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The Stranger

(Seriously, my Savior would not wear bangs) 5:00 a.m.

In defeat I turn off the alarm, which has been rendered useless due to the fact that I am already awake and tragically have been for the past two and a half hours. I awoke at 2:00 a.m. thinking, “If you don’t go back to sleep you’re screwed tomorrow,” which produced just enough adrenaline to keep me awake.

Trying not to wake my husband, Matthew, I get out of bed to face the twenty-four straight hours of Trinity Broadcasting Network. Again.

So here I am, and there just isn’t enough coffee in the whole world. My friends Jay and Annie, who’ll be watching the 5:30 a.m. show with me, are asleep in the guest room downstairs, but I’ve decided I need to start this day on my own.

Coffee. Shower. Coffee. Pray. Coffee. Turn on the TV.

♦♦♦

Mysterious, who could this Stranger be? I wonder.

This show appears to be a made-for-TBN drama. We open on an African American diner. Chaos is swirling around this busy breakfast joint with the requisite cranky floor manager and flirty waitress. In walks a white man with an insidious smile and long, chlorine-damaged blond hair with, and I couldn’t make this up, bangs. Is it really possible that a guy who looks like a creepy middle-aged yoga teacher from Boulder, Colorado, could be the second person of the Trinity? Well, maybe Jesus would wear a white V-neck sweater.

The flirty waitress (Mary) sits down with the Stranger, who is on his third or fourth cup of coffee (so he’s clearly not the Mormon Jesus) and tells him how the diner used to belong to their dad before he died, but now she and her sister, the cranky floor manager, are left to run the place. She’s distressed about the fact that unlike their dad, her sister opens the diner on Sunday to get the church crowd. She tells the Stranger that while she never misses church and she prays a lot, she has a lot of questions. “I wish Jesus would just come down and answer a few questions for me.”

The Stranger: “Really? What would you ask him?” The camera pans down to a closeup of his crucifixion-scarred wrists.

“I’d ask him why Daddy had to die so suddenly and why Martha’s fiancé moved away and never came back, and why I had to quit school and sling hash for two-dollar tips.” I’d have to add something about why Growing Pains lasted seven full seasons on ABC, but that’s just me.

The Stranger: “No discipline seems pleasant, but painful But later

it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.” It’s hard to believe that Jesus would go the “redemptive suffering” route. Didn’t he go through that so we wouldn’t have to? Still, the most difficult disbelief to suspend is that my Lord and savior would have bangs.

Their conversation is interrupted by Martha — “Excuse me,” sarcastically to Mary. “Are we closed now? Those lunch menus aren’t going to put themselves out.” Oh my gosh. I get it now, Martha and Mary. Just like the gospel narratives about Mary and Martha, the sisters of Lazarus. This family was close friends of Jesus, and the story goes that one day Mary was hanging out with the guys listening to Jesus when her sister, Martha, started to passive aggressively slam dishes around in the kitchen to show how hard she was working in comparison to her slacker sister. When the passive thing didn’t work, she implored Jesus to rebuke Mary for not helping out more. He, of course, told Martha to chill out. So this is a modern retelling of that story. I actually like the idea and, I almost hate to say it, other than creepy-Jesus, it’s not too bad.

Mary sits in Jesus’ booth again and after telling him charming childhood stories about how her daddy never turned away homeless folks from the diner but gave each one a sandwich and a cup of coffee, she confesses that Martha isn’t quite so generous. Martha predictably interrupts their conversation to task Mary with filling the salt shakers. Next we see Jesus with a box of kosher salt, refilling shakers with Mary. If anyone pokes their head out of the kitchen and says, “We need to buy new yeast,” I may have to leave the room for a few minutes.

Martha interrupts again basically to try to kick Jesus out for just hanging around. (I tried that in my twenties, and it just didn’t work). The drama comes to a peak when Mary scolds Martha right back for opening on Sunday.

“Daddy wouldn’t be proud of what you’ve done with the café. He’d be ashamed of who you’ve become.” Ouch.

They both turn to Jesus to ask which one of them is in the right: Mary who wants to just kick back and enjoy life, or Martha the miserable workaholic. To which he says, “Both. In God’s eyes it makes no more sense to spend all your time smelling the roses than it does to work yourself to exhaustion Enjoying God’s love means balance.”

To which Martha replies: “That sounds like something on Oprah. You can’t just expect to live your life 50 percent one way and 50 percent the other.” I have to say I m with Martha on this one. I am fairly convinced that the whole “live a balanced life” thing is just another device society uses to try to make me feel bad about myself, much like commercials for Crest White Strips.

“Do you remember the broken-down playground across the street when you were kids?” Jesus, um, I mean the Stranger, asks the sisters.

“How do you know about that?”

“Remember what your dad would do to make the seesaw more fun? How he d stand in the middle to keep it balanced”?

The sisters pause and say, “Keep our eyes on him.” And I’m going to puke. The sisters turn around at the sound of breaking dishes in the kitchen. When they turn again, Jesus is gone. Only his empty coffee mug, five dollars, and a photo of them as young girls is left, which is a little Twilight Zone-ish. I’m just glad Jesus is a good tipper, though that in no way makes up for the bangs.

Final shot: a patron walks up to the diner, but the door is locked. The sign on the door reads, “Closed Sundays.”

THE ROUNDUP

Thought for this show: Keep your eyes on God and your life will be balanced, but your teeth will be no whiter.