July 12, 2009

Clay Nelson

Pentecost 6     2 Sam 6:1-5, 12b-19     Mark 6:14-29

Whomever said church is boring has never attended on this particular Sunday. There is nothing boring about a whirling dervish David, dancing nearly nude before the Ark, making his wife mad as a meat axe. Nor is there anything boring about the gruesome details surrounding salacious Salome’s suggestive pole-dance for her daddy, Uncle Herod, to get her ahead. This stuff makes reality TV look tame. My problem is coming up with a sermon title worthy of such stories. Israel’s Got Talent has possibilities, or perhaps Dancing Queen… and King.

As choreographer, Kristy Nilsson has pointed out, “dancing is the world’s favourite metaphor.” Perhaps it’s because there is an element of danger involved—by danger I mean sex. George Bernard Shaw observed that dancing “is the vertical expression of a horizontal desire legalized by music.” Its undercurrent of sexuality is certainly offensive to some fastidiously religious types. For them, perhaps, I should entitle the sermon: Dirty Dancing or Saturday Night Fever.

But there are other aspects of dancing that make it dangerous. In this case I don’t mean Dancing with Wolves or letting Simon Cowell judge my impersonation of Michael Jackson moonwalking. As ill advised as that would be, I’m thinking more of how dancing changes things. That is Risky Business.

Do you remember the movie classic Footloose? It’s about a teenage boy and his family moving from big-city Chicago to a small town in the West, where he experiences a real case of culture shock. Though he tries hard to fit in, he can't quite believe he's living in a place where rock music and dancing are illegal. It turns out his new girlfriend’s father, a Bible-thumping minister, is responsible for keeping the town dance-free because his son was killed in an auto crash on the way home from a dance. The gist of the story is that the boy has the courage to initiate a battle to abolish the outmoded ban. He begins by dancing alone in a warehouse. Then he starts teaching a few friends how to dance. It ends with him in a scripture-quoting duel with the preacher at a city council meeting. Dancing wins the day. A repressed town is liberated and their children have a Senior Prom. Watching the final scenes of joyous, unrestrained dancing is like hearing my heart sing.

The movie is a reminder that we are born to dance. Toddlers do it to music only they hear. We fall in love dancing and the first thing we do as a couple after getting married is dance. It is at the core of our being and no matter how dangerous we must dance. Even people who can’t dance, those who are rhythm-challenged like me, dance. It takes a lot to keep people from dancing. I’ve watched people in wheel chairs cut a rug with the best of us. Even quadriplegics dance in their hearts. The Japanese have a saying that we are fools whether we dance or not, so dance. It is universal. There is no tribe or ethnic group that doesn’t dance. We waltz in Vienna, salsa in Rio, tango in Paris and Hip Hop in Harlem. We do so for all kinds of reasons. The Maori Haka on different occasions to celebrate, to honour or to intimidate. But we also dance to woo, entertain, seduce, exercise, and worship. We dance in circles, in squares and in lines. We do it barefoot, in toe shoes, with taps, and even on roller skates. We do it in groups, as couples and alone. We do it around bonfires, on polished floors, on beaches and in pools. About the only place Pakeha Anglicans aren’t likely to dance is in church. Well, that is not exactly true, at least at St Matthew’s. I do have photos of parishioners Elena Philp belly dancing and Irene Grove doing interpretive dance, but they haven’t done it at a service…yet.

All this makes me wonder if dance is our favourite metaphor what is it a metaphor for? Could it be for something intangible, transcendent, life-giving, and beyond words, yet is rooted in who we are?

Frederick Nietzsche, who is more famous for writing God’s obituary, once said the only God he could believe in was one who knew how to dance. But perhaps it is more than that. Maybe God is the dance. If so, when we dance, it becomes an act of transformation. We become not only the image of God but also one with God. For dance is the only art form that doesn’t require an instrument, a brush, a chisel, or a pen. When we dance we are both the artist and the art. We become one with the metaphor.

Sounds good, but that is the rub. To be one with God is to be fully alive. But to be fully alive is to dance on a wire. Life is an uncertain thing. We may awake to blue skies only to be drenched in an afternoon downpour. To be fully alive is to dance anyway, whether the music playing is joyous or sorrowful, serene or frenetic.

As David is bringing the Ark to Jerusalem to spiritually bolster his political aims there is a mishap that was cut out of the reading. When the oxen pulling the cart carrying the Ark stumble on rough ground, one of the priests, Uzzah, reaches out to steady it and dies. The story suggests that God kills him for touching the Holy of Holies--not very nice of God to strike down a well-meaning, presumably pious priest trying to prevent a catastrophe. While today we might not make such an assumption as to his cause of death, it gives David pause about bringing the Ark to his capitol. It gives us pause as well. Walking along side God can be harmful to our health, never mind dancing. David doesn’t dance into Jerusalem until he has tested whether of not having God hanging about can be a blessing as well as a risk.

To make the point more strongly we have Mark’s account of John the Baptist’s death. Herod doesn’t like John. He is nuisance and a pest stirring up unrest. But Herod is more afraid of offending God by killing one of his prophets, so instead he has locked him up and thrown away the key. When he is cornered by his step-daughter after promising her anything as a reward for turning him on, he executes John to save face. Even being God’s mouthpiece does not protect us from the capriciousness of life.

Mark tells this story in the middle of an account of how well Jesus’ disciples are doing in their new ministry of healing and casting out demons. They are on a roll, so what better time than to remind them about John as a cautionary tale. Since Mark’s readers already know about the fate of Jesus they will quickly pick up the similarities of John’s death to his. They will begin to understand that walking with God, speaking for God or revealing God are no guarantee that we will live happily ever after. The Gospel is not a fairytale--it’s a dance.

There are preachers out there who make a good living preaching a “Gospel of Success.” People pay these pipers and dance to their tune in hopes of good things happening to them for following Christ. I don’t know what tune they dance to, but it isn’t Gospel music. But it is probably legitimate to ask though, if dancing to the Gospel doesn’t protect us from the evils that might befall us or bless us with wealth or health or whatever we strive for, why dance to it?

D.H. Lawrence’s answer was, “that we might be alive... and part of the living, incarnate cosmos.” If we learn that, it will be worth blistered and tired feet. Tripping the light fantastic with Jesus may not change how the world operates. It may not change our luck or our prospects, but it changes us and that can make all the difference.

So in the words of W.H. Auden:

The tune is catching and will not stop;

 Dance till the stars come down from the rafters;

 Dance, dance, dance till you drop. [1]

Endnote:

[1] Auden, W.H., Death’s Echo, 1936