Holy Foolishness

Lent 3, Year B 2024

How many of you remember the Emperor’s New Clothes by Hans Christian Anderson? (Some of you may only know it as a Disney film.) The king has been tricked into believing that he has a magic outfit that can only be seen by intelligent people. When he walks down the street, no one is willing to admit that the king is naked, for fear that they’ll be called stupid or get arrested. Only a small child yells out over the crowd, “The king isn’t wearing anything!” The child is a Holy Fool. The fool who isn’t afraid to tell the truth.

The Holy Fool is an archetype with a long history in Russian literature and the idea of holy foolishness dates back before the 15th century in monastic settings in Byzantium and Russia. The Holy Fool demonstrated the benefits of being able to see the truth of a situation. This fool is typically an eccentric character, sometimes even a crazy one, who has access to truths that other characters don’t have access to. In modern times, the “Holy Fool” in society is often a whistleblower. 

There were also professional fools in the middle ages, hired in the courts so that they could make jest of kings, queens, and royalty in a way that no ordinary citizen would dare. In those jests, they often prodded the truth and put it on display, mocking hypocrisy, often getting quite close to the line of falling out of favor with those in power. Shakespeare highlighted such fools in his plays. They were often the silly sidekicks but they were the ones watching the whole scene, picking up on little truths and insights that the main characters were missing and pointing it out to the audience. 

St. Francis may be one of the most remembered fools for Christ. When Francis of Assisi acted like a fool 800 years ago, they called him pazzo. That’s Italian for crazy. Even using words like “crazy” and “dumb” – words that make us understandably uncomfortable – are words that holy fools embrace. 

Part of being foolish to Francis was to embrace lesser self with joy. St. Francis was devoted  to Christ and it brought him great joy to serve him for Francis really believed the words of Jesus, when you serve those at the very bottom of society, you serve me. Whatever you do to the least of these, you do to me. He saw Jesus in the suffering. Letting go of his wealth brought Francis a kind of freedom he had never known before. He had nothing but Christ and yet he had everything. Foolishness. 

The foolishness of Francis’s life and actions is difficult to explain if you use only rational or pragmatic ways of understanding:

• Like when he stripped naked in front of a crowd in order to give everything in the world that belonged to his father back to him.
• Or when he began preaching to birds after people didn’t seem to pay much heed to his words.
• Or when he mediated a truce between a wolf and the villagers so the wolf would stop eating the children and the villagers wouldn’t kill him.
• Or when he took off his only coat in the freezing rain and gave it to  someone who was cold.

Why would someone do these things? They don’t exactly make sense, do they? And yet, somehow, they did, and do.

Why would we venerate a fool? I want to be careful to point out, especially in today’s world where we dismiss research and knowledge and expertise when we don’t like it and substitute our own preferred fanciful thinking for facts, that that is not the kind of foolishness I am referring to. I’m referring to what Paul talks about in his letter to the Corinthians.

Pauls asks the Corinthians in his first letter to them, “Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?” See, Paul is talking to the Corinthians who came from Greek society that prized debate and rhetoric and turned wisdom into a competition. The best debaters were brilliant, like Aristotle, Socrates, and Plato. They passed on their philosophical knowledge that still influences western society to this day. 

But the path to redemption, freedom, and restoration through the cross was, and still is to many, foolish. The Good News of Jesus Christ turns conventional wisdom upside down. His strategic plan and executive summary left everyone scratching their heads and by the end many of his followers had left because it was just too foolish and cost them too much. Just take the Beatitudes, for example. “Blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are they who mourn? Blessed are those who are persecuted for the sake of justice, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven? I mean, c’mon! Sit with that for a minute. That message isn’t going down very well even today, after two thousand years of practicing Christianity.

In Corinth, you had Jews and Greeks who were followers of the Way of Jesus. Understandably the Jews, who had suffered a long time under an oppressive occupying government, wanted a God of power, they wanted a sign like those Moses gave during the exodus from Egypt. And the Greeks wanted wisdom as they understood it, a reasonable account of things in a logical and compelling manner. The Christ should be a brilliant teacher of philosophical truths. Both groups were having difficulty with a Christ who was a crucified criminal. It just didn’t look good and wasn’t very smart. What God goes and gets themselves killed?

I think we, too, tend to feel quite uncomfortable that Jesus was executed as a criminal. Crucifixion was designed by the Roman Empire to demonstrate that no one should defy the powers that be. But that was the event through which Jesus triumphed over those powers. It’s incomprehensible and, for some, ridiculous and embarrassing. But it is the most humble, lowest, and powerless means that God takes and triumphs over death. 

Not surprisingly then, it is the lowest, most humble, and powerless that Jesus devoted his entire ministry to. All of us who are comfortable and proper and do things right and believe we have pulled ourselves up by our bootstraps–we aren’t impressing Jesus. I don’t think he really cares about us being right or successful, he cares if we are willing to look foolish and hang out with the wrong people, befriend the welfare mom, visit folks in prison, welcome the stranger, feed the hungry, and know them by name. Oh boy, is that foolish. And people will think you’re pazzo, crazy. 

But that’s the wisdom of God, for we worship a God of love and Jesus will ask us to come along with him as an act of our love and gratitude to be with those who suffer. We are guaranteed to find Jesus in the places only fools will go. The wisdom of this foolishness is that while you think you’re walking down to the bottom, you’ll discover that you are actually climbing a mountain. The holy foolishness is much like dancing to music when everyone around you is deaf. If they can’t hear the music you hear, much like if they don’t know the Way of Jesus that you follow, you do look like a fool. Jesus asks us to be willing to be this kind of holy fool, to take a risk in acting on the love we profess to God and to each other. Don’t be afraid to dance when people are watching, don’t be afraid to talk to birds, and don’t be afraid to be the child that calls out the truth when the Emperor has no clothes on. Don’t be afraid to be a Holy Fool.