Good Friday
March 21, 2008
Isaiah 52:13-53:12
Psalm 22
Hebrews 10:16-25
John 18:1-19:42
I have a habit of looking for a Christ figure in nearly every movie I see, and I generally find what I’m looking for. The man named John Coffey in The Green Mile is a Christ figure. Not only because of his gentle, loving nature despite his superhuman size, he had an uncommon power, a God-given gift to heal people; to free them from an illness that would have held them prisoner and left them with a diminished life. The way illness does to people. And John is a Christ figure because he was an innocent man unjustly condemned and then executed in the sight of those who believed in him, believed he was innocent, and those who accused him falsely to the very end. He couldn’t free himself from that tragic end but he could liberate others before they got to that point (including a little mouse who was a pet to one of the other prisoners).
There was a woman of prominence in the movie who had a brain tumor. Like John, she too had a gentle and loving, generous nature. Little by little the tumor was stealing her life and her personhood from her, separating her from herself. Day by day she was dying. When the warden’s deputies discovered John’s gift of healing they sneaked him over to the woman’s house in the middle of the night and as was his way John took her illness into himself. Each time he did that it seemed to drain his energy.
When the officer in charge of the “Green Mile” was convinced that John Coffey was a man of God, one of God’s own suffering servants he feared God’s punishment if he carried out John’s execution. He offered to look the other way if John wanted to escape his death sentence and live. But John declined his offer. He said he was tired -- tired of all the wickedness in the world, tired of seeing it and knowing about it and not being able to turn it around. John had no desire to flee his execution even though he was innocent of the crime the state sentenced him to die for.
They wanted to put a dark cover over John’s face. That was for the benefit of the witnesses, so they wouldn’t have to look into his distorted face as he was electrocuted. A sight so disturbing it could bring nightmares for many nights to come. But John told them he was afraid of the dark and begged them not to cover his face. They granted his request. He went bravely to his death. The executioners and witnesses together watched him die. The same as the executioners and witnesses together watched Jesus die.
Jesus took into himself all the sins of humanity and for them and through them he died. Sin does to us what the tumor did to the woman in the movie. It steals the life we were created for. It not only separates us from God and from each other, it separates us from ourselves. A human cannot live well with all that separation. Jesus healed humanity of that separation and freed us from the effects of sin by taking our sin into himself like John Coffey did with the woman's illness. Jesus walked into death, took hold of it and brought it back to God to be transformed, made over, into new life.
I understand why he had to die but I would have preferred Jesus to have a tumor or some other disease of humanity that was fatal. Something that would have killed him expediently in the comfort of his own bed with minimal suffering, and surrounded by people who loved him to hold his hand and stroke his hair. Surely the Son of Almighty God could still take hold of death and turn it inside out without being executed in such a cruel and gruesome way.
What really needed to be redeemed was the violence that humans do to each other in the name of justice or righteousness. That was an important theme of the movie too. We have a system in place to accuse, judge, condemn, and execute the guilty. We have nearly become idolators of resolution and closure even if it means we repay evil for evil. Throughout his life, Jesus said not to do that. He said that is not the way the image of God is made known in the world. God is not like that. God is full of mercy, abounding in steadfast love, slow to anger. Throughout the scriptures God easily repents of the punishment God threatens to deliver.
Every state execution is an opportunity to remember our Lord’s execution. I was part of a group of folks who met for prayers at Trinity Cathedral in
We were not advocating the guilty man be set free. In a civilized society if one violently abuses his civil freedom by intentionally taking away a life, in this case three, then he ought to lose the freedoms of citizenship for the rest of his life. But as people who bear the image of God, as followers of Christ, as people who know he said not to repay evil for evil, we were there to advocate mercy for the condemned.
The execution was set for 8:00 at night. It was middle of July, hot and humid. The air was heavy. Not a breeze anywhere. I felt like my clerical collar was pinching the breath out of me. It happened that I was standing next to the wife of the condemned man. I didn’t plan it that way. We were clumped together in a crowd at first, then someone suggested we make a circle and she stood next to me. As the minutes passed toward 8:00 I saw her grow more and more anxious. She was praying her own prayers fervently while tears and sweat rolled down her cheeks. I put my arm around her shoulders (because I could, she was about my height). Now if I hadn’t been there and someone told me this story, I tell you I’d have a difficult time believing it. But at 8:00 on the dot a strong warm breeze came. It extinguished all four candles at once and I felt life go out of that woman as her husband was executed.
We who say we are the hands and feet and heart of Christ in this world have not yet been able to allow his violent death to transform violence on the earth. We are still guilty of repaying evil with evil. But then for love of us, God is still God. Still merciful and just and loves us with an everlasting love. What we in our lack of mercy and oh, so conditional love fail to set right in life, for our sake, God in boundless love and infinite mercy sets right in death.
