The first time I really understood the art of clowning I fell in love with it.
Wait … don’t stop reading. The clowns I have in mind are akin to performers from the past like Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin, or more recently, Mr. Bean or Borat. This type of clown is a naïve character or “fool” who explores the seemingly mundane with a sense of exploration and wonder. The audience is initially bemused by their ignorance, and perhaps even feels a sense of satisfying superiority; but we often find ourselves drawn into their spirit of discovery and come away seeing the world with fresh eyes. Sometimes, they remind us of the simple beauty of a flower or the gentle comfort of a teddy bear. At other times they surface hard truths we can otherwise pretend away: the tragic absurdity of treating humans like machines or our foolish ascription of strength to self-aggrandizing buffoons.[1]
I often encourage both undergraduates and tenured professors to channel the humility and curiosity of the clown. I tell my freshman university students about the first time I was cast in a seemingly awful play. While in full panic, I felt a voice—the Holy Spirit, perhaps—encourage me to consider that the issue might be my own. I had not worked hard enough to find the genius in the script … and with humbler eyes I soon discovered its previously unseeable brilliance.
Similarly, when I’m training qualitative scholars, I explain how a tactic of naïve analysis led to one of my biggest discoveries in my work with youth. After hours of reading interviews filled with teen-speak—lots of “you knows” and ambling sentences—I was feeling a bit judgy and dismissive. But again, I felt that gentle inner prompt: “What if this is a rich, foreign language you need to process more thoroughly to understand?” Sure enough, once I positioned myself as a clueless explorer, I came to appreciate the depth of their philosophizing—something my initial, arrogant assumptions had obscured.
Jesus doesn’t use the term “clown,” but there is no doubt he loves featuring people and situations that upend our prideful and blinding certainties. Matthew’s Gospel features a perfect example of the power of the naïve when Jesus places a child before His disciples to demonstrate the real nature of “greatness”:
Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me. (Matthew 18:1-5, NRSV)
While taking the question of greatness seriously, He chooses to undermine the disciples’ self-seriousness and status-seeking by featuring a lowly and “ignorant” child. To me, this is a kind of deliberate comic performance, curated by Jesus to make a surprising point. The disciples needed to rethink the orientation that best suited the world Jesus was promoting (“the kingdom of heaven”); and a messy child, like a clown, was—and is—its perfect exemplar.
We are sometimes tempted to think Jesus is advocating for a beatific vision of the purity of youth. Do a quick Google search of “Jesus child greatness” and you will find centuries of art depicting perfectly coifed, tiny angelic models. We imagine their hidden wisdom, calling them old souls. More likely though, the child Jesus put centre stage was as goofy and clown-like as my own boys at that age. And having been a kid with ADHD, it’s easy for me to imagine the child bouncing side-to-side, eyes flitting around, and in need of a good bath.
Aesthetics aside, the larger point is that throughout most of human history, a child understands they are low in every sense: they are smaller, newer, less educated, and have little power to impose themselves on the world. However, as Jesus infers in verse six, barring a traumatic “stumbling-block,” this low perspective does not dampen a child’s ability to move forward in exploratory and even enthusiastic trust and expectation. This combination of humility and expectant playful engagement is what Jesus sees as the attitude that will get us the farthest in God’s Kingdom. As teacher, church leader, and consultant, I can tell you that a person’s capacity to entertain personal ignorance is the dividing line between those I can and cannot help.
If we have a sense of our own power, knowledge, and status this is probably pretty bothersome. I get it. I like to feel my experience, effort, and training have given me some capital. But this surety is an ongoing barrier to my capacity to hear and learn from others, especially God. In a comedic and playful twist, since I started this article, I get asked many times a day by the Holy Spirit, “Now, is that how a clown would approach the situation?”
The final act of many clown shows features an experience of loss and disappointment followed by a surprising, hope-inspiring transformation—the friendly caterpillar is lost but emerges as a butterfly. The clown does not manufacture this outcome but is changed by their childlike embrace of the miracle. This story should feel familiar to those of us who, like Paul, are “fool[s] for Christ” in the divine “spectacle” (I Corinthians 4:9-10). Our certainties and hubris are crucified on the cross—once and for all, over and over again (Romans 12:1-3). We are confounded by a shocking resurrection of Hope, not of our making but nevertheless transformative as we embrace its wonder.
I know that I am becoming increasingly aware of how little control and understanding I really have in this world. But like a clown, like a child, I am being invited to explore it in a very different way. I am being asked to open my eyes and heart to the daily ways God’s greatness is making itself known in surprising and wonderous forms; in events and people that are unseeable by the confident, self-important, and mighty.
We are in a spectacle that can break us or change us, and we need to decide what kind of fool we will be.
[1] Totalitarian clowns of this more dangerous sort are featured in plays like the still sadly relevant Ubu Roi.
