“The Clown of God”

January 29, 2006

Scripture Reading:    1Corinthians 1:18ff

Rev. Dr. Carol L. Kerr 

In the time of Saint Francis, the twelfth and early thirteenth century, a very popular movement had arisen.   They were called “troubadours.”  It arose in southern France and its chief product was love poems which the troubadours played on light musical instruments.  They were minstrels who wandered the countryside singing of love, passion, and chivalry.  Troubadours and their courts of love elevated romance to a spiritual plane.  The realization of love was an end in itself.  It was glorious.  The person in love was an improved and refined.  He became courteous, temperant and loyal.  The lover would perform great acts of courage for the beloved.  Also, the potential for love is universal.  Like a flower and its seed, love lay dormant in every human heart.  All it need was the right circumstances to awaken it to life, water, sun, nourishment, a beautiful woman.  Then love blossoms into a radiant flower

At the same time there arose another phenomena along side the troubadours.  These were called “jongleur” in French.  In English they may be called “jokers” or “jugglers” or “clowns” - depending on your translation.  These jongleurs wore crazy clothes, stationed themselves in the market place or village green and also sung verses.  They exaggerated the antics of the lover and soon of everyone around them.  They were buffoons as they made people laugh at themselves.  Often they would juggle and do other tricks for fun. 

Why would clowns and lovers go hand in hand?  Well if you have ever known someone in love it makes a lot of sense.  From the outside, lovers often seem like fools.  They have two feet planted firmly in mid air.  From the outside someone in love acts like there is something seriously wrong with them.  On the one hand they remind me of my cat when he had kidney failure.  He would sit in our garden backwards and stare at the flowers for hours on end.  On the other hand, they exhibit disorders with sensory integration such as the lyrics of the Barbara Streisand song, “He Touched Me.”  “He touched me!  It wasn’t accidental.  No, he touched me and suddenly nothing was the same!!!...”  Some sort of dementia sets in.  A lover can rehearse a simple phone call for hours.  “Hi.  Is this Diane?  Hi, this is Steve.  Would like to go to the movies tonight?”  Then actually make the phone call and forget everything he had rehearsed.  Impulse control is not so great either.  As the lyrics to another popular love song indicate.  “Hello.  I love you.  Won’t you tell me your name?” 

The lover sees the extraordinary when everyone else sees the ordinary.  The mole on the lover’s nose is charming.  Or was that a pimple.  Stuttering is endearing.  The fact that they don’t pick up after themselves is cute.  Dumb jokes are gut splitting funny. 

From the lover’s point of view they have entered a sublime reality.  They want nothing more than to be obliterated  and become one with the lover.  The caterpillar in the cacoon of love emerges entirely free from its heavy old body and can fly at last.  But, those who do not understand it all seems foolish.

Saint Francis called himself a “Jongleur de dieu!”  He called himself a clown for God.   He realized that he was so in love with God that it was ridiculous.  He did many foolish things.   Once he took off all his clothes in front of the whole town and the bishop.  He gave them to his father saying that he was no longer his son.  He declared he was now only God’s son.   Another time, he spoke to a wolf who was so terrifying that the people of one town refused to leave the city gates.  He said to the wolf, “Brother Wolf in the name of Jesus Christ I command you not to harm me, or anyone else.”  Then Francis realized that the real wolf was inside the people.  Once, he saw a woman with leprosy.  He gave her gold coins and then kissed her putrefying mouth.  When he let go and opened his eyes he kept saying “Where are you, I can’t se eyou, where have you gone?”  Francis had fallen in love with an extraordinary woman.  His beloved was the most foolish of all.  He loved Lady Poverty.  A woman who he continually searched for all his life. 

People laughed at St. Francis  they thought he was a fool.  But, instead of a badge of shame Francis took this as a badge of honor.  He agreed he was ridiculous in his love for God.  He was over the top.  He was a one man stand up comedy for those who didn’t understand.  Only those who also loved could understand how the ridiculous was indeed the sublime.

When you think about it, St. Francis is right.  Not only him, but anyone who is truly in love with God is a clown of sorts.  Consider some of the major characters of the Bible.  It makes for quite of list of surprisingly clownish people.  If you ever find yourself trying to explain the Bible to people who have never heard of any of the stories it starts sounding quite strange.  There is Noah, building an ark in the middle of the desert.  When you stop to think about it, that is an odd thing to do.  Then there is Moses, a murderer with a stutter, who confronts the Pharaoh and commands him to “Let my people go!”  Abraham and Sara have a child in old age – really old age -90 and 100 years old.  Job made a habit of arguing with God.  Jacob wrestled all night with a shadow, or an angel, or something and ended up getting his hip out of joint. 

The New Testament is no better.  We have men like Peter who one day declares Jesus to be the Christ and the next day betrays him three times.  Then in another twist of events the Resurrected Christ calls Peter the rock on which he is going to build his church. 

Christ draws strange people around him.  They were ragamuffins and bumpkins.  They were tax collectors, street walkers, winebibbers, the lonely and the down trodden.  Those who were to inherit the Kingdom were the poor in spirit, the lame and blind and deaf.  Most of all were the least of all, children.  (Who, by the way, love clowns.)

St. Francis was not the only one who recognized how foolish this all seems from the outside.  Jongleur de Dieu ,  fools for God was something Saint Paul also noticed.  Paul writes in his first letter to the Corinthians, “We proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to the gentiles, but to those who are called…Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of god.  For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.”  If Paul was writing to us he might be saying something like this in modern terms, We here at the Blue Point Church talk about a God who was given the death penalty by courts of law.  It makes everyone wonder if he was God then how did he get himself into so much trouble?  What kind of idiot is that?  But, God’s idiocy is smarter than our geniuses.  God in the most vulnerable position we can imagine is stronger than all the nuclear war heads of the world put together. 

Then Paul goes on to remind people of what they don’t want to be reminded of.  That they are basically a bunch of riff raff and fools themselves.  He says,  Consider your own call brothers and sisters; not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth.  But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world ot shame the strong.  God chose what was low and despised in the world, things that are not to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God.  Let me put this as if he was addressing us in our church.  Paul would be saying something like,  Consider yourselves here at the Blue Point Church.  Face it, not many of you are very smart.  If you are book smart, you certainly don’t have much common sense.  You have done a lot of stupid things in your life.  Plus, no one is particularly successful here.  At best a few might be known in Portland, but beyond that you are all pretty much off the radar.  Most of us are out right failures.  Plus, a lot of you come from pretty dysfunctional families.  I am not talking about anything approaching normal.  But, not to worry, God likes you because of your faults, failures and foolishness.  In fact, God chose you because you have absolutely nothing to brag about.  So, he figured you would be the most thankful of all people.  You know that God alone is the source of your life.  You can’t fool anyone otherwise. 

Paul admits that he is not much better himself.  He says in so many words, Of course, I am not better.  When I came to you proclaiming the mystery of Christ, I came with my tail between my legs.  I couldn’t think of anything smart to say, or pretty.  I just fumbled around mostly and then let the Spirit demonstrate what was really going on. 

According to Paul, our special qualification that allows us to become Christians, is not our honesty, moral integrity, and knowledge of the Bible.  Rather it is whatever makes us buffoons.  Lovers of God?  Divine troubadours? Clowns for God? It’s all the same.  What is so important about our weaknesses?  Because our admitting our weaknesses makes us humble.  Admitting our weaknesses makes us unable to claim any kind of special exceptions or prerogatives from God.  Only through humility may we come to God realizing that everything is a gift from God.  As Paul explains, “God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God.  He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption…”

The clown is a foolish lover.  So are Christians.  A cynical man once said, “Blessed is he that expects nothing, for he shall not be disappointed.”  But St. Francis the clown for God said, “Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall enjoy everything.”  The lover adores anything and everything the beloved has touched.  The tissue she used.  The gum wrapper she dropped.  The song she sang.  Suddenly all the lover can see is blue, the color of her eyes.  The smell of her intoxicates him wherever he goes.  For the foolish lover the whole world is a gift from the beloved.  So it was for St. Francis.  Everything God has touched, no matter how big, no matter how small is a gift.    So much so that one of his greatest prayers is a canticle to everything.  The Canticle to the Sun:

Praised be my Lord God with all his creatures, and especially our brother the sun, who brings us the day and who brings us the light; fair is he and shines with a great splendor; O Lord, he signifies to us Thee.

Praise be my Lord for our sister the moon, and for the stars, which he has set clear and lovely in the heaven. 

Praise be my Lord for our sister water, who is very serviceable unto us and humble and precious and clean.

Praise be my Lord for our brother fire, through whom Thou givest us light in the darkness; and he is bright and pleasant and very mighty and strong.

Praise be my Lord for our mother the earth, the which doth sustain us and keep us, and bringeth forth divers fruit and flowers for many colors and grass.

From our foolishness, this great nothing of who we are, we find true freedom.  If everything is a gift from God, everything is free.  For there is no way a man can earn and deserve a sunset.  Or, can earn a star, or earn a smile from a child.  Or, earn a hug. 

Children love clowns and Christ said, if only you can come to the Kingdom like a child.  One thing that children can do best is to be startled by how wonderful the most common thing is.  I remember Gavin when he was around four years old use to love to collect stones.  Any stone would do.  Any stone.  I would go on walks with him and he would pick up stones he liked.  It didn’t matter if already had one like it, this one would be worthy of his collection too.  It didn’t matter if it was the most common stone in the State of Maine, it was a stone and it was wonderful, so it should be in his collection.  Our pockets would be stuffed with stones.  Our pants would start to slide down our hips as we waddled back to the car after one of the walks.  I remember one time, I was walking with him along the shoulder of a country road.  He stopped, reached down and picked up a blob of old black pavement.  The edge of the road had crumbled a bit, and there were these pieces of old road lying on the shoulder.  He insisted I carry these pieces for the rest of the walk.  He was astounded that I would even think of throwing them back.  They were wonderful and had to be part of his collection too. 

Children see splendor in everything. Nothing is jaded.  Everything is great.  Even that which we adults throw away.  That is the way we must be if we are to enter the Kingdom of heaven according to Jesus.  Only a clown could get the point across.  Imagine a clown with a huge box that has a sign on it, “Valuable Collection of God’s.”  The box is very fancy with lots of gold and many locks so no one can steal anything.  Imagine the clown carrying it down to the front of our sanctuary.  Getting out a fist full of keys and opening the locks.   The first key, then the second, then the third, then the fourth.  Finally with great fanfare from the organ playing, “Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee.”  The theme from Beethoven’s 9^th symphony the clown slowly opens the box. Then when the collection is finally revealed  we see a dandelion weed, a chunk of granite, some twigs, some moths who flutter  off around the sanctuary,  a broken mirror in which the clown admires himself, and an old valentine.  

The clown is ridiculous to treasure things so common.  Yet, the clown is absolutely right.

Saint Francis did not write theology.  He left barely a few statements of what he believed.  The power of Saint Francis and why he speaks so profoundly to people of all faiths is in his actions and his life.  Clowns don’t leave theories, they just do.  These foolish wordless actions of saints and clowns and lovers stir and awaken depths and longings we never would have known were there. 

There was a woman doing clown ministry in the children’s wing of a hospital.  In one room there was a child crying and who was inconsolable.  The social workers couldn’t comfort him, the nurses couldn’t comfort him, his parents couldn’t comfort him.  The clown entered the room with a bag of popcorn.  Without speaking the clown sits on the edge of the child’s bed as he cried and cried.  Finally, the clown took a small cluster of popcorn, wiped them on his face till they collected all his tears.  Then the clown ate them.  The child was comforted at last.  Your pain is my pain.  Your sorrow is my sorrow. 

Clowns speak in foolish actions that are transform the most ordinary gesture to a sacrament.  Even sorrow, sin and death can be  embraced and loved into salvation and eternal life by the actions of a clown, indeed, perhaps only by a clown. 

Francis canticle ends with these words:

Praised be my Lord for all those who pardon one another for his love’s sake, and who endure weakness and tribulation; blessed are they who peaceably shall endure, for Thou, O most Highest, shall give them a crown.

Praised be my Lord for our sister the death of the body.

Blessed are they who are found walking by they most holy will.

Praise  bngh5tbv fgvb ye and bless ye the Lord, and give thanks unto him, and serve him with great humility.