Easter and Improvisation

It has been a few days and I’m still thinking about the implications of Easter Sunday’s experiment at Spring of Life using improvisational theater as a metaphor for responding to the resurrection.

During my Easter sermon I pointed out that Mark’s gospel ends abruptly after Jesus’ resurrection from the dead, and the oldest original manuscripts don’t have anything past verse 8. Three women come with spices to the tomb looking for a body and leave with spices in hand bound for Galilee to look for a living Jesus. And that’s where Mark leaves us. It’s like Mark is prompting us to pick up from there, respond to the resurrection ourselves, meet Jesus in the ordinary, everyday places of life – in the “Galiliees” where we live.

As an improv actor, one important rule to follow is accepting what you are offered and building upon it. One of the actors with us on Easter said that he listens carefully and treats the offer like a gift. That shapes the way he responds. He’s not thinking about trying to be funny or making things turn out “right.” That kind of thinking creates anxiety and paralyzes the drama.

Because of Jesus’ death and resurrection, we are able to make a major liberating assumption: It isn’t up to us to make everything turn out right. That’s God’s job, and in fact, God has already made things turn out right through Jesus’ life, death and resurrection.

Have you ever thought of Jesus’ resurrection in that way? Its implication is much bigger than just good news for Jesus (as in, Yea for Jesus! Your’re not dead anymore!). Its implication is bigger than “there’s hope for life after death” (as in, we get to go to heaven when we die). The apostle Paul talks about Jesus’ resurrection as the first fruit of God’s new creation. Jesus’ resurrection is both the evidence and the promise that God’s reign is coming on earth as it is in heaven. Jesus’ resurrection is evidence that the forces and powers of evil at work in the world have been defeated, and that any evil at work in the world today will not have the last word. We can claim the power of the risen Christ at work within us to make everything turn out right. It isn’t up to us to make everything turn out right.

We can say along with the apostle Paul: “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.” Galatians 2:20

Most of us have a general idea about the way we’d like our lives to go. And when we sense that circumstances beyond our control are pushing us in a direction that we don’t want, we tend to get anxious, angry, depressed and controlling. This is classic non-acceptance. For an improve actor, this non-acceptance will kill the drama. For a Christian, this non-acceptance is really our attempt to be God and it kills the adventurous life God hopes for us.

What makes improvisation fun and adventurous is when the actors accept each offer as a gift without trying to force their own agenda or try to be creative, funny or original. They simply continue the story by responding to the offer in a way that is obvious.

This is fairly easy to do when you get offers that are kind or friendly. It’s easy to accept “kind” offers as gifts. The important next step is to learn how to accept the offers that you think are negative as gifts too. I’m not talking here about just “having a positive attitude.” I’m talking about learning to accept every offer in light of the bigger story of God’s resurrection hope. This is the basis of Christian hope.

Take the example of Jesus being offered crucifixion. He could have rejected the offer and fought to the death like many perhaps thought he should have. Instead, Jesus accepted the negative offer of crucifixion. However, he did so with faith that his death would not be the end of God’s story. Jesus accepted the negative offer of crucifixion with trust in God’s bigger story – something far more substantial than “having a positive attitude.” We don’t need a God who raises the dead in order to have a positive attitude. But we do need a God who raises the dead in order to have hope in the face of death.

This points toward a second major assumption we can make because of Jesus’ death and resurrection: God’s story started before and will continue after evil and death have had their way. Another way to put this is “death doesn’t have the last word.” In his book “Improvisation: The Drama of Christian Ethics,” Sam Wells suggests that we use the word “and” after every negative offer.

Wells writes, “This word, “and,” constitutes a significant statement. It indicates that the sentence is not yet finished. The story is not yet over. There is more to come, even when evil has done its worst. . . . For the power of Christ lies in the fact that he accepted death, even death on a cross; he was able to do so because he believed in the “And.” He believed that his death was not the end of the story: and so it proved.”

Because the living Jesus is at work in us, we are capable of accepting negative offers followed by the word “and.”

Think about a negative offer you have received and consider the way you can now accept it with the word “and” in light of the resurrection of Jesus. Here are some examples of what I’m talking about.

• I’m offered betrayal .. . . . and I will forgive you.
• I’m offered terminal illness . . . . and I will pray to see God present in this suffering.
• I’m offered a pink slip . . . . and I will remember that this isn’t the end of God’s story.
• I’m offered my own death or that of a loved one . . . . and I will remember that death doesn’t have the last word.
• I’m offered injury or other unexpected negative news . . . . and I will enjoy this detour because God will show me things I wouldn’t have seen otherwise.
• I’m offered physical or emotional attack . . . . and I will take this opportunity to learn to love my enemies better.
• I’m offered the irresponsible choices of a loved one . . . . and I know it is not my responsibility to make everything turn out right.
• I find myself becoming angry at the actions of another . . . . and I will seek first to understand before being understood.
• My teenage child offers me the words, “I hate you!” . . . . and I will love you.
• My loved one rejects Jesus . . . . and even so, God will have his way and get what God wants!

None of these responses are creative or original or clever. They are obvious in light of what Jesus has done through his resurrection from the dead. They are all responses that make sense in light of the new creation that Jesus has made possible through his defeat of evil and death. They are all things that Christians can and should learn to take for granted so that they become a kind of second nature response to the negative offers we receive. The extent to which these responses sound unusual, shocking or abnormal reveals the extent to which we have been formed by the way of the world rather than the way of Christ.

I’m not talking here about memorizing responses. I’m talking about being trained in the habits of Jesus so that these kind of responses become the obvious, “knee jerk,” kind of things we would do when we are given a negative offer.

Now for the next obvious question: How is your training in the habits of Jesus going these days?