Send in the Clowns

(Micah 6:6-8; I Corinthians 1:18-25; Matthew 5:1-12)

The readings for today are exceptional for their clarity about what the values are of a Christian life. That clarity is especially important in light of the also quite clear gap between those values and the values of the culture wherein we live. This is not something new. The gap has always been present between the ways of God and the ways of the world. That’s what that story of the serpent and the apple was all about. Ironically in our time we have been less clear about the difference assuming in our arrogance I suppose that we as a culture are synonymous with the values of God. In fact this is not the case. It is confusing when we see church services as part of our national rituals. I am a little surprised that they still exist even as a formality but that is all they are, a formality, there is no connection between the ways of God and the ways of politics. (I did find some amusement in the fact that the new president had to sit through an entire prayer service at the National Cathedral as part of the inauguration.)

So you may be wondering what is so different about our culture and Christian values and why does it matter anyway. Some years ago I was reading an article in Harper’s Magazine. Lewis Lapham had a column in those days and he decided to borrow an idea from Gustave Flaubert who at one time in the century before compiled his Dictionary of Accepted Ideas. Sometimes we don’t even realize what we have come to accept as reality until it is spelled out for us. Here is his list (modified by me to update some of them) which sum up quite nicely what we could say are just some examples of the ways of the world:

Awe: Proper show of respect when addressing persons blessed with very high incomes.

Corruption: Sign of a mature society. What is true and what is not true become one and the same.

Ethics: Quaint local or regional customs, like Basque folk songs or Bolivian hats.

Freedom: Synonymous with being rich.

1 Future: Under the management of the Corporation. Higher walls and more prisons are envisioned.

Generosity: Reckless impulse like drunken driving.

History: Anything that appears on TV or the Internet.

Literature: Decorative art; belongs to the same category as throw pillows and lawn sculpture.

Money: The light of the world and the mandate of heaven.

Self-Interest: Always proceeded by enlightened. Worthy cause. God’s grace reveals itself as property.

Superfluous: Word applied to people, never to hotels or automobiles or electronic devices.

Virtue: Best practiced by the poor who have more need of it.

Giving and Forgiving: For losers and fools.

Always taking and never apologizing for anything: the definition of a winner.

I have added a couple to the list but the point is that the accepted values of our society are taking root as simply the way it is. If something is what it is for long enough we begin to think that is the way it should be. We are conscious of some of the things we have agreed are acceptable and unconscious of others. In any case, what we accept to be the norm does influence what we do and who we are. It’s not like we are making this stuff up. We learn these things from experience. They are what we are being told relentlessly. They tend to make sense somehow. They become so much a part of our expectations for how things will be that we are no longer aware that they might not be true at all or only part of the truth and that what we have accepted as the natural world has gone completely off the rails. But this is our world and our experience. What else is there? We are not prepared for a reality that says deny yourself and take up your cross for those who want to save themselves will lose everything and those who lose themselves for my sake and the sake of love will have everything. This is, of course the

2 foolishness of which Paul is speaking. How does this ever make sense? It didn’t then and it doesn’t now. Lose oneself? Yes, the followers of the way of Christ are called to be losers but the punch line is that it is only by losing that we can win the only thing that really matters, the peace of our souls and the eternal love of God. Do we begin to understand why the Christian movement is in decline? Is anyone buying this? If anything the values of Jesus are even further removed from the acceptable ideas of our time and place.

Blest, says Jesus are the humble and the hopeless, the meek and the gentle, the sorrowful and the hungry and the merciful. Blest are those who do not hate anyone. Blest are they who are peacemakers, who care about the well-being of all others and not just their own and who are willing to make personal sacrifices for peace to actually be possible. And not only blest but happy. And long before these words were spoken, the prophets declared it first: What does God require? To do justice, to love mercy and to walk humbly with God. It is not as if these values have completely disappeared. We still know what they might mean I think even if justice has become only what serves our own self-interest and personal biases and mercy is considered a terrible weakness and humility is the ultimate essence of losers. I hope we can still remember what these values really mean and what blessings they bring to those who are not afraid to go there still. We have an important task, the church, the community of the beloved losers, in Dillard’s delightful description – the dancing bears and the circus clowns, to subvert the ruling powers that be from their headlong plunge into the abyss. I like the way Alistair Campbell put it in one of my required readings from the seminary days: Yet in all societies and all ages the fool has been a necessary and significant figure. He appears as the essential counterpoise to human arrogance, pomposity, and despotism. His unruly behavior questions the limits of order; his crazy outspoken talk probes the meaning of common sense; his unconventional appearance exposes the pride and vanity of those around him; his foolhardy loyalty to lost causes undercuts prudence and self-interest.

Does anyone remember the musical Godspell in which Jesus is portrayed as a clown. Here is the holy clown of holy clowns. I remember a time in my younger days when it was popular to do

3 communion as clowns. It brings into sharp relief the message. Here is the foolishness of God in the flesh. Jesus in rags apparently completely powerless before all the powers that be portrayed as the fool but anybody can see that the fool is not the one in rags who speaks not a word in his defense but is in fact everybody else who is playing by the rules of the world and who think they know what they are doing and who also think they are getting away with it. In the circus the clown never speaks, they fall down, they mess up they come between the death- defying acts. Sometimes they are funny and sometimes they are disturbing. Frederick Buechner thought that Jesus seemed to understand the serious comedy of it all: there are even times when Jesus seems to see the comedy of his own life. His fellow Nazarenes, the ones he grew up with, worked with, played with, came at him with fire in their eyes to throw him off the cliff as a blasphemer at worst and a lunatic at best, and he says to them: “doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, Physician heal thyself. (LK 4.23) He sees how they see the preposterousness of Jesus, the carpenter’s son, putting himself forth as Christ, God’s son. He sees how they are affronted by him as one who proclaims himself anointed to preach the good news to the poor when it is no news to anybody that his is himself the poorest of all. He says: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the deaf hear, the dead are raised up . . .and blessed is he who takes no offense at me which is to say blessed is he who sees that, all appearance to the contrary notwithstanding, he is who he says he is and does what he says he does if they will only, at admittedly great cost to their pride, their common sense, their sad vision of what is and is not possible in the stormy world, let him do it. Blessed is he, in other words, who gets the joke. (To Tell the Truth, p.61)

Talk about jokes: Did you hear about the one who came to save the world? Yeah, he‘s the one the world crucified. Ha-ha. We’ve got it all figured out. We haven’t got a clue. Jesus was on to it though I believe, Do you remember what he said when the official Roman thugs came to take him to his death? Be of good cheer he said I have overcome the world. Even to the end what seemed to be utter defeat was in fact a great victory. The world in all of its might makes it right wisdom, as it always does, thinks it has the last word but does not even know what is going on.

4 And what difference does it make? And why is any of this still important? Well, for one thing it is to keep waking us up from complacency and even boredom, to keep us alert to the ways we are deceived about what is true and what is not true, what is acceptable and not acceptable. And to remind us how important it is that the church is in the world. The world still needs people who are tuned in to another reality and the message of these ancient words on this day again is to remind us that we will not find it easy, that none of this will come naturally to us. It will require an effort to see past what we already know and expect. It will require an even bigger effort to walk over there where Jesus walks. Maybe even a major breakthrough for it is about being vulnerable in a world that eats the vulnerable for lunch. It is about being humble in an arrogant world. It is about being gentle in a violent world. It is about seeing the serious humor at the heart of all things which means in common everyday language that good news is still possible and that there are happy endings even if they aren’t what we thought they would be. The clowns are a metaphor for grace, you know. Like them we fall down, we mess up, we are sad and silly. And we keep coming back for more. When we realize that much at least we will be open to where God might take us with this lunatic they call Jesus who was not ashamed to be humiliated before the eyes of the whole proud and careless world and who is prepared to suffer and even die because he knows that life will have the final word after all is said and done.

All of this is still important to us because we need to see that it matters being different and not going along with a world hell-bent on destruction even when it may appear to benefit us personally. And, furthermore, you matter. You are the people of God and we have a message for the world that the world needs to hear. Something like: It doesn’t have to be this way. We could love one another and live in peace. Now how silly is that? How does that song go? But where are the clowns. Quick, send in the clowns. Don’t bother, they’re here.