The Insane Christ!
Vintery, mintery, cutery, corn,
Apple seed and apple thorn;
Wire, briar, limber lock,
Three geese in a flock.
One flew east,
And one flew west,
And one flew over the cuckoo's nest.
Where the "apocalyptic" and the "romantic" meet there is only the fool and his madness, insanity. The greatest artistic works of the Roman Catholic imagination understood this . . . The Divine Comedy, Don Quixote.
Harvey Cox, in his brilliant book from 1969 The Feast of Fools tried to exhume this reality for the church. The romantic and apocalyptic is the intersection of the spirit (pneuma) and material (physis) --sprites of dung and straw. It is a collision of two realities that can only be experienced in the absurd, the irrational, the illogical, the foolish.
Midnight too is noon; pain too is a joy; curses too are a blessing; night too is a sun --go away or you will learn: a sage too is a fool . . . Have you ever said Yes to a single joy? O my friends, then you said Yes too to all woe. Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra
This world cannot contain nor understand the place where the apocalyptic and romantic intersect. We know, because the world tired to kill and silence it. The point of intersection occurred --not is a place-- but in a person. Jesus of Nazareth (INRI). Jesus is the foolishness of this world, he is the madness of this world because in him there is death and there is life. In Jesus there is humiliation and glory.
I am reminded of my trip to Bull Run; Jesus is poetry and savage brutality. This is why he is the foolishness of human reason (1 Cor 1.27). Not because he is thinks that the kingdom is in simplicity over the complex, the peasant over the bourgeois, or the uneducated over the erudite.
Jesus is the foolishness of this world --the insanity, because of the reality to which he discloses. The future AND the past, life AND death, the spiritual AND the finite, hope AND despair. In Jesus we see the revelation of the divine and we are driven to insanity. Our mind cannot contain paradox --insanity is paradox.
The world desires to marginalize and lobotomize this threat to its order, peace, and security.
Consider La Strada. A cinematic masterpiece by director Federico Fellini. The humble and loving harlequin Christ whose sweet serenade haunts life through death.
Consider the poet and the musician. Whose beauty and sweet sounds are only possible through torment. Kierkegaard says the poet is
"an unhappy person who conceals profound anguish in his heart but whose lips are so formed that as sighs and cries pass over them they sound like beautiful music. It is with him as with the poor wretches in Phalaris's bronze bull, who were slowly tortured over a slow fire; their screams could not reach the tyrant's ears to terrify him; to him they sounded like sweet music. And people crowd around the poet and say to him, 'Sing again soon' --in other words, may new sufferings torture your soul, and may your lips continue to be formed as before, because your screams would only alarm us, but the music is charming." (Either/Or)
This is costly grace, paid for in God's own blood. Anything less is cheap. Romantic without the apocalyptic . . . cheap. The Apocalyptic without the romantic, Resurrection without death, Joy without sorrow . . . cheap.
This is the life of the believer, this is the life of the church. We are called to be the intersection of the apocalyptic and the romantic. We are called to disclose the realities of death AND life, of despair AND hope, damnation AND grace in the everyday world. We are called to be the harlequin, the insane, the fools to the world for the sake of those who cannot help themselves. Now is the time, today --not tomorrow, in this place, in this lifetime.
What will we do?
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