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I am inspired by an item my pastor mentioned in passing yesterday regarding clowns in a sermon on Mark 13: the so-called “Little* Apocalypse” — so named to distinguish it from the “Big” apocalypse in the Book of Revelation.

*(I don’t particularly care for the diminutive. Jesus’ prophecy of the destruction of the Temple in 70AD is hardly “little”. Proportionally, more Jews were killed then than in the Nazi Holocaust. It’s also clear that Jesus’ prophecy grades over into an account of events still not yet fulfilled as I write this — i.e., the “Big” apocalypse at the end of the age. He glances eagerly up and out the window, waiting and hoping… any day now!)

His note dovetailed in remarkable fashion with a post Cindy-by-the-Sea did last week (“Fat Tuesday, Jesters, Masks and More”).

Quoting from another article, Cindy writes: “Mardi Gras celebrations have embraced the court jester as a symbol of rebellion.”

She goes on to trace a thread of rebellion from Satan into post-WWII America. (My take: Having lost in Europe and Japan, it’s not hard to imagine the dark one changing tactics, planting slower-growing seeds of rebellion that have spawned bitter fruit among the Baby Boom as some of those individual have risen to power.) James Dean, American Pie and the ultra-dark Joker character, played by the late Heath Ledger provide key landmarks along the way in CBTS’s post. Go read it.

Some people are freaked out by clowns. I’m not talking general dislike or distaste, but sheer, stark, absolute must-run-from-the-room, gut-level terror. In light of a man such as serial mass murderer and pedophile, John Wayne Gacy, who made his living as a clown at children’s parties, this is not hard to understand.

Such visceral reactions however (e.g., among those too young to recall Mr. Gacy) bespeaks something much deeper than a rational process of equating clowns to a specific individual and his heinous acts. I believe they sense the presence of, or at least the increased potential for, deceit, depravity and demonic possession.

I was profoundly disturbed by an incident just before Christmas last year involving clowns. Springy and I were attending the annual gathering of the local branch of a global, extra-denominational Christian movement. I’m not going to name the organization. It has done many good things over many decades to bring many people (including me) closer to Christ and with the utmost seriousness, strengthen them in their walk with the Lord. I believe this incident to be a local aberration.

Over several years, I have gotten to know and observe the local leadership team and by all accounts, they are solid and sincere — Christ- and Bible-centered and highly dedicated. Unfortunately, their success at forging disciples seems to make this group a high priority target for the forces of darkness, while their sincerity appears — at least in this exceptional case — to have graded over into dangerous naivete.

Unbeknown to me, the organizers invited a “clown ministry” group to the Christmas party to put on a series of skits and (this part makes me somewhat ill in the retelling) to serve the Lord’s Supper dressed in their brightly colored clown outfits and funny hats.

(Now before any Catholics start guffawing and wagging fingers about Protestant vulnerability to such doctrinal foolishness — a problem I will be the first to admit (I could write volumes on it!!) — take a look in the mirror. The subtle infiltration by our common enemy runs deep, long and wide, I’m afraid.)

The clown ministry’s stated mission — to bring the gospel into hospitals and nursing homes “with a smile” — seems innocuous enough. I laud them for reaching out. When I read that in the flier they handed out at the door, in fact, my first reaction was one of guilt. (How often have I visited such places to bring the good news?) Once I saw how it was going to manifest however, my cognitive dissonance meter leaped to the far end of the red zone; it stayed there throughout for the remainder of this escapade.

Should we flee and make a scene, I asked myself, as it began to dawn on me what was transpiring? Or do we stay and acquiesce to this horror with our presence? The way the facility was laid out, we were literally trapped. The clowns and their show blocked all but the alarmed, emergency exits. In hindsight and with time to think and pray about this gross deception, I now realize we probably should have fled anyway.

Lesson: social pressure to conform, especially from trusted brothers and sisters in the Lord, is a lot harder to deal with in fact and in real-time than it is in theory, alone with a Bible and time to think it through carefully.

What’s the big deal, some may ask? Just this: In this life, we see the face of Christ through a glass dark enough as it is (1st Corinthians 12:13).

Ironically, one of the big lessons I learned through this very group (firsthand and with tears of abundant joy) is that when we do see Him in this life, it is nearly always in the face of those brothers and sisters who have sacrificed or subsumed themselves in such a way as to let his light and love shine forth brightly.

What purpose is served then, by obscuring that image? How do we come to perceive the simplicity and purity that is Christ in another when we are distracted by wildly colored, strangely shaped garments, funny hats, neon-polyester wigs, big shoes, joke props and the face paint of false, deceptive expressions?

I can think of only one purpose and it is literally antichrist — an imitation, synthetic. (If the word synthetic reminds you of syncretism, there’s a good reason. They come from the same root that means mixing, e.g., synthesis of the profane with the sacred. With a ‘y’ or an ‘i’, it’s still sin.)

Most clowns, masks and costumed events have the objective of providing “fun”, “escape” from reality and/or promoting “happiness” in some vague, fleshy form. Yet how enduring is such a state? Even the most die-hard Mardi Gras participants and supporters unwilling to concede the flagrant and pervasive pagan and demonic elements of Mardi Gras and Carnival must admit that any “happiness” gleaned from it is, at best, fleeting — a pale imitation of the deep, eternal kind. (Garbage, or at least “junk” of no substance in the streets, in one’s body, and in one’s soul.)

What my pastor described yesterday regarding clowns was the beginning of the end of the Temple desecration just a few years before it was burned in 70AD. Just as Jesus had predicted, its stones rent one from another as the Romans and their Arab mercenaries worked to retrieve gold from the temple furnishings that had melted down into the cracks between them.

On page 469 of his 1974 commentary, “The Gospel According to Mark”, W. L. Lane quotes and paraphrases Josephus from his ancient tome, “The Wars of the Jews” (abbreviated ‘War’ below) –

During this period the Zealots moved into and occupied the Temple area (War IV.iii.7), allowed persons who had committed crimes to roam about freely in the Holy of Holies (War IV.iii.10), and perpetrated murder within the Temple itself (War IV.v.4). These acts of sacrilege were climaxed in the winter of 67-68 by the farcical investiture of the clown Phanni [Pinhas] as high priest (War IV.iii.6-8). It was in response to this specific action that the retired high priest Ananus, with tears, lamented: “It would have been far better for me to have died before I had seen the house of God laden with such abominations and its unapproachable and hallowed places crowded with the feet of murderers” (War IV.iii.10). Jewish Christians who had met in the porches of the Temple from the earliest days would have found this spectacle no less offensive. It seems probable that they recognized in Phanni the “appalling sacrilege usurping a position that is not his,” consigning the Temple to destruction. In response to Jesus’ warning they fled to Pella.

Phanni ended up being the very last “high priest” before the Temple was destroyed. In his book, “From Joshua to Caiaphas: High Priests After the Exile”, James C. VanderKam summarizes Josephus’ take on Phanni: “a buffoon”. He directly quotes Josephus in more detail (Jewish Wars, 4.3,6 ~147-149)  –

In the end, to such abject prostration and terror were the people reduced and to such heights of madness rose these brigands, that they actually took upon themselves the election to the high priesthood. Abrogating the claims of those families from which in turn the high priests had always been drawn, they appointed to that office ignoble and low born individuals, in order to gain accomplices in their impious crimes; for persons who had undeservedly attained to the highest dignity were bound to obey those who conferred it.

Hmm… I started off thinking this was only about the kinds of clowns we find playing the deceptive part explicitly, in brightly colored costumes. Upon discovering and reflecting upon that last bit however, I realize we may be led somewhere equally important — to another kind of clown in high office, dressed in another kind of costume, also drawn out of obscurity by men with larger plans for him.

For more on how that part is being played, in expressions, gestures and movements, see Sue Bradley’s recent analysis (including pdf) of the President in images vis a vis Proverbs 6. Josephus continues (Jewish Wars, 4.3,8, ~155-157)

They accordingly summoned one of the high-priestly clans, called Eniachin, and cast lots for a high priest. By chance the lot fell to one who proved a signal illustration of their depravity; he was an individual named Phanni, son of Samuel, of the village of Aphthia, a man who not only was not descended from high priests but was such a clown that he scarcely knew what the high priesthood meant. At any rate they dragged their reluctant victim out of the country and, dressing him up for his assumed part, as on the stage, put the sacred vestments upon him and instructed him how to act in keeping with the occasion. To them this monstrous impiety was a subject for jesting and sport, but the other priests, beholding from a distance this mockery of their law, could not restrain their tears and bemoaned the degradation of the sacred honors.”

Without belaboring the point, my conclusion is this: Jesus never employs a disguise, prop or ruse, for he is truth itself.

Our failures to recognize him stem first from our own misunderstandings, worldly fixations and blind spots. Think, for example, about the disciples on the road to Emmaus in Luke 24 who didn’t recognize the resurrected Jesus until he took them, at length, through the scriptures — v. 25-27:

Then he said unto them, O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken: Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory? And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself.

Deliberate disguises and sleights-of-hand… extravagant clown make-up and play acting designed to conceal emotion, fuel escapist fantasies and throw off recognition of the inevitable tics, tells and giveaways that unmask all but the most practiced liars only serve the enemy.

As much as I struggle with application of this principle to the seemingly innocuous ways in which this kind of thing can present itself (e.g., little kids trick-or-treating) and with drawing firm lines-in-the-sand against a thousand ways in which we all wear psychological “masks” and “costumes” (business suit?) and play roles of one sort or another, it is nonetheless a slippery slope. Without a belay rope tied firmly to truth, we will slide down if left to our own sin-flawed reason, our innate desire to fit in and please our fellow men, and the lack of perspective (boiled frog metaphor) that’s inherent in our short span of time on this planet.

It shouldn’t be hard to agree though — at least I hope it’s not — that the deliberate synthesis of such things with the holy and sacred in a Christian context, the main goal of which should be to see Jesus more clearly, is both corrosive to trust and dangerous to our spiritual health.