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| Painting by Fr. Sieger Koder |
There is a
very colourful painting by the German priest-artist, Fr Sieger Koder which depicts a clown putting
on a mask. The mask is placed in such a way that it hides half the face of the
person who holds it. Koder called it
“The Real Me.”
A clown of
course is one of the oldest figures in the world. We love clowns, we laugh at
their antics, we believe that they are real persons. But they aren’t. Clowns are essentially
tragic figures, or sad figures, or figures of derision.
Why is this,
I wonder? Probably because they hide the
real person behind the mask. They press
down their worries, their fears their loneliness, their psychoses behind a
funny, painted mask. They spend their
entire professional lives on stage, in circuses, in entertainment – yet they
are rarely seen as they are. They are
poseurs.
Jesus once
asked the apostles “Who do you think I am?”
The answers came out as “John the Baptist”, or “Elijah” or “one of the
prophets.” Only Peter said “You are the
Christ.”
And Jesus
recognised that Peter could only have known who he was through the power of
the Holy Spirit who guided him to the truth.
The others recognised Jesus in part, but the ideas that were current
then about the Messiah dominated their thinking, and they wanted Jesus to be a
conqueror, a success figure, a man of property with a court, where they of
course would be leaders and men of success. That was Judas’s downfall. He
really believed that Jesus was to be a human success, get rid of the Romans,
make the Jews a nation which could conquer the world. And the reality was so
different that he couldn’t take it. We all like to be part of a success story, but perhaps we
need to look more closely at what we mean by success!
But where
does all this lead us? We were talking about being real. In order to live a happy life – we might call
it a successful life – we must recognise who we are, what our gifts are, how we
can use them to help others, not just ourselves. As we get older we tend to know ourselves
more. Experience has taught us what makes for true happiness, or it should have
done. The world around us seems to be
populated with so many who seek power, money and adulation of one kind or
another. We must belong to the A team,
we must make a lot of money, we must be beautiful, chic, trend-setters etc. But not all of us can do that, and we begin
to think of ourselves as failures. In
Liverpool they call that being “not much kop!”
But Jesus
told us that it is in our weakness that we are strong. He proved it on the
Cross. It was in that hell-hole of pain, humiliation, derision, blasphemy and
hatred that he won the battle for us – gave us life, hope and salvation through
his Resurrection.
But to avail
of this stupendous gift, won for us through the weakness, pain and humiliation
of Jesus, we too, like him, have to learn to be real. When we come to eternity,
we will know for certain whether or not we have become real, and have fought
against the temptations to outward success, power, too much money and lust. Not
necessarily in that order!
Have you
ever read a child’s story called “The Velveteen Rabbit?” Like all tales
supposedly told for children, it has an adult meaning. It is all about becoming
real. Margery Williams tells the story through the eyes of a stuffed rabbit who
finds out that to be real you have to
give and receive unconditional love. This is the conversation he has with the
skin horse:
“What is REAL?” said the rabbit one day. “ Does it mean having things that buzz inside you, and have a stick-out handle?” “Real isn’t how you are made,” said the skin horse. “it’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time; not just to PLAY WITH. BUT REALLY LOVES YOU , you become REAL.”
“Does it hurt?” asked the rabbit.
“Sometimes.” said the skin horse, for he was always truthful.
“When you are real. “ he added, “you don’t mind being hurt.”
“Does it happen all at once, like being wound up, or bit by bit?”
“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the skin horse. You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be ‘carefully kept’. Generally, by the time you are REAL, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out, and you get loose in the joints, and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because, once you are REAL you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”
All reality
has to do with love. Unconditional love. It is about learning to love others unconditionally,
warts and all, and it is of course about accepting that we are loved
unconditionally by an infinitely loving God.
It isn’t easy to do that, but, In the words of the skin horse, “when you
are real, you don’t mind being hurt."
It’s what
discipleship is all about.
