Is Don Quixote a type of Jesus figure?

I’m in the middle of preparing our young adults small group Bible study and I just came across the story of Don Quixote. I’ve never read the book or seen the musical. I should really ask my brother in law who is doing his Phd on this story,  but apparently Don Quixote was an idealist, a helpless romantic who considered himself a sort of ‘knight in shining armour’ out to change the world and do the impossible with his side kick Sancho Panza. His mission as he put it was, ‎’To dream the impossible dream: To fight the unbeatable foe: To bear with unbearable sorrow: To run where the brave dare not go.’

During his journeys he met a bar maid and prostitute named Aldonza. In her, he sees something no one else does. Where everyone else sees a lowly bar maid, a promiscuous woman with no real worth, Don Quixote sees a treasure beyond words and he renames her Dulcinea, which means, ‘elegant sweetness’ and sings her a song, ‘To dream the impossible dream’. No one accepted that Don Quixote would ever see such a thing, everyone in the bar laughed at him, even Aldonza couldn’t see in herself what Don Quixote saw.

She would often do that, laugh at him and the things he would say and asked him one day, ‘Why are you the way you are? Why do you do and say the things you do?’ And he replied, ‘This is my quest: To follow that star, no matter how hopeless, no matter how far: To fight for the right without question or pause: To be willing to march into hell for a heavenly cause.’

Gradually, her heart began to melt. Because of his pure and relentless love for her, she slowly began to believe in what he saw, she came to believe in her own worth. The story goes on, until, near the end, Don Quixote is lying on his death bed, moments from dying and in walks a beautiful, confident, elegant woman – a vision. Don Quixote doesn’t recogniser her and asks her who she is. She replied, ‘My Lord, don’t you remember? You sang a song, ‘To dream the impossible dream…’ You gave me a new name, you called me Dulcinea. I am your lady, Dulcinea.’

Don Quixote showed Dulcinea a love that was more than she had ever experienced before, that was undeserved and perhaps even bordered the scandalous. But that love redefined her, it changed and transformed her into the best version of herself. How much like the way Jesus loves us! We were far from grace, not deserving of the love of anyone, let alone a ‘knight in shining armour‘. Yet he sees in us something we perhaps don’t see in ourselves. He sees in us something maybe no one around us sees and pours his relentless love out on us, singing ballads of commitment and faithfulness, of a love never ending. And he marched all the way to the gates of hell for that heavenly cause.

Jesus calls to us, saying ‘come away with me, it’s not too late, come away with me, I have a plan’ and promises to give us ‘a future and a hope’ (Jeremiah 29:11). Dulcinea chose to accept that love, and was made so much the better for it. That’s the challenge, that’s a place where so many of us dare not go, even those of us who are brave – to that place of being able to accept his love. Will you accept Christ’s love? Will you allow yourself to be transformed by it?