Messiahs and Suchlike

I was thinking about Cool Hand Luke this morning.  It's actually a pretty regular phenomenon for me; I've watched the movie quite a few times, and I would securely place it on my list of "movies I would want if I was ever stranded someplace with nothing but a TV, DVD player and electricity to run them," which is a list I made during some long car trip, when I was mainly trying to keep my brain awake and force it to keep driving.
But there is a reason why Luke stays with me beyond simple repetition, it's because, at it's core, Cool Hand Luke, is a movie about our relationship with God.  I'm not talking about one of those God Is Not Dead, or Heaven Is for Real, kinds of movies either.  I'm talking about a movie that asks some hard questions and gives absolutely no answers. It's a hard look at what it takes to be a messiah.
For those who have never seen the movie, though I somehow doubt you are a real person if you've never seen Cool Hand Luke, let me summarize.  Lucas Jackson, played by Paul Newman, is a man with some demons to say the least, he is arrested for cutting the heads off of parking meters in a drunken state, "small town, not much else to do," is his excuse.  He is sentenced to a term in a work camp prison and by various twists and turns, moves from being "new meat" to being what I will call the spiritual leader of the prisoners.  But it's not a hero story, it's not about redemption, as one might expect, it is about how the world handles a messiah, even an unwilling one.  Luke first runs afoul of Dragline, the shot caller of the prison played to absolute perfection by George Kennedy.  Dragline is a man who has learned the system of the prison and managed to use it to his advantage.  He is a massive man, who can match strength and, to some extent, wits with anyone in the camp.  Luke is a challenge to him, because he won't play the game.  The climax of the antagonism between Luke and Drag is a Sunday fight scene where they put on gloves and "settle differences" in the yard, while other inmates and guards alike place bets on who will win.
In your standard Hollywood movie, scrappy Luke would have managed to somehow bring down Dragline and take his place as the big dog in the yard, but he doesn't.  In fact, Dragline is simply too big and too strong and Luke takes a major beat down.  But he never gives up, even as his blows fall with absolutely no effect, and he can barely stand on his own.  The crowd quiets as Luke goes down again and again and still keeps getting up and coming back at Dragline.  Dragline has managed to destroy the much smaller man, while barely even breaking a sweat, but he cannot beat him.  A half unconscious and stumbling Luke takes one last swing and Dragline simply scoops him up over his shoulder and carries his limp form back towards the barracks, and the antagonism between the two has been transmuted into a friendship of sorts.  It is the first several crucifixion scenes in the movie.
And it's a theme that repeats: Luke is beaten, but not broken.
He eats fifty hard boiled eggs to win a bet, and he is stretched out, incapacitated and full to bursting on a bench table, arms out to the side as though he was nailed to the cross.
He is tortured by "the Bosses," put in "the box" made to do backbreaking and pointless labor for hours.  He is "disowned" by his dying mother.
Eventually it seems as though Luke is broken by the brutality and the power of the system, but he's not, at least not permanently, he makes one final escape, during which he is shot in a church by Boss Godfrey, and the crucifixion is complete.
During the movie Luke has several conversations with God, which reveal that he feels abandoned and alone, and that he desires nothing more than the faith to believe that God is actually there.  Luke can deal with the brutality of authority better than anyone else, whether it's Dragline's Yard rules or the carefully crafted cruelty of the bosses that is supposed to turn him into a compliant (read broken) man.
But God never gives him anything.  God is persistently silent.
Even as the other prisoners begin to look to Luke for leadership, and to need him to be their hope and their salvation, he feels ever more isolated.  Because the expectations placed on a Messiah were just too much for him to carry around on his obviously weighted shoulders.
"Stop feeding off of me!" he shouts at his bunkhouse mates.
They accept him as a sort of hero, or even antihero, as a man who can eat fifty eggs and escape the clutches of the Bosses, who can resist Dragline and defy the Cap'n, who doesn't fear "the man with no eyes." They love him as Cool Hand Luke, but they don't have the foggiest notion of who Lucas Jackson actually is.
In the end, it's only death that can set Luke free, free from his own limitations, free from the tyranny and the adulation, free from the constant struggle.
I wonder how much of this we can learn and use in our relationship with the Messiah.  I often wonder if we're like those other prisoners who were feeding off of Luke, when it comes to our understanding of Jesus.  Do we like him because he can eat fifty eggs (or feed five thousand)?  Do we love him because he stands up to the crooked and tyrannical authorities?  Do we love him because he can appear to be beaten and yet not be crushed?
You leave the movie with the understanding that nothing has really changed, except maybe Luke.  The prisoners will still be cowed and broken, the Bosses will still be brutal, and the world will still be full of suffering.  The only difference is that hope has now been given, a bigger idea has been planted.
I think the narrative of Scripture, with it's telling of a relationship between God and humanity, shows us that, while there was a time and place for God to be mediated though one person or one lineage, that time has come to an end through what Jesus did.
The Messiah, did not act like the messiah that people expected.  He didn't blow up the prison, but he gave the prisoners hope.  It is not reasonable for us to expect one person to be a superhero, even in the incarnation, Jesus realized that He was not enough, and that bigger things were going to need to happen and those bigger things were never going to happen as long as he was in the way.  No matter how many miracles he did, there would still be doubts, no matter how sound his doctrine there would still be those who disagreed.
The Messiah, therefore, had to go, and the Advocate had to come.  What Luke left the other prisoners was a vision, a vision that, even in their privation, life could be good and full of wonder, and that death, the ultimate tool of the brutal, was not perhaps a final defeat.  He still had that Luke smile, even as the Bosses condemned him to certain death.
When we make Jesus into a conquering hero, we are making a major mistake.  That's a role he will not play until the closing credits are about to roll.  What he did was give the other prisoners hope, and an assurance, to those of faith that death is certainly not the end of the story.  It's just a really good bluff, it looks like it's final, it looks like you have nothing, but "sometimes nothing is a real cool hand."