This week I came across, by accident, two different interpretations of the final scenes of Saving Private Ryan. One sees it as case of offering up salvation by works & the other sees it as salvation producing good works. Funny isn’t it, how two people can see the exact the same thing and come up with two different ideas about what it means.

Let’s consider the salvation by works case, made by Brett McCracken in an article titled: 9 Movie Moments of Unmerited Grace

Steven Spielberg’s World War II epic is one big rescue operation. Few films more powerfully capture the cost of salvation. Many characters die, and much blood is split, all so that one (seemingly unimportant and undeserving) private (Matt Damon) can be saved. Private Ryan himself can’t understand it. “It doesn’t make any sense,” he says when Captain Miller (Tom Hanks) and his squad find him and announce their mission to take him out of harm’s way (watch below). “Why do I deserve to go? Why not any of these guys? They all fought just as hard as me.” Indeed, one cannot understand unconditional election; one simply receives it with gratitude. At the film’s climax when a dying Miller uses his last words to tell Ryan, “Earn this,” we rejoice that these were not the final words of Christ on the cross. We know what Private Ryan doubtless knew as well, in that moment. We can never earn such amazing grace.

It sounds like Brett sees a little of both in the film: the choice of Ryan seems unconditional (although it isn’t but instead it’s motivated by the desire to spare a mother the grief of losing all four sons instead of only three). But Brett sees the burden of the words ‘earn this’ and reminds us that this is not what the Gospel says to us.

By contrast Matt Hatch saw this moment a little differently. In his new book Metamorphosis he writes,

The film begins and ends with an elderly Private Ryan weeping in a Normandy graveyard, looking back at his life. He had been chosen to be evacuated from the war in France after his three brothers had died in combat. As the film unfolds, we find that almost every soldier sent on this mission to save him dies. At the gravestone of Captain Miller (played by Tom Hanks), who led the mission to save him, Ryan reflects on the captain’s final words to him. Miller whispers to Ryan, “Earn this.” He tells him, in other words, “Live a life worthy of how much this cost.” In the closing scene, Private Ryan stands at the Captain’s grave, asking his family, “Have I lived a good life? Have I lived a life worthy?” It’s a question we live with too. The Apostle Paul addresses this theme in several of his letters: ‘As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received’ (Ephesians 4:1) ‘Whatever happens, conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ.’ (Philippians 1:27) We’re not called to live any old life, but a life worthy of the Lord.

This is slightly different. Matt sees the question ‘earn this’ not as a debt to be paid because that’s impossible but instead sees it as a call not to cheapen the sacrifice. In this sense Hatch borrows from Bonhoeffer, who lived and died in this very war, and his words about costly grace.

Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all, it is costly because it costs God the life of His Son: “ye were bought at a price,” and what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us. Above all, it is grace because God did not reckon His Son too dear a price to pay for our life, but deliver Him up for us. Costly grace is the Incarnation of God.

The Cost of Discipleship p.36

I think a lot about that line, ‘what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us‘. I think that is what Matt sees in this scene, saving Ryan’s life was costly so he cannot, must not, now live as if his life was cheap.

Here are the scenes in question so you can decide for yourself: (Why me?; Earn this; Am I good man?)

I think in the end the words ‘earn this’ has been a heavy burden on old Ryan, a debt he knows he cannot pay but has hung over him not as a source of joy but of unsettling uncertainty. But what do you think?