'Lost': A Shot at Redemption

PHYSICIAN, HEAL THYSELF!
Beginning today: Ongoing coverage of ''The Redemption Season'' of Lost!

''Physician, heal thyself!'' is not a rallying cry for MDs to serve as their own practitioners. The contemporary understanding of this maxim: Attend to your own health instead of busy-bodying yourself with diagnosing and judging other people. Or: Mind your own damn business. My translation? ''Physician, heal thyself!'' is a rallying cry to mend our spiritual brokenness. The ironic problem with fulfilling this mandate — and the implicit paradox within this pearl of wisdom — is that we can't do the job alone. The labor must be shared. We need extra eyes to see the stuff we can't or won't. We need extra shoulders when our stuff becomes crushing. We need extra hands to reach the stuff beyond our grasp. In other words… we actually need people to get into our business. The pilot episode of Lost offered a potent visual metaphor for this philosophy of redemptive healing. It's the moment when Dr. Jack Shephard tried to sew up his gash — a physician literally trying to heal himself. But the wound on his side was closer to his back than his front; it was beyond his reach. Humbled, Jack beseeched Kate to help him.

Take a look at the scene in the player below. For me, the metaphorical subtext kicks in at 1:30, when Jack sneaks into the jungle to perform his self-surgery. The key word there is sneaks — watch him as he looks around nervously, as if worried of being followed or seen. This is Jack the Hero Junkie, hooked on feeling his own strength, ashamed of feeling — and being seen as — weak, impaired, limited. Fittingly, the sequence culminates with Jack's iconic ''Count to five'' story. Watch him almost snarl with self-loathing as he talks about his own fear. The look on Kate's face as she listens to Jack's macho extremism is priceless: she looks terrified... and maybe just a little turned-on, too. So begins the push-pull of her attraction to this reckless savior...

The most famous utterance of ''Physician, heal thyself!'' is found in the New Testament, when Jesus makes sardonic use of the proverb. Its exact Biblical coordinates set off my Doc Jensen alarm bells: The Gospel according to Luke, chapter 4, verse 23. I have this theory that the Numbers correlate to Luke chapters 4, 8, 15, 16, 23 and 24 (the last chapter of Luke, and an inversion of 42), as each of those chapters are filled with Lost ideas and motifs...but I'll save the full scope of that suspect Sunday School lesson for another pulpit.

However, consider just Luke Chapter 4. It begins with Christ entering the wilderness to be tested by Satan. It ends with Christ casting out evil spirits. In between, you'll find a verse that strongly evokes the song that ABC has chosen to showcase in its season 6 promos: Willie Nelson's rendition of ''Amazing Grace,'' the classic Christian hymn, composed by a slave ship captain-turned-clergyman and abolitionist. Luke 4:18-19: ''The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.'' The hymn — which was most directly inspired by the parable of the Prodigal Son found in Luke Chapter 15 (another Number) — begins like this: ''Amazing Grace!/How sweet the sound/That saved a wretch like me/I once was lost/But now am found/Was blind/But now I see.''

All of Lost is like Luke 4. It's a story that began with people who entered a wilderness and found themselves tested by mysterious, menacing forces. It is now ending with our heroes battling at least one evil spirit, and maybe more, depending on what we ultimately learn about Jacob, the Man In Black, Smokey, and Ghost Christian. And in the middle of this amazing saga about a very strange form of timeless grace, Lost has been about souls struggling toward redemption — about ''prisoners'' trapped by their past, about ''blind'' souls learning to see themselves for who they really are, about ''oppressed'' people liberating themselves from powerful, exploitative forces that would rather keep them stuck in their ruinous rut. It is a story about wandering prodigals seeing the light and running back home. The story will end badly for some and ambiguously for others. But for those who find the triumph of redemption, my hunch is that they will do so together, as a community.

NEXT PAGE: Super-fan Lyla Miklos writes a Lost church service