Remember Haley Joel Osment’s character in The Sixth Sense? You know the one: he looks in the camera with his ragged child’s eyes and whispers (say it with me, now) . . . I see dead people.

I often feel that way when I read books and watch movies, only instead of dead people, I see theology — or, if we want to get ultra-specific about it, I see Lutheran theology.

I see it in The Sixth Sense. (How meta is that?) I see it in Disney’s Frozen. And today, with the U.S. theatrical release of Episode VII just hours away, I see it in Star Wars.

This, of course, takes a tidy bit of Jedi master-level theologizing. It’s true that finding spiritual themes in Star Wars — with its Force-based religion and Luke Skywalker’s epic moral quest toward greater spiritual discipline, enlightenment, and selflessness — is relatively easy. But Lutheran theology, what with its emphasis on divine grace over human effort, is a little trickier to spot.

Or at least it might be if I didn’t already see it everywhere I turn.

(Before I go on, I should take a moment here to pay homage to Roy Anker — the master to my padawan — whose chapter on Star Wars in Catching Light: Looking for God in the Movies inspired some of what follows. He’s really good at this “finding God at the movies” thing, and you should definitely read his books.)

(I should also note that my comments below deal exclusively with the original trilogy (or “oridge tridge”), not only because, like all true fans, I hate the prequels, but also because — despite Lucas blatantly inserting an uncalled-for virgin birth into The Phantom Menace — even I can’t find any Jesus in them.)

“Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit,” says the Lord Almighty.
— Zechariah 4:6 NIV

As Anker points out in Catching Light, Luke is entirely caught off guard by the Force. The child of a (quite literally) dry and dusty secular society, he is mind-boggled by the existence of a heretofore unsuspected supernatural reality, and it takes him most of Episode IV to wrap his head around it.

Yet, like those drawn to faith in Christ by the preaching of the Gospel and the work of the Holy Spirit, Luke gradually comes to grasp both the existence and the power of the Force. His journey to faith happens gradually, but it is eventually so complete that, in the end, when Obi Wan exhorts him to stop relying on his skill, gadgets, and personal effort and simply “Use the Force, Luke,” he does. And in his decision to “let go and let God” — or, in this case, “let go and let the Force” — he finds victory beyond hope for himself and others.

He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
— Isaiah 53:2 NIV

As one of the biggest reveals in The Empire Strikes Back, Master Yoda’s appearance and identity are likewise a complete shock — as much for us as for Luke, whose “typical childish notions of the Force as simple power and domination lead him to expect a resplendent mighty warrior, a shining John Wayne figure,” as Anker puts it.

Who among us would ever have guessed that the most powerful Jedi in the series would turn out to be a tiny, stoop-shouldered, three-fingered gnomish green alien with a crooked cane and a speech impediment?

Then again, who among us would have ever guessed that the Eternal Son of God would look to all the world like an itinerant Jewish rabbi — the son of a Nazarene carpenter — whose own disciples generally failed to recognize who he really was until after they had seen him raised from the dead?

Like Christ, Yoda has “nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.” And yet, like Christ, there is so much more to him than we would ever have expected.

He has brought down rulers from their thrones
but has lifted up the humble.
— Luke 1:52 NIV

Let’s face it, the story at the heart of Star Wars defies all logical sense. The notion that a whiny teenager, an old kook, a thieving ne’er-do-well, a refugee freedom fighter, and a ragtag band of misfits and Ewoks could join forces to break the back of a sophisticated military empire stretches the boundaries of rational belief even more than hyperspace travel or lightsaber physics.

You could say, I suppose, that Luke, Obi Wan, Han, Leia, and all the rest are just very, very lucky.

Obi Wan Kenobi says pretty plainly, though, “In my experience, there’s no such thing as luck.”

Call it fate if you like, or the working of a generally altruistic but still somehow completely nonsentient cosmic Force, but that feels like weak sauce to me.

Whenever I look at the world and see that up is down and down is up — that the mighty are brought down and the lowly are lifted up by a power that far exceeds their own finite abilities — I see the unmerited grace of God.

“Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts and turn, and I would heal them.”
— Matthew 13:15 NIV

Nowhere is this upending of worldly wisdom more apparent than in the characters of Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader.

Both are practitioners of the Force, which Anker identifies as “a complex conception that within its posture of love demands an attitude of nonaggression — an odd, even paradoxical, stance for would-be warriors.”

Both are seduced by the Dark Side.

Vader falls so deep into darkness that he is powerless to crawl out of it.

Luke resists, and by his nonviolent submission to torture and death at the hands of the Emperor, he saves both himself and Vader.

Just as the old Adam in us is conquered not by our own power but by the folly of the cross, so Vader is redeemed by Luke’s seemingly foolish self-sacrifice — and not only redeemed, but sanctified, made holy, from the inside out.

In the trilogy’s most touching scene, Luke drags Vader to the ramp of his ship, while the Death Star erupts in chaos around them. He removes Vader’s mask so that Vader can at last see him clearly, not through a glass darkly, but face to face.

“Go, my son,” Vader tells him, but Luke will not leave him.

“I’m going to save you,” he says.

“You already have,” says Vader.

Through Luke’s sacrifice, Vader has been brought out of darkness into the light. Death holds no sting for him.

In the same way, when we see Christ on the cross and begin to realize “how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ” (Ephesians 3:18 NIV), it changes something deep inside us — breaks the power of the dark side that was beyond our strength to resist or conquer on our own.

“Save me,” we cry.

“I already have,” he says.

So there you have it: the Gospel according to Star Wars. A bit of it, at least.

If you have your own insights to share on the theology of Star Wars, the comment thread is open.

Please, no spoilers.

For more expert help in “finding God at the movies” — from The Godfather to American Beauty — check out Roy Anker’s books Catching Light and Of Pilgrims and Fire, and watch for Robert Joustra and Alissa Wilkinson’s How to Survive the Apocalypse: Zombies, Cylons, Faith, and Politics at the End of the World in May 2016.

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About Rachel in Review:

Life for this pastor’s wife and working mother of four can be messy. Confusing. Painful. Funny. Breathtakingly beautiful.

Enter the Eerdmans books. So, so many of our books, whether written for board-book-munching babies or distinguished professors emeritus, seem to have a single uncannily common quality about them: they just fit. These wise, wonderful books somehow manage to tie into — and by so doing, help me sort out — the knotty complexities of life and faith as I actually experience them.