Redemptorist Preacher

A clown has several purposes—the most obvious is entertainment. If a clown’s not funny or entertaining, no one will watch. But there’s more. In a very real sense, a good clown is a fun-house mirror, a warped reflection of a person, a trait, or society.

For instance, you have probably seen, as part of a larger clown skit, a clown sitting down at a piano to play, only to realize that the bench is too far away from the piano – his fingers won’t reach that far, even after stretching. So, the clown does the only logical thing; he moves the piano, not the bench. Why? Because the bench is in the right place—it’s the piano that’s not in the correct spot. You’ve seen that, laughed at that, and moved on with your life. However, if the clown’s done his work well, later on you’ll reflect on that skit, and realize that sometimes you also attempt the difficult adjustment instead of the easy, for no better reason than the clown had—maybe you’re a little too stuck in the that’s the way we’ve always done it mindset. If that happens, the clown has done his job—he’s made you look in his warped mirror, and seen yourself.

Now, of course, I am not talking about literally being a clown  but I believe this is direction that St. Paul is heading when he says that to be an apostle means being a “fool for Christ”. The purpose of which is not to seek humiliation for its own sake but to put aside pride and vanity and perhaps even experience ridicule in order to offer society a mirror in which it can look at itself. A person or society that does not realize that it needs a new direction is not very likely to respond to an invitation to change. If a Clown does their job well, only then will the need for change become self-apparent.