the cost would’ve been my soul.” Or, as Paul says in Philippians 3, “I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things.”

And, if we read further into the symbols of the story and beyond the literal events, we see that Kirk and company are journeying to rejoin Spock’s body with his eternal spiritual essence. In the same way, we as Christ’s Body (the Church) are ultimately rejoined with the eternal Christ. On Vulcan, we have a picture of communion with Christ in a heavenly place, a joyful reunion as one body with the one we’ve risked everything for.

The rewards at the end of a life of faithfulness are great. But our focus must not be on crowns in glory. If we chase after doing good works for our own gain, we miss the point entirely. Our focus must be always, only on Jesus. It is him we seek above all else because he is the one who loved us first and has saved us for himself. We are not saved by what we have done, but by what he has done for us. Because of this, our “first, best destiny,” as Spock puts it, is found in him. Therefore, in gratitude, we pursue him, seeking to honor him with our lives with the kind of devotion and dedication the Enterprise crew show Spock in Star Trek III. It is then that we are fulfilled. It is then that we are fully alive, fully human. It is then that we truly “Live Long and Prosper.”

For more on Spock as a Christ figure in these films, you can read my essays in Spockology. You can even get a signed, personalized copy!

​“How we deal with death is at least as important as how we deal with life.”

​I suppose many people grow up in a tradition wherein Palm Sunday is about the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem. I did not. In Palm Sunday worship services throughout my youth and into adulthood, I never carried palm fronds down the aisle. That practice was not a part of my tradition.

Instead, my pastor focused on the crucifixion of Christ on Palm Sunday. We didn’t have a Good Friday service, so we did at the beginning of Holy Week what most people do at the end. But this service was not just telling the story of the crucifixion. Every year, my pastor shared in visceral, painful detail the physical effects of Roman scourging and crucifixion on the human body. I believe I was about 10 years old the first time I felt I could sit through it. I couldn’t help but cry.

This sermon had the effect of rendering the entire week before Easter a seven-day meditation on the crucifixion and death of Jesus. It was a week of Good Fridays. Filmmaker Martin Scorsese tells the story that his priest always told him that his movies were “Too much Good Friday, not enough Easter Sunday.” At its first screening for a test audience, Star Trek II was also “too much Good Friday.”

I relate the story in our audio commentary that Harve Bennett tells about that screening – the audience filing out of the theatre as though leaving a funeral, Harve thinking, “What have we done?” and a rush to fix the film. Clearly, there was something missing. No one wanted audiences going home from a Star Trek picture feeling depressed.

The ending as we see it now had a far different reception. Bennett describes the audience rising to their feet “as one, with tears in their eyes and applause on their hands.” This, he says, felt good and felt right. Clearly, Bennett and the cast and crew ofStar Trek II (against the objections of director Nicholas Meyer) had restored to the film what had been missing before.

What was missing was quite simple: Hope. The end of Star Trek II all but promises that Spock will return in Star Trek III. It does not, however, let us see Spock actually return. There’s no shadow of the resurrected Vulcan, no pan to Leonard Nimoy’s face with a wink in our direction. We simply know that death may not be the end.

During all those weeks of Good Fridays growing up, in the back of my mind was always the old Tony Campolo sermon, “It’s Friday, but Sunday’s comin’!” The suffering and death of Jesus was a hard thing to meditate that deeply on – especially with the knowledge that, as the Dennis Jernigan song says, “It was my sin that nailed him there.” But of course I knew that resurrection was on its way.

Still, I’m glad I had that time of deeper reflection on the death of Christ and on my culpability for it. As Kirk says in Star Trek II, “How we deal with death is at least as important as how we deal with life.” Kirk, too, is culpable for the death of Spock. Everything that happens in this film is a result of a decision he made 15 years earlier. It is Kirk’s past, Kirk’s sin, which comes to confront him in the form of Khan. Relentless and unyielding, Khan represents the impending spectre of death that has haunted him throughout the film.

“Other people have birthdays,” McCoy complains to Kirk, “Why are we treating yours like a funeral?” Kirk’s inability to face age and death are turning what should be a celebration of life into a time of mourning. What Kirk must learn is that we all deal with death, even as we live.

From a gospel perspective, how we deal with death is transformed by the victory Christ has won over it. The sorrow and pain are still present but, as Paul says, “We do not mourn like those who have no hope.” The hope of resurrection is one we don’t see yet, but that we can know is coming. I certainly knew how the story of Jesus was going to end when I was 10 years old, but that didn’t keep me from mourning for the pain and suffering of Jesus and the loss felt by those who loved him.

In the same way, every time I watch Spock die in Star Trek II – every single time – I’m affected emotionally. I’ve seen the next picture. I know Spock comes back. But I still mourn him.

At the same time, I am moved by what Spock’s sacrifice means for Kirk. Spock doesn’t just save Kirk’s life. He delivers Kirk from the death that he has earned. Because of this, it is not just an external victory against Khan that Spock has earned for Kirk, but an internal victory against a kind of “death while living,” the loss of hope in the face of mortality.

Spock restores Eden to Kirk’s heart and Christ restores us to Eden as well. And he does this at the cross. The empty tomb is important, but it is not the victory. It is the cross that is the victory because it is there that Christ pays the price for our salvation. The resurrection is the proof.

“Live long and prosper,” the dying Spock says to Kirk, and because of Spock’s death, Kirk is able to do just that. In the same way, Jesus said that he came so that we may “have life and have it more abundantly” and it is through his death that we receive this life.

As we start off our Star Trek Holy Week on a kind of Good Friday note, I hope it will cause you to reflect on what makes Good Friday good – that Jesus, like Spock, died in our place. He accepted the consequences of our sin, took our burden upon himself and paid our debt for us. Because of this, we can deal with death – and life – in a whole new way.

For more on Spock as a Christ figure in these films, you can read my essays in Spockology. You can even get a signed, personalized copy!

As I'm deep into The Gospel According to Star Trek, I'm re-blogging this series from the UCP Blog Archive.

I’ve done a lot of work with Star Trek over the last five years of research, writing and speaking, but few things have been as compelling for me as watching the gospel unfold in amazing, surprising ways in Star Trek II, III and IV.

Unexpectedly discovering how rich the “accidental” symbolism of these films is made for a totally unplanned and beautiful Holy Week leading up to Easter for me last year. Now that we have audio commentaries for all these films, I can share what I discovered on the journey with you!

I’ll be going through the films and commentaries myself and blogging devotional thoughts throughout the week. Here’s the schedule of events:

Holy Saturday
Rest. Reflect. Pray. Fast. Prepare to celebrate the Resurrection of Christ.
​
I hope this Star Trek Holy Week is a beautiful, life-giving one for you. Maybe you’ll want to invite some geeky/Trekkie friends to join you. Feel free to use the comments sections of the devotional blog posts to share your thoughts and prayers. I’m looking forward to sharing this time with you!