Trinity Goes the Movies:

The Green Mile: Jesus feels the Pain of the World

August 12, 2007

Isaiah 53/ Matthew 9:35-10:1 

We have so many ways of learning about God. We learn from Scripture, of course. We learn from our worship, from the seasons of the year and the glories of nature, from one another, in our prayers.

There is also a way of watching movies that can open our minds and hearts to God in ways more powerful than we might imagine. When we see a movie strictly for entertainment, we've received our money's worth, but when we watch the screen through the eyes of faith, God can touch us in ways that are worth much more, ways that are surprising, even transcendent. Ordinary, commercial films become "Jesus movies."

Take the film, The Green Mile, for instance. The Jesus figure in The Green Mile is obvious, of course. John Coffey, an enormous black man in the South, has been accused of murdering two small girls, and upon his arrest he is delivered to "the Green Mile,” death row in a southern prison. It becomes apparent early in the film that John is innocent; he is sweet and what we used to call "simple-minded;" despite his huge size, he weeps quietly at times and is afraid of the dark. He shows tenderness to all but the truly evil ones he encounters on the Green Mile, and after a couple of miraculous healings, there's no doubt in our eyes just who John Coffey represents. He's our Jesus figure in this movie.

A condemned criminal sentenced to death, John Coffey is gradually revealed to be something else-indeed something of a miracle worker. Loving, kind and tender-hearted, he takes the suffering of others upon himself. It turns out he has the power to heal the sick and on occasion even raise the dead.

Did I mention he was innocent of the crime he was accused of? Did I mention his initials are J.C.? Are you with me? 
Yes, John Coffey is very much a Christ figure, a suffering servant, not unlike the despised servant of Israel portrayed in the 53^rd chapter of Isaiah where it is written, “He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not, surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows…” 
John Coffey could feel the pain of others. He could see the evil in the heart of another. A harmless lamb, seemingly without fault, he eventually is electrocuted in the most cruel fashion while onlookers jeer.

No one would have chosen this giant hulk of a man, a man who seemed to have the mind of a child, to be either great or long remembered. But the prison guards slowly but surely became convinced that there was something different about prisoner John Coffey. They knew of his innocence with absolute certainty, even as they carried out the sentence. In the end hardened prison guards were brought to tears because of the life of this one man, a man who humbly accepted the execution that should have been for someone else.

As I watched the movie I couldn't help but think of the crucifixion scene in the gospel of Matthew where Jesus finally cries out in a loud voice and gives up his spirit in death. In particular I thought of the Roman centurion who had been among those guarding Jesus and who upon seeing the earthquake when Jesus gave his las breath, exclaimed, “Surely he was the son of God!”

I don't know if Frank Darabont, the director of The Green Mile is a Christian. Frankly I doubt it. But Darabont acknowledges the parallels between the central character of his film and the central figure of all history, Jesus the Christ. In an interview after the movie Darabont said, “People who do good always feel more of the world's pain than those who don't…the most emblematic figure of this thing we are talking about would be Jesus Christ. Because Coffey is a pure soul, he's the purest soul there is…All he wants to do is use his gift to help people…But the more that purity and gift is called upon, the more he suffers for it. It just seems to be the way it goes. And the world has a way of punishing those who try to do good…they will nail Christ to the cross.”

So what can John Coffey show us about the nature of God if we view him through the lens of Christ?

In Matthew's Gospel today, we learn that "Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness." Matthew continues: "When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd."

Like John Coffey, Jesus deeply felt the pain of others. He was moved by the plight of others; he felt their pain.Think of how many times we find him healing people who are physically sick, delivering people who have spiritual oppression, feeding people, doing miracles not to impress but simply to help the helpless. The important word is in verse 36, "When he saw the crowds he had compassion on them." Compassion is a visceral word. It has to do with something that we feel in our gut. It's not a clinical sort of thing. It's not a strategic sort of thing. It's that gut level response to a need that we sense. Some of the older translations would translate this as bowels of compassion, because that's what the word actually means, it's a gut level feeling. In English we might say that our heart went out to them. Here we see Jesus is not sitting there making a clinical strategic decision of how his outreach could be more effective. We see him relating to the needs around him from the gut. He can't help but have this response, because it's the same response that God has to human need. From the very start the Scriptures declare that our God is a compassionate God. We can go all the way back to the Book of Exodus. In Exodus, Chapter 34 we hear this: "The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger and abounding in love and faithfulness." This is what God is like; compassionate and gracious.

   In The Green Mile, one of the several climactic scenes shows us a gruesome execution, one in which a sadistic rookie deliberately omits a step in the electrocution process, essentially cooking a Cajun inmate named Edouard Delacroix, a man for whom John Coffey - and the movie's viewers - have developed a fondness. In one of the most graphic death scenes in cinematic history, as Del screams and jolts and jerks and smokes, John Coffey, in his own death row cell, experiences exactly the same torture. He jerks and grimaces as though he were sitting in "Old Sparky" himself. The lights on the Green Mile dim, then burst, as he lives through Del's electrocution from afar.

After the body has finally died and has been removed for burial, the officer in charge of the Green Mile, Paul Edgecomb, returns to his block and walks to John's cell. Sweat pours from John's body; he is still trembling. He says to Edgecomb through clenched jaws, "Boss, Del, he the lucky one. He out of it now."

"Do you mean you heard that all the way down here, John?" asks Edgecomb.

"No, Boss. I felt it," replies John.

John Coffey, our Jesus character, actually felt the pain of his friend. He experienced his torture, as though he had somehow been in the body of Edouard Delacroix.

That's compassion. That's what Jesus felt, he deeply felt the pain and need of others. He was truly the man for others

But it isn't enough that Jesus feels humanity's pain. Jesus came not only to save us but to create an army of compassionate people. He sends his friends out to preach and to heal those for whom he himself had such great compassion. This is a commission; he is charging the disciples to do as he has done. We might overhear him saying something like, "Heal every disease and sickness. Cast out evil spirits. Take the message of the Kingdom to those who live on death row every day of their lives. Help me care for them. Have compassion on them. Feel with them. I can't do it all by myself. The task is too great to be done alone, even by me. And it's not God's purpose that it all be done by me. You're in this, too. I can't do it without you. You're going to be my Body on earth soon, so you'd better get out there and start learning what that means before I leave you."

So the followers of Jesus, his disciples, the ones who had left fishing nets and families to follow and learn from this magnetic young man who spoke so winningly of his heavenly Father, these twelve meagerly prepared ones were now to take their first steps as apostles - they were sent out to feel the pain of a hurting world.

As we step into their shoes today, let's listen to this story carefully, because it is our story, too. We are his disciples today and more -- we are his Body. What is Christ telling us? To go out and be do-gooders in the name of the church? No! This has nothing to do with building up the church. Having compassion is not a technique for growing the church. That's not what Jesus is calling us to here. Jesus is sending us out to do the work that springs from a heart filled with compassion, with empathy, with doing our best to experience another's pain. We can never reach this ideal, of course; each person's pain is unique. But the heart of the compassionate Christ, which is and must be our own corporate heart, has no place for criticism, for judgment, even for merit. We help those who need help, not those we deem worthy of our help. It is not our own help we offer, of course; we are merely the vehicles for Christ's healing touch, his saving grace, his Word of hope. What is the church after all except a community of people who present living proof of a loving God to a watching world. Living proof of a loving God to a watching world. Through our compassionate acts we show we are the church. A church without compassion is no church at all.

Freely we have been given, not deserving. Freely and with compassion we are called to give. The harvest is plentiful, and we are the laborers today in a field filled with weeds and hungry for the harvest. Shake off the dust and let's go!

The young jailer Paul Edgecomb describes John Coffey this way, “In a way ... it was as if it was sorrow for the whole world he felt, something too big ever to be completely erased.” These words aptly describe Jesus as well. Jesus was a man of sorrows, consumed by his intense compassion for humanity. It killed John Coffey in the end of the film, and it led Jesus to the cross, a last desperate act to save the world he loved so deeply. As his followers, as the ones for whom he died, how can we not offer the world that same compassion?