Christ calls his followers not only from something but also to something: both abundant life (John 10:10) and self-denial in taking up the cross (Matthew 16:24). Christian faith offers us the paradox of saving our lives by losing our lives for Christ’s sake (Matthew 16:25)—a life of emptying ourselves for others, not of building up our own reputations. Ideally, that’s one of the things we learn from our shepherds (pastors) in pursuing the life modeled by our Good Shepherd. But movies with pastors or priests have conditioned me to have other expectations when a priest appears in a film. I anticipate that a movie priest will preach a harsh, hypocritical legalism; or undergo a crisis of faith; or offer a “gospel” of cross-less abundance; or be lovable but ineffectual; or drink too much; or struggle with anger; and so on.
In Wake Up Dead Man, Rian Johnson presumes those expectations and then thwarts them. We discover that the film’s “bad priest,” Monsignor Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin), is despicable not because the film avers that Christianity is a sham (it doesn’t) but because Wicks doesn’t understand “mere Christianity.” He uses the trappings and position of religious leadership for personal gain. “I’ve envied the power of great men,” he confesses. “Envied my grandfather’s power as a priest. I wanted that. Always did.” Wicks desires the charisma (“gift”) but not the charis (“grace”) that must be its purpose and outcome. Having rejected the gift, he has, by the time we meet him, become a “squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner,” to borrow from Dickens—and though his parish has shrunk and, by his design, doesn’t attract new worshipers, he continues to exert influence over those few who desperately seek justification. Christian viewers might profitably observe Wicks and his followers and ask themselves: Is there any of Wicks’s desperate yearning for personal power in me, even within my Christian service? Am I in danger of turning from Christ to follow someone providing different answers in his name?
Wicks’s foil is the young priest, Father Jud Duplenticy (Josh O’Connor). His violent past has been forgiven but not forgotten, and this ever-present memory of rescue motivates Father Jud to see everything in his life as grace: “Undeserved acceptance and love received from another, especially the characteristic attitude of God in providing salvation for sinners” (Holman New Testament Commentary: Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 354). As Father Jud explains to the atheist Benoit Blanc, “The guy I killed in the [boxing] ring? I hated him. . . . I killed him with hate in my heart. There’s no hiding that. There’s no solving it. God didn’t hide me or fix me. He loves me when I’m guilty. That’s what I should be doing for [my parishioners].” In this story that threatens Father Jud with the loss of his vocation as a shepherd, he never questions his faith in Christ, nor does the pressure turn him toward other vices. Instead, he shows himself ready to deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Christ (Matthew 16:24). In the end, his example of faithfulness through brokenness breaks through the ice of the cold, hardened heart of a murderer and also causes Blanc to ponder his own character and modify his performance accordingly. As we consider Father Jud’s example, we might ask: What can I do to build a faith that both withstands the external pressures of circumstances beyond my control and turns from the internal drive toward personal power and reputation? Am I ready to meet someone’s need for gentle, compassionate presence, even when it’s inconvenient for me?
In Wake Up Dead Man, Johnson gives us something that, though simple and truthful, feels unusual at the movies: a faithful, loving, gospel-animated priest. But Johnson does even more. Christianity proclaims that the church forms the body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12:12–27). At the start of the film, Wicks’s parish seems dead. Father Jud believes it can come back to life because he believes that’s what Christ himself did. Through Father Jud’s moments of what Blanc aptly terms “foolish grace,” the “dead man” of this congregation is beginning to wake up. Abundant life and a cross await. —Neil R. Coulter (2025)
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