Jesus, the Heart Transplant Donor, and Denzel Washington’s Movie “John Q”

[This post is part of a series of illustrations for, and analogies of, Jesus’ saving work in the medical substitutionary atonement paradigm.  This series is especially designed for teachers, preachers, parents, and communicators.  This and other illustrations of the atonement can be found here. A great video clip from the movie John Q is here, thanks to Tim Catchim, although trigger warning: an offer of gun-based suicide is made.]

Back in 2002, Denzel Washington starred in a movie called John Q.  Denzel played John Quincy Archibald, the father of a young son, Michael.  Michael had a defective heart.  He needed cardiac surgery, urgently, to have a heart replacement.

The health care system had failed Michael.  The doctors didn’t run the right tests on Michael and didn’t detect the heart failure.  John’s health insurance policy will not cover the surgery.

So John gets desperate.  He grabs his gun and takes the Emergency Room hostage, along with the ER doctors and staff.  He says, ‘The hospital’s under new management now.’  But John doesn’t behave like the typical hostage taker.  Along the way, he takes care of people in the hospital.  Right from the jump, he says, ‘From now on, free health care for everybody.  How’s that?’

Of course this is covered by the news.  John brings the entire city to the edge of its seat.  He releases some hostages.  He says he wants his son delivered to the Emergency Room, too, because Michael is sick, and needs help.  It seems like John is going to force the doctors to perform heart surgery on Mike.

But John actually becomes friends with his hostages.  He even gives advice to some of them.  It’s quite touching, and sometimes funny.  Towards the end, Mike is wheeled into the operating room.  The following is the script of the movie taken from the website, Screenplays For You (https://sfy.ru/?script=john_q).  But you can watch the video clip on Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-i73XQAeuXI.

Dr. Turner and John look through the glass at Mike resting peacefully.

TURNER: Mike’s blood pressure has dropped into the mid-forties. His atrial blood pressure should be in the low teens. It’s thirty-five. If I put that LVAD into him, his heart will never be able to handle the extra strain.

J.Q.:  But…

TURNER: Not buts, John. Without a new heart, he’s not going to make it.

J.Q. is devastated. It takes a few moments to sink in.

J.Q.:  Take mine.

Turner doesn’t get it.

TURNER: What?

J.Q.:  You heard me. Take my heart and put it in Mike.

TURNER: You can’t be serious.

J.Q.:  You think I’m just going to stand here and watch my son die? You bet I’m serious. Dead serious.

DEBBY:  Wow.

JULIE:  Oh my God.

Lester (one of the hostages, a patient) tries to comprehend the nihilistic existentialism of it all.

LESTER:  But that means you’ll die, man.

J.Q. calmly finishes Lester’s thought.

J.Q.:  And my son will live.

KLEIN: John, you can’t do this.

J.Q.:  It’s the only way.

KLEIN: No, you don’t understand. You physically can’t do it.

J.Q.:  Why not? I kill myself. You cut me open and take my heart.  It’s perfect.

LESTER:  The boy crazy.

KLEIN: We just can’t remove your heart and put it into Mike’s body.

TURNER: There’s too many unknowns. Matching a donor and receiver is extremely complicated. There’s several critical tests that have to be taken.

J.Q.:  Like what?

TURNER: Cross matches for blood type, chest cavity measurements. If both blood tissues aren’t compatible, there’s a very high likelihood of rejection.

J.Q.:  Come on, Doc. I know all about compatibility. We’ve been tested up the wazoo. Mike and I are both B-Positive. Our tissues are a match. And his heart is three times normal size which means mine will fit. You know damn well we’re compatible.

TURNER: No, we don’t. You’re an adult. Mike is strong, but the amount of blood your heart pumps may be too much for Mike.

J.Q.:  I’ll take that chance. It’s better than letting him die.

TURNER: Out of the question. Too risky.

J.Q.:  I’m telling you, he’ll make it.

TURNER: Can’t do it, John.

J.Q.:  You’re telling me that if I’m laying dead on the floor, you wouldn’t take my heart and put it in my kid to save his life? You’d let two people die instead of one because of a technicality?

JULIE:  I think what John’s trying to do is right.

DEBBY:  Me, too. I think it’s very brave.

MAGUIRE:  Yeah, it’s all very noble and brave. But what do you think Mike would want? Or your wife?

J.Q.:  Mike is too young to know what’s good for him. I’m his father. It’s my job to protect him, and Denise would do the same thing if she was in my place.

SECURITY GUARD:  Are you saying Mike’s life is more important than yours?

MITCH:  Or that it’s okay that Mike grows up without a father?

MAGUIRE:  You can have more children, John.

LESTER:  What happened to Mike is bad, man. It’s the worst. It ain’t fair, but you can’t kill yourself. Sometimes you’ve just got to let go and let God take care of it. You’ve got to accept it.

J.Q.:  Accept it?  Accept what?  Accept what??

TURNER: That Mike’s going to die.

J.Q.:  No!  I don’t accept that.  Ever!  No, I reject that out of hand.  I mean, look:  He… Alright, he’s a patient to you, I understand.  But if you… He’s a good kid.  I mean, he… he loves bodybuilding!  He wants to be a bodybuilder, can you believe that?  And he’s funny… He’s… You’d like him.  You’d like him, Doc, if you got to know him.

TURNER: I do like him.

J.Q.:  Please. You’ve got to help him. I’m begging you. If you ever do anything outside the rules, do this. Take a chance, please.

TURNER: I’d like to. I really would. But what you’re asking crosses the line. It’s completely unethical.

J.Q.:  I’ve crossed the line? No, you’ve crossed the line. The whole system has crossed the line.

J.Q. paces around the room, his hand on his weapon, his mood very dark and threatening.

J.Q. (CONT’D):  I don’t think you understand. I’m not letting him die.  Haven’t you figured that out by now?  I don’t care what I have to do.

TURNER: So, what, you’re going to kill me if I don’t operate.

J.Q.:  No. I’m going to kill myself.

J.Q. puts the gun to his temple.

J.Q. (CONT’D):  And we’ll just see what happens.

LESTER:  Aw, man, this is messed up.

J.Q.:  We all know how this works, people. In order for Mike to live, someone has to die. I’m the father. It might as well be me.

J.Q. and Turner’s eyes meet. Turner doesn’t speak for a long moment.

TURNER: Alright.

MITCH:  Alright, what?

TURNER: I’ll do it. If that’s what you want.

John then reveals that in his gun is only ONE bullet.  He brought only ONE bullet.  He never intended to hurt anyone.  This whole time, his plan was ultimately built around taking one life.  Or rather, giving his own life for his son, Mike.

Now in the movie, there is a plot twist.  At the very last minute, a helicopter flies in the body of a woman who had been killed in a car accident.  She was a match for little Mike.  John doesn’t have to kill himself, to our great relief.  Though John does go to trial and then to jail, Mike gets a new heart after all.  He lives.  The last you see of little Mike is him thanking his dad, and flexing his arms like a bodybuilder.

In the biblical story, there was no plot twist that let Jesus off the hook.

God, the Father-Son-Spirit loved us into existence.  He made us to be His children.  But we damaged our own hearts, to various degrees.  Our life was draining away.  A resistance to God set in.  And we needed a heart replacement.

Can you imagine God, the Father-Son-Spirit whose very being is love, watch us get sick by Adam and Eve’s own choosing?  In Genesis 3, Adam and Eve took into themselves God’s prerogative to define good and evil.  So they started the corruption of their own human nature.  They were in danger of making human evil immortal, and even intensifying it, without an escape from the disease.  Would God accept this?  I can just imagine God saying among Himself, ‘Accept it?  Accept it???  No!  I don’t accept that.  Ever!  No, I reject that out of hand.  I like them.  And I love them.  I will offer them a new heart.  MINE.’

The Father-Son-Spirit kept careful watch over us.  He gave us instructions that would keep us alive and relatively healthy, until the time was right for a heart transplant.  With Father-Son-Spirit’s help, a few people (the people of Israel) recognized the desperate human need each of us have.  They phrased it as a hope:  This good and loving Father-Son-Spirit will cut something diseased away from our hearts (Dt.10:16; 30:6), or rewrite the script on our hearts because we had garbled the originally good script (Jer.31:31 – 34), or replace our bad heart with a good heart by transplant (Ezk.36:26 – 36).  But whatever the exact turn of phrase, the message was the same.  We need for God to bring about a fundamental, internal change to be made right with Him, and right with ourselves.

So the watchful Father sent the eternally mature Son into our human flesh, by the power of the Spirit.  He took on our sick condition personally, and started healing it from within, as one of us.

Meanwhile, people misunderstood him.  They thought he was going to be a military revolutionary who would take over places – like the capital city, Jerusalem – and take some people hostage until they gave in to his demands.  But Jesus of Nazareth became a friend to many people, and they didn’t expect that.  He said, ‘Healing for all!’ as he did miracles in the power of the Spirit.  And as Jesus matured his humanity, he was cutting the disease away from his heart.  He was rewriting the script on his heart.  He was filling the weak heart in his chest with one full of God’s love and Spirit.

Until finally, Jesus showed that he only brought one bullet, so to speak.  He came to give himself up.  But, unlike John Q, Jesus’ heart-donation didn’t happen through his dead body.  His heart donation was spiritual, by the Spirit.  By living and then dying and then rising again, Jesus perfected the heart we need.  So Jesus shares it with us by his Spirit, by coming into us.  That’s why Jesus’ resurrection is ultimately what saves us, not just his death:  ‘If Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins’ (1 Cor.15:17).

That’s great for us!  Because we do not want to be stuck with that defective heart of ours!  In this life, we have received Jesus’ new heart, by his Spirit living in us, and we’re learning to live his life, to share his life, to let his life pour out through us.