What is the role of the pastor during hospital visitation? If you have ever ministered at the bedside of the sick and dying, you know how irrelevant you can feel. Sometimes it can even feel like you are in the way. Nurses come and go checking vitals and giving meds. Doctors pop in to give updates. Family members in a variety of emotional states, depending on their relationship with each other and the person in the bed, create a fluid and continually evolving environment. And there is you. Squeezed in among all these distractions with only a curtain of privacy between you and the other patients. What are you doing here? You don’t belong to any of these categories. And you are there to represent something invisible, usually by not saying anything (to avoid being like Job’s unhelpful friends), but to simply be present. The whole thing appears kind of silly and gives (especially younger) ministers a feeling of inferiority.

Reflecting on this, Heije Faber compares pastoral care with that of a circus clown.^[1] He does this by listing three tensions the circus clown lives under and then relates those tensions to what ministers regularly face.   

1. The tension between being a member of a team while being in isolation.

2. The tension of appearing to be and feel like an amateur among acknowledged experts.

3. The tension of the need for study and training while being original and creative.

What is a circus without a clown? The clown is certainly part of the circus team and yet they are solitary figures who don’t quite fit in. And that is their strength because it is in that space that a minister can minister. As Faber notes, “The clown lives on a different wavelength. Despite all their clumsiness and failure, they come across as someone who comes close to what life is really about.” The slightly anti-social, irresponsible, careless inner freedom to live on the fringes of human life in a way the shares in others suffering with compassion, patience, wisdom and humor is really the life of the saint, in the deepest sense.

Second, we know that we are only small. And, if not, we need constant reminding of this. The clown is one who puts things in perspective. In a childish way he makes the stuntmen look a little foolish. He makes them feel that they are, after all, only human and ordinary. Thus, the clown reestablishes a sort of spiritual balance; just as the jester did with the king. In the hospital the minister plays a contrast to all the specialists, social workers and physiotherapists. Faber contrasts these trapeze-artists to the clown of the clergyman. Of course, circuses hospitals need trapeze-artists, but the clown minister provides us with a healthy reminder of our limits and mortality. In this way, by making themselves small they point to what is truly important. Again, Faber writes, “The minister, like the clown, will seek to make himself small, but in so doing he will point towards the great things, which can set the sick person free, show them the (divine) humor of the situation, so that in the midst of their suffering they will raise a smile.”

Finally, like clowning, ministers need good training in their craft, but only so that they can minister with ingenuity, flexibility, originality and creativity. Just as there is much that can be learned about the craft of preaching, it needs to be held in the tension of understanding that good preaching is always “truth through personality” (Phillips Brooks). Therefore, the minister clown does not operate by a formula but becomes present in each unique situation by entering the real-life doubts and struggles of the sick, as modeled by what God did for us through Jesus.

A mistake insecure ministers can make in hospital settings is the need to justify their existence by becoming busy doing many things and talking too much. But the minister, like the clown, must never forget that what they are is more important than what they do. Their presence changes the “climate” of the environment because of who and what they represent. Usually that is enough. As we mature in our calling, the peace of our presence becomes a reminder of the limits and follies of humanity in a way that doesn’t bring despair. Instead, we bring with us the laughter, joy and hilarity of the Good News through our comfortability as Clowns for Christ. Then it doesn’t matter if people laugh at us or find us irrelevant. We laugh along with them because of our confidence that it is in what seems irrelevant that God works.    

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[1] Faber, Heije. “The Circus Clown.” In Images of Pastoral Care: Classic Readings. (ed. Robert C. Dykstra). Chalice Press, St. Louis, MI. 2005. pp. 85-93.