I remember when I rented the final installment of The Sopranos. I don’t have cable so I didn’t get to see the finale when it originally aired. It was quite a few months later when it was finally released on DVD. I had tried hard to avoid hearing or reading anything about the ending by word-of-mouth, magazine articles, and the ubiquitous blog postings that were still circulating the internet months later. I walked up to the counter at Blockbuster and handed this young guy the box. He instantly got this sour look on his face—as though just seeing the cover triggered a latent emotional bitterness. Obviously quite unimpressed by my selection he said, ”so, you ready for the anti-climatic finale?” Aside from the fact that he nearly ruined my experience of watching the final episode without having any expectations for what it would or would not be, he genuinely seemed upset. As though David Chase had personally offended him: he was holding on to this grudge. What was he so upset about? What were so many who followed that show so upset about?
After I watched the last episode I went back and read through some of the online articles and blog posts and even watched an interview with David Chase, the show’s creator. In the articles and blogs and in the responses from fans that Chase recalled in the interview; it was clear that the fans were hoping for one of two outcomes. Some wanted justice; others redemption. It was amazing how many fans of that show wanted to see the main character, Tony, pay for his crimes with his own life. Many fans were calling for blood. Others wanted to see Tony repent, or participate in some action that would make recompense for his crimes. No one wanted the sinner to continue sinning. Is this strange? Shouldn’t this secular American popular culture be on the side of freedom? Shouldn’t Tony be allowed to just be Tony?
But this is just one example. You can pick any popular movie or novel and it will, more often than not, finish with either justice or redemption; or frustration on the part of the viewer. We don’t like it when a story leaves us hanging. We want our characters to repent… or die. I’m reminded of John the Baptizer standing at the bank of the Jordan River offering similar options to those that came to hear him. Which begs the question, why are we so set on having justice and redemption in inconsequential places like popular movies and books but not quite so apt to see it in places where it really matters, like ourselves.
We can see the need in others; well, we can in extreme cases. We believe that terrorists should pay—murderers, extortionists, racists, rapists—things that we haven't spent much time doing. We’re not so concerned with sins that we regularly take part in. Gossip, slander, arrogance, being untrustworthy, getting angry, bragging, these don’t need to be redeemed. Do they?
What is so hard to see in the small, private, personal missteps that we all make everyday becomes quite obvious when we take them to their extreme conclusion—that we need redemption. We hate the final episode of the Sopranos because Tony is that extreme. And so we hate this show’s finale or that movie’s ending or that novel because we never get to find out if that character cleans up, sobers up, turns around, pays, changes, bleeds. And yet John’s message doesn’t just come to those extreme, followed to their conclusion, terrorist, extortionist, FBI’s most wanted sins. John’s message comes to all of us. This desire for justice that you so easily and naturally look for in the big, obvious sins that publicly affect a lot of people, is rooted somewhere deep inside of you. What you have and I have and that guy at Blockbuster video had is an inclination that things are not the way they are supposed to be. There should be justice, there should be redemption, or there can be no conclusion.
What we long to see happen in HBO series, Coen Brothers’ movies, and Cormac McCarthy novels, John wanted to see in the characters in his own story and God longs to see in everything, everywhere, forever.
