It’s the fact that you haven’t heard of the Ghosts of Pasha that made them a perfect subject for an Improv Everywhere mission.
Improv Everywhere was conceived by a guy named Charlie Todd. Its purpose: “to cause scenes of chaos and joy in public places.” Improv Everywhere missions have included the No Pants! Subway Ride, in which 2,500 people took off their pants on subways in 22 cities around the world, and Food Court Musical, in which, as you might have guessed, 16 “agents” suddenly staged a choreographed musical in the food court of a Los Angeles shopping mall.
The concept for “The Best Gig Ever”, the brainchild of Agent Lee, was simple: Give some struggling small time rock band the show of their life.
The Ghosts of Pasha of Burlington, Vermont, had recorded their first five songs the previous summer, and were on their first tour. So they were pleasantly surprised when 38 fans showed up for a Sunday evening show at the Mercury Lounge in New York.
What they didn’t know was that exactly three people besides the Improv Everywhere crew had purchased tickets for the show.
The agents had done their homework. They had listened to those five Ghosts of Pasha songs over and over until they had every word memorized. Then they each adopted a groupie persona for the night. Some sported temporary Pasha tattoos and t-shirts designed for the event. The faux fans jumped and danced and sang along. One bobbed his head introspectively, eyes closed, as if he were soaking in the band’s genius one beat at a time. At the show’s close a shirtless Agent V leapt onto the stage and threw an ecstatic bear hug around lead singer Milo Finch, with a convincing “I love you, man”.
And then they were gone. Mission accomplished. The Ghosts of Pasha had just played the best gig ever. And the Improv Everywhere agents slipped away into the night.
Now, it’s hard to say whether the Ghosts of Pasha were beneficiaries or victims in this stunt. Their feelings were more complicate a few weeks later when someone sent them the Improv Everywhere website where all was made plain. But for one Sunday evening in New York the Ghosts of Pasha felt like rock stars.
Improv Everywhere plays with and on the simple assumption that what we do affects other people. I’ll be impacted if I step onto a train and a group of perfect strangers throw me a birthday party. In their own quirky way Improv Everywhere reminds us that our lives matter to one another, because our encounters change us.
It was that encounter of Jesus and Nathanael that got me thinking about Improv Everywhere. Something about the scene seems staged almost. And the way Jesus addresses Nathanael seems almost as odd and intentional as an Improv Everywhere mission.
We just heard the story, but let’s recap. Jesus finds Philip and asks him or tells him to follow. Philip finds Nathanael and tells him that this Jesus of Nazareth is the one Moses wrote about in the Law and the Prophets.
Nathanael isn’t immediately convinced. “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” he asks, memorably. “Come and see,” says Philip.
And here is where Jesus’ improv mission seems to happen. Seeing Nathanael approaching, Jesus says, “Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!”
It’s an odd greeting. Apparently Jesus hadn’t met this Nathanael. From our perspective we might wonder not just whether Jesus was right. We might wonder what he was up to. What was this mission all about?
Nathanael might not have been deceitful, but he was the first follower to respond to Jesus with a little resistance and skepticism in the gospel of John. And Nathanael is the first disciple whom Jesus addresses with a compliment rather than a command.
To the other disciples he says things like, “Come and see” and “Follow me” or even “You are to be called Cephas.” But to Nathanael, “Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!”
That’s a curious thing to say for several reasons. But you may remember that back in Genesis, Israel was the name given to Jacob, the one who deceived his brother Esau out of his birthright. And when Jacob fled his brother’s wrath he stopped for the night and dreamed of a ladder reaching into heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending upon it.
“You will see heaven opened” said Jesus to Nathanael, “and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.”
We can’t know just what was going through Nathanael’s mind in all this. But with a few carefully chosen words, Jesus pushes Nathanael into the strange, morally complicated, but grace-filled story of Israel. Maybe Jesus was calling Nathanael a Jacob without the deceit—strange but wonderful praise. Whatever he meant, Nathanael was changed.
This story is even more compelling if we resist the urge to make Jesus a mind reader. It’s not clear that there was anything miraculous about his seeing Nathanael under the fig tree, nor is it clear why Nathanael believes that Jesus has come to know him. All we know is that the strange little conversation changed Nathanael. It turned him around. He followed.
While the question of how Jesus changed people is a perfectly good one, the question of how our lives change those around us seems just as relevant. We stand in a long line of Jesus’ followers stretching back to Nathanael, so might this story also remind us that the ways we engage people can make all the difference in the world? Or at least all the difference in their lives.
Think about the people who send all your defenses up, and the ones whom you easily trust? The difference can be subtle, but that difference is life and death. And somehow if we’re going to move through this world in a healing and life giving way as Jesus did, don’t you think we each have to find a way of being that opens up trust in the lives we encounter?
I suppose being Christian all these years later is still about responding as Nathanael did, trusting this Jesus and letting ourselves be known. There are plenty of reasons for the mention of Jesus to send up our defenses and turn us off. But for all that’s been done in the his name, if you’re here, it probably means that something in Jesus’ life and story has opened up something up in you. For reasons you might not be able to explain, you trust him.
“Where did you get to know me?” asked Nathanael. Which, if you’re one of the Ghosts of Pasha, might be paraphrased, “Where did you learn the words to our songs?” And a distance between strangers is closed.
So often we assume that Jesus’ gifts were divine and that only his limitations were human. But what if Jesus’ life changing impact on people began with the ordinary miracle of human trust. And of all Jesus’ singular gifts and powers, didn’t they all rest on this one? On the simple gift of looking at another person, and knowing them and gaining their trust with a clear eyed love?
We can live this way too. Imperfectly, but we each of us in our own way can live this way. We can learn to leave our assumptions and agendas behind long enough to see the person in front of us for who they are, no matter how foreign or strange their life might seem to us. We can give people the simple dignified feeling of being known and loved, and the trust that can follow changes everything.
And if this seems like nothing more than a little common sense relationship advice, remember this. God became incarnate in just this way. God’s redeeming love moved out beyond the body of Jesus and into the lives around him in the simple exchanges of human life. Whether it was to one Nathanael or 5000 hungry people on a hillside, maybe the ripple of God’s love making its way through the world sounded like, “Where did you get to know me?” or even “Where did you learn the words to my songs?”
Maybe it still does. Amen.
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