Keepin’ It Cool

One of the ways I keep current (which I do badly) is check in with my son. He’s got a good eye for movies, a sound ear for music, and a bloodhound-caliber nose for truth.

So I asked him to bring a couple good movies. He brought Cool Hand Luke and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.

It’s been years since I saw CHL. We popped it in and watched it. As a preacher, I found myself wondering what the subtext of our watching this film together was. In the novel Luke is a preacher’s son.

“What appeals to you about this movie?” I asked.

My son replied, “The way Luke never gives up.”

 Summary of Cool Hand Luke

Based on author Donn Pearce’s real experience in a Florida chain gang, the movie begins with Luke (Paul Newman), drunk, settling an old score,  decapitating parking meters. For that offense he gets two years. The prison captain notes he is a decorated war hero but came out of the army a buck private.

Washing a car, a well-built nameless girl taunts the prisoners. An argument between Luke and Dragline, the de facto leader among the prisoners, ensues. Luke weighs much less than his opponent, but wears him out by refusing to stay down. Dragline calls off the fight rather than kill him. In a card game Luke wins with a nothin’ hand, gaining the position of leader of the prisoners. For kicks Luke says he can eat 50 eggs in an hour, which he does. Afterwards, the camera shot depicts him lying on a table in a cruciform position.

On the road the prisoners face a grueling day of work, tarring a road. Just for the hell of it, Luke leads the men to finish the job several hours ahead of schedule; the bosses are baffled.

A scene follows between Luke and his dying mother. She flirts with him, but grieves that he’s a lost soul, the son she wants to give up on but can’t. When she dies, the captain puts Luke in the box, solitary, until after her funeral.

Next Luke makes three futile escape attempts. After the last, Luke returns battered by the guards. They determine to get him in his “right mind” by a relentless campaign of isolation and meaningless work, digging and filling and digging a grave.

Finally he gives in, to the prisoners’ disgust. To all appearances Luke has become a trustee, a toady. But on an impulse he steals a truck. Dragline jumps in, but Luke refuses to stay with him.

Luke ends up in an empty church, where he has a one-way dialogue with God. It concludes with his saying to the silence, “That’s what I thought.”

When Dragline appears, telling Luke the building is surrounded, and all he has to do is give up, Luke goes to the window and shouts the captain’s trademark line: “What we have here is a failure to communicate.”

The bosses shoot Luke; then, rather than taking him to the ER, knowing he’ll die, the captain drives him to the prison hospital. There is an enigmatic smile on Luke’s face, and he becomes legendary among the prisoners.

Commentary 

The movie makes explicit the parallels between Jesus and Luke. Both fight the system. Both die. Is Christ the existential man, facing the empty meaninglessness of life as a stubborn rebel? Is God silent, when people cry out in suffering and hopelessness?

The Christian message is that we are neither alone nor abandoned to meaninglessness. God answers when we call. God redeems the brutality of our suffering first by sharing it on the cross, second by transforming it. Love makes it meaningful.

When I cry out in the darkness, I hear God’s answering love. Once, when my wife was facing sudden open heart surgery, we sat through the long weekend in fear. We felt so alone. Suddenly, we heard someone humming softly Amazing Grace. Mrs. Turner, a nurse veteran, a black woman, showed up in our midnight hour. We asked her to lead us in prayer. It was as if God was right there beside us.

I’ve had many midnight hours. Some have passed in silence. Others have brought assurances of God’s presence and power to save.

An ancient hymn says, “O God from God, and Light from Light / You are yourself the Day.” (Benedictine Breviary, p. 1025)

We can overcome evil, not by futile gestures, but by doing and ultimately through God’s grace becoming good.

For me one meaning of the cross is that it is the dead end of violence. Here God takes in all the darkness and violence of the world, and responds with the will to forgive. I like that Jesus says, “Father, forgive” rather than “I forgive” because it gives his humanity some breathing room. Nevertheless, God’s relentless grace never stays down for the count, but keeps getting up until, if possible, it wins over its adversary.

In the novel Luke is brutalized by war. As a veteran suffering the ravages of war, he is a thoroughly contemporary figure. Tens of thousands of vets are returning, bearing their medals internally. They offer the church an incredible opportunity to serve.

I admire Luke’s refusal to give in. Like him I’m also an outsider. A biblical expression of that life stance is:

Hebrews 13.11-14 (The Message)

In the old system, the animals are killed and the bodies disposed of outside the camp. The blood is then brought inside to the altar as a sacrifice for sin. It’s the same with Jesus. He was crucified outside the city gates–that is where he poured out the sacrificial blood that was brought to God’s altar to cleanse his people. So let’s go outside, where Jesus is, where the action is–not trying to be privileged insiders, but taking our share in the abuse of Jesus. This “insider world” is not our home. We have our eyes peeled for the City about to come.

Prayer

God, who are yourself our Day, you will never leave us or forsake us. Give us eyes to see and hearts to feel the pain of all who, like us, can’t ever quite get it all to turn out right; and hands to offer hope, beloved community, space to be and to become whoever You are creating us to be. In the name of the Morning Star we pray. Amen