"THE calling to be a clown is a high and special calling. The clown mocks convention. The clown turns truth on its head. The clown looks at important things in a radically different way. The clown is a nuisance. The clown refuses to fit into ordinary boxes. The clown is a prophet who challenges, not a priest who reconciles. For all this there is a price to pay.
Tonto or Matt, Matt or Tonto, this man has not grown old like the rest of us. The shelf-life of the clown is different. He wasn’t a man much given to looking after himself. In fact he wasn’t much given to advertising who he was : this was the man who liked wearing someone else’s ID badge; and some of you haven’t heard of Matt, and others of Tonto. He sat on the margins, except he
didn’t. He brought the message of the margins into the mainstream, which is what clowns do. Without such people the rest of us are diminished.
If I’m anything, I’m a bad comedian : I’m not brave enough to be a clown. But Jesus Christ was. There’s a deep strand of the fool in the Christian faith, and it starts with Christ, the crucified God. He didn’t make people laugh, but he did make them think. He shews that the universe must be seen through different eyes. It is not static and inexorable and impassive. It is moving in strange and elaborate ways towards the God who made it. All things, all events, in time will come together for good, in Jesus, in the Lord of the Dance, in God almighty himself. Though the dance goes through dark places and light places, the rhythm is unbroken, and the destination sure.
It’s the joker in the pack who transforms your hand. It’s the vagabond jester in Charles Williams’ great novel, The Greater Trumps, who gives meaning to all the other figures on the cosmic board, by moving so quickly he is always at its centre : if you have eyes to see him. My brothers and sisters, let us open our eyes, to the deep wisdom beneath the apparent waste of Christ’s death : for without that death there would have been no resurrection, no hope, no
joy."
Revd. John Thewlis, Memorial service for Tonto, The [other] Jester
Carshalton Rectory
26 May 2009
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
TONTO, 1971-2009, THE CALLING TO BE A CLOWN
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thankyou for this matt aka tonto was my nephew and this bought him alive again for me. I also agree with the sentiments about a clown they are usually very sensitive individuals. Always ready to make others laugh which he always managed to do. May God bless and keep him.
ReplyDeleteHe was a great guy, a kindred spirit. I found the sermon very moving & it seemed a shame for such a fitting memorial not to be preserved - I had to write to the Revd to ask for the transcript and permission to use it. Thank you for letting me know that my small gesture of remembrance has been of some solace to the living - until now I did not know whether my efforts had been in vain
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I met Tonto (Matt) back in thr kate 1990s when he was doing his statue act in Covent Garden. I was visiting London and just stopped to watch for a while. When he had finished Tonto called to me to come and have a drink with him and his friends and I did that. I wrote my address in Chester down and a few months later he showed up at my door. He came to stay with me and my husband and daughter a couple of time after that and brought colour and laughgter into our lives. We lost touch, but I will never forget him x
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