God's Kingdom is for Clowns, Comedians, Immigrants and Exiles

Readings for the 11^th Sunday in Ordinary Time: Exodus 17:22-24; Psalm 92: 2-3, 13-16; 2^nd Corinthians 5: 6-10; Mark 4: 26-34.

Today's readings put me in mind of two superb films I've recently watched, "Joker" and "In the Heights," both available on HBO.

Each film described a world inhabited by people our culture tends to despise and that empires like ours devalue and vilify. In that sense, both "Joker" and "In the Heights" focus on individuals very like the Hebrews liberated from Egyptian slavery and like Jesus himself and his friends who lived under impoverishing Roman occupation.

"Joker" showed the dark threatening side of life under an order structured to favor the rich. "In the Heights" was infinitely more positive. However, taken together, they illustrate a theme suggested in today's liturgical readings. It's that positively or negatively, the poor represent our future. They are the key factor that will either destroy or save us.

Joker

Begin with "Joker." It points up the need for a new (divine) order in our collapsing world whose worship of the rich is leading to disaster.

"Joker" is the story of Arthur Fleck, a sign-spinning clown and aspiring comedian who, he admits, has never had a positive thought in his life.

And there's good reason for Arthur's depression (ironically underlined by uncontrollable laughing fits). As a child, he was abused by his adoptive mother's boyfriend. He's down and out and spends much of his life watching television with his now sick mother. Crucially, he has no other community.

The world in Arthur's Gotham City is also disintegrating. Garbage litters its streets. Rats are running wild. And rampant crime plagues city streets.

Meanwhile the rich hide within their gated estates, all the time blaming the poor characterizing them as lazy clowns who need sermonizing from above rather than the dignity of employment at a living wage. Tellingly, at one point the headline of the city's main paper reads "Kill the Rich!"

Little wonder then that after Arthur murders three Wall Streeters on the subway following their unprovoked attack on him, alienated poor people throughout the city adopt his clown mask as a sign of rebellion reminiscent of the Guy Fawkes mask in "V for Vendetta."

Arthur had unwittingly started a class war of poor against rich. He has his community at last, but it is completely hopeless, nihilist and destructive.

In the Heights

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