If you ever saw the movie “My Dinner with Andre,” it’s about
two characters who have dinner together.
That’s all that happens in the whole movie. But I loved it. Ebert said it was his favorite movie of the
year.
The Andre character has all kinds of incredible
adventures. He goes to Poland and participates in an
improvisational theatre that takes place in the woods and goes all night
long. He speculates on wild fantasies
and tells stories about his exotic travels.
His dinner partner, played by Wallace Shawn (you may remember him as Vizzini in
Princess Bride), is someone we
could call more “normal.” He likes for
things to be comfortable and predictable.
He says,* “I can’t imagine anything more wonderful than going to sleep on
a cold night with my warm electric blanket.
And to put a cup of coffee out the night before and to know that no
cockroach has crawled into the cup. I
mean, I just can’t think of anything that would be more perfect.”
These guys represent two aspects of our character playing
tug-of-war for our dreams and our time.
Jesus was fascinating like Andre was.
He didn’t have a pillow to call his own.
He wandered about having adventures.
A crowd followed wondering, “What will he do next?”
He continually tweaked the oh-too-serious religious
establishment. His verbal swordplay was
edgy, like a Hebrew Cyrano de Bergerac.
Jesus was a born raconteur like Andre. His stories were provocative, often
unsettling. If he were to walk among us,
we’d be left to wonder what his point was exactly, scratching our heads at its
practicality if we did get the point.
Like Wallace Shawn’s character, having listened to Jesus
spinning tales about this fabulous kingdom
of God, a majority of us
would probably say, “You know, I just don’t get you. Life is hard enough as it is and you’re
asking me to leave my Starbucks and my electric blanket behind.”
And Jesus would say, “Suit yourself; there’s a mortuary
around the corner where they bury dead people.
Go buy your own spot there on layaway.”
*Paraphrase of about five minutes of conversation: Actual dialgue from movie:
Andre:
Remember that moment when Marlon Brando sent the Indian woman to accept
the Oscar, and everything went haywire? Things just very rarely go
haywire now. If you’re just operating by habit, then you’re not really
living.
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I'm motivated to join God in his global reclamation project. He's on the move, setting his sons and daughters free from their places of captivity. And he's partnering with those of us who have been freed to go and free others.
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