“To live the Gospel is to follow the follower and to serve the server; to take risks for and with each other; and to remember that fear is the death knell of joy.”
Sermon by Mike Kinman at All Saints Church, Pasadena, on Sunday, May 6, 2018.
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I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete. This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.
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Sometimes the Bible just seems like the biggest setup.
Take those three lines from this morning’s Gospel reading.
We start with Jesus saying: “I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.”
That’s a pretty good start, right? Jesus has got our attention.
Complete joy.
It doesn’t get much better than that.
Sign. Me. Up.
And then we read on.
“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.”
OK, Love. That’s pretty awesome, too, right? Love one another. Sure, that’s not easy sometimes. It’s not even easy a lot of the time, but who can’t get behind love? Jesus, I’m right there with you. Tell me more.
Then Jesus says: “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”
Well … crap.
We were right there, and then Jesus just monumentally hosed us.
If you want joy you must love. If you want to love, you must lay down your life.
Good. Feeling. Gone.
Now, I want to be clear, laying down your life for your friends is amazing. Whether it is risking your life to speak up for those most oppressed like Oscar Romero or giving your life to serve others like Mother Teresa or literally throwing yourself in front of bullets to save children like Marjory Stoneman Douglas football coach Aaron Feis – these are amazing, powerful, beautiful and extraordinary examples of humanity at our best.
And that’s the first problem with this. They are extraordinary examples. Even if each of us has the potential to be an Oscar Romero, Mother Teresa or Aaron Feis, if that is the yardstick by which our loving faithfulness will be measured, pretty much all of us are going to fail. And what started out as an invitation into joy becomes a seemingly impossible standard to meet.
Sometimes the Bible just seems like the biggest setup.
Not only that, like most of the Bible, this passage too often has been effectively weaponized against anyone who has some degree of powerlessness. This passage has been used to tell people – be they women, people of color, people living in poverty – those among us who say: “Lay my life down? All I do is lay my life down! You see this boot on my neck don’t you?” This passage has been used to tell them that their powerlessness and forced servitude is justified and even holy. That they should rejoice in lovingly laying down their lives in service. After all that’s what Jesus said. After all, that’s what Jesus did.
Sometimes the Bible just seems like the biggest setup.
And yet, I am convinced there is another way, a better way, a truer way to read this passage. A way that is accessible to all of us. A way that liberates those of us who have been subjugated. A way that doesn’t set us up for failure. A way that will make your joy, my joy, all of our joy complete.
I am convinced there is another way, a better way, a truer way to read this passage and the interpretive key that I have found was given to me by the 21st century American prophet … Stephen Colbert.
Stay with me here.
In 2011, Stephen Colbert gave the commencement address at his alma mater, Northwestern University , and he talked about how after his graduation he had joined an improv troupe.
Here is what Stephen said about improv.
“There are very few rules to improvisation, but one of the things I was taught early on is that you are not the most important person in the scene. Everybody else is. And if they are the most important person in the scene, you will naturally pay attention to them and serve them. But the good news is, you’re in the scene, too. So, to them you’re the most important person, and they will serve you.
“No one is leading. You’re all following the follower, serving the servant.”
I am here to tell you, the key to interpreting this Gospel passage. The key to our joy being complete. The key to loving one another. The key to laying down one’s life for one’s friends … is improv. It is living in a way that we are always meeting the other where they are, loving who they are and what they offer, adding to it boldly and fearlessly out of our own unique giftedness, then passing it on to the next person for them to benefit from, rejoice in and contribute to.
It is living in a way that we can always be concerned with having each other’s backs and never worried about our own back because we are so sure that everybody else has ours covered.
It is being able to give our lives away in big ways and small depending on the reality before us, not out of obligation or subjugation but because we are players on this stage and together we get to create something amazing and wild and spectacular.
It is living a life of following the follower, serving the servant. And it is hard. And it is creative. And it is So. Much. Fun.
Stephen says there are very few rules to improvisation. He is right. At its roots, there are three. They are called the Westminster Place Kitchen Rules because they were first written down by Elaine May and Ted Flicker at a kitchen table on Westminster Place in St. Louis.
Three rules. And they’re simple. And together they are the best interpretive structure I’ve found for living Jesus’ command to love one another as he loves us, to lay down our lives for each other. And I believe as we follow them, Christ’s joy is in us and our joy becomes full.
The first rule is: Don’t Deny Reality.
Don’t Deny Reality means name and accept what is before us and who is before us. Don’t try to change the other players on the stage. Don’t deny the truth they bring. Realize that change will happen. Growth will happen. Not because we force it but because we accept each other and change and creativity are what happens when we love without judgment and act without fear.
Don’t Deny Reality has become known as the rule of “Yes, and.” In improv, it is the idea of honoring what the other brings and adding to it in a way that invites them and others to add to it again, making it more and more and more. “…and your joy may be complete.”
In improv, it is the idea that there is no such thing as a mistake as long as everyone is trying to serve the servant and follow the follower.
Does that mean we don’t screw up and hurt each other? Of course not. It does mean that there is nothing we do that we cannot learn from and grow from and create from. That whatever we offer and whatever we create becomes the new reality that we offer to one another. That even when we commit the cardinal sin of not having each other’s back and letting ego and fear take command and the scene comes to a screeching halt, there will be a next scene and a next opportunity to do it differently and better … and a time to come together to share the pain of what happened.
In a community of faith such as All Saints, the rule of “Yes, and” is Anne Lamott’s conviction that God loves each of us as we are and loves us too much to keep us that way. That God is always playing improv with us. That God is always saying, “Yes, and…” to us. Meeting us where we are and shaping and embellishing and creating. It is the ability to lay down our lives for each other knowing that life will be accepted, not rejected, and made a part of the comedy and the drama and the tragedy and the romance of what God is doing in this place.
The first rule of improv, the first rule of faith is Yes, and… Don’t deny reality.
The second rule is “Make a strong choice. The less obvious the better.” Or in a word: Risk. Don’t be afraid of the outrageous idea. Remember, there is no such thing as a mistake. No matter what happens, as players on the stage, we have each other. No matter how bananas things get. No matter how scary things get. No matter how much the joke falls flat or even if people start to walk out – we continue to take risks in love for and with one another because we know that fear is the death knell of creativity. Fear is the death knell of joy.
In a community of faith such as All Saints, the rule of “make a strong choice” means we can lay down our lives for one another in ways great and small. We can take bold stands for love and justice out in the world and bold stands for ourselves and each other within this community. We can risk saying how we feel and what we believe, trusting that this community will remember the rule of “yes, and.” Trusting that this community will meet us as we are, love us as we are, and take what we have to offer and incorporate it into our journey of creativity, compassion and joy. Trusting that the road to becoming fully alive individually and together is not holding back.
The second rule of improv. The second rule of faith is “Make a strong choice. The less obvious the better.”
The third and final rule of improv is “You are you.”
Elaine May said, “What you think of as your ‘character’ is really just a magnified piece of you. Therefore, onstage, be you.”
In improv and in life that means trusting that you are enough. That you are on that stage not to pretend to be someone else but because you bring unique gifts to this creative process and it is absolutely imperative that you claim the authority to do what nobody else in this world can do and that is to be totally, fully, boldly yourself.
To let go of the pain
and fight through the struggle
Come out of the dark
And show the world who you are.
To not be afraid to let your true colors
shine through like a rainbow.
In a community of faith such as All Saints, the rule of “you be you” means hearing Jesus say “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” and knowing that before you can lay down your life, you have to claim your life. You have to claim that power. You have to be unapologetically yourself before you can truly give that self to another. Otherwise it’s not the gift of your life. It’s either not a gift because it’s being compelled of you or it’s not YOUR life because it’s merely a shadow or an idea of who you are supposed to be.
The third rule of improv is “You are you.”
Jesus said: “Love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”
How do we do that? By serving the servant and following the follower. By being improv followers of an improv Jesus and an improv God.
By together saying “Yes, and…”
Making a strong choice.
Remembering you are you.
And as improv followers of an improv Jesus and an improv God, we can remember that there are two main things that will absolutely kill improv – that will bring a scene and our community of faith to a screeching halt – and that is ego and fear.
In Sam Wasson’s new book Improv Nation, he tells the story of when Bill Murray joined the Second City Improv Troupe as the tag-along kid brother of troupe member Brian Doyle Murray. Bill was clearly brilliant but he had no experience with improv and so he was nervous. And because he was brilliant, he realized he could get a great laugh not by saying “yes, and..” but by rejecting and ridiculing the premise another actor offered. And he got the laugh. Every time. And the scene became something that fed Bill’s ego and soothed his fear … but the scene ground to a halt because there was nowhere else for the other actors to go with it.
Some of the other members realized the problem and instead of kicking him out, saw and loved him as he was and pulled him aside and explained improv to him, and Bill got it immediately and became one of the strongest members of the troupe. And in so doing, Bill realized the power of Yes, and. The power of making a strong choice. The power of remembering you are you is that it turns fear into joy.
In fact, if you talk to most of the actors who went on from improv troupes like Second City to become big stars through Saturday Night Live, TV shows and movies — vehicles that were designed to market them as individuals who got the big laugh for themselves, didn’t take risks that might endanger their brand and, far from “you are you,” shaped themselves into an image advertisers and ticket buyers craved. If you talk to most of them — and Sam Wasson did talk to them – almost to a one they will say that the happiest they ever were wasn’t with the fame and the fortune but on stage or sitting around in a living room with their old improv troupe saying Yes, and., Making the strong choices. Remembering that you are you.
When teaching the Westminster Place Kitchen Rules, Ted Flicker would say: “You can’t imagine the excitement of being able to plan it so that no matter what the audience gives us to play … we are able to play it instantly.”
You can’t imagine the excitement.
Being improv followers of an improv Jesus.
You can’t imagine the excitement.
Say “Yes, and.”
Make the strong choice – the less obvious the better.
Remember that you are you.
I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.
Amen.
