President Dykstra Reflects on Star Wars, Psalms, and Lord’s Prayer at Chapel

Anyone who has watched all seven of the Star Wars films knows that the three prequels are “terrible,” Trinity Christian College President Kurt D. Dykstra told those at Chapel on Jan. 13. While the movies are terrible on many levels, the most egregious problem is the failure to convincingly demonstrate how Anakin Skywalker turned from the light side of the Force to the dark side to become Darth Vader—a villain so dastardly, he has been reproduced among the grotesques at the Washington National Cathedral. “It’s not a natural progression,” he told students, faculty, staff, and members of the Trinity community. “They failed to get to the point for two and a half movies, and then rushed in the last movie to make it work.”

According to Dykstra, that’s not a mistake the Psalmist makes in Psalms 1, which describes how the ways of the righteous and the wicked differ. Dykstra encouraged everyone to use the Psalms to guide their prayers. “Read the Psalms, pray the Psalms and make the Psalms your own,” he urged.  “Grab hold of the Psalms and pray them.”

Dykstra also delved in to the Lord’s Prayer, and how the disciples may have reacted when hearing it for the first time. When considering the Lord’s Prayer, many often turn to the slightly longer version that appears in Matthew 6. Dykstra focused instead on the version that appears in Luke 11.

While the Matthew version appears as part of the Sermon on the Mount, Luke’s version follows a request by the disciples to Jesus to teach them to pray. “Luke gives us context,” Dykstra said. Yet the prayer Jesus taught his disciples would have a familiar ring to it—the sections of praise, petition, and thanks closely follow the structure of the Hebrew prayer Shemoneh Esrei, which Jesus’ followers would have heard their entire lives, said Dykstra.

Dykstra closed his meditation by performing a solo version of the Lord’s Prayer. He called it part of his own New Year’s resolution to sing more, and encouraged the Trinity community to expand on what they are, and can be, in 2016.

Chapel is held every Wednesday and Friday at 10am in the Auditorium at Ozinga Chapel.