Dance Lessons
By Caroline Dean
July 15, 2012
2 Samuel 6:
[ Audio
(mp3, 5.2Mb) ]
Reading from 2 Samuel 6: (Retold instead of read)
David has just been anointed as King of Israel after Saul's
death. And so he has much to
celebrate. However there is something
missing. David goes through the
checklist for the coronation party: defeat the Philistines (remember that guy Goliath), check! Marry the former king, Saul's, daughter,
Michal – Check! Pick a new capital city
– Jerusalem – Check! Find a crowd of
adoring people to rule – Check! And then
David remembers, oops! We forgot about
inviting God to the party, (specifically the Ark of the Covenant, which
represented the throne of God and symbolized God's presence and God's
blessing.) And so David went out to get
the ark with a host of people. And when
they were bringing it down the hill, they were singing and dancing and playing
every instrument under heaven! (And
there is this interlude here when a guy touches the ark and gets killed because
he is ceremonially unclean and David decides to stash the ark away for a while
and then comes back and gets it with another party) This time they stop every few yards to
sacrifice animals to honor God (and probably to celebrate that no one had
randomly died!). And so they finally
make it into the city and David goes nuts. He dances in front of the ark with “all of his might” the scriptures say
celebrating the presence of God among his people in the chosen city. He wears a linen ephod, which is associated
with a religious person of authority, and apparently David is a bit scantily
clad. And everyone cuts loose because
God's presence is near and they have a huge celebration and divvy up all of the
sacrificial meat for a huge festival celebration. Well this would be a nice happy ending but we
have one more scene that puts a bit of a damper on things. When David returns home from all of his
festivities – we hear from his wife Michal (who is often unfairly described as
the nagging wife or the one without faith). And she does speak quite bluntly to David saying, “You have made a fool
out of yourself dancing like that and what are you wearing!” She is the daughter of Saul and so she knows
how kings are supposed to behave. And
David cuts back quickly, “I danced with all of my might before God, the God
that appointed me as ruler in place of your father, and I will make myself even
more foolish than this in the presence of God.” And then we learn that Michal never bears a child in the rest of her
days. It's a bit of a party pooper
moment for David and it's such a curious way to end this celebratory scene.
Let us pray:
Loving God, grant us the courage to come before you with our
true selves this day. And help us to
trust that even when our authenticity reveals imperfection, your love and grace
cover us and sustain us. May the
meditations of our hearts grant us a sense of your presence here with us today. Amen.
Confession: I am a
Young Clergy Woman, I do funerals & weddings, I preach & teach, I play
silly games with youth & sit with people in hospitals & I also love to
dance – well at least under the right circumstances.
Last weekend Brantley and I were in Texas for our friend
Ryan's wedding. He is a Mennonite pastor
in Dallas and it was a lovely ceremony and fantastic party. And Ryan, knowing our divinity school friends
well, decided to come up with his own play list of a list of songs our time
together at Duke campouts and divinity school gatherings. This playlist had an enthralling effect on
all of us and before we knew it we were all dancing like lunatics for 3 hours
straight. Now this scenario is lovely
and celebratory, until you look around and realize that there is an average of
about 5-8 people dancing at a time (which leaves out any possibility of anonymity)
but I get over that quickly and re-focus on Ryan's goofy dance moves.
Then during the cutting of the cake a tall fellow leans over
and says – so I hear that you are preaching tomorrow? And he kindly introduces himself. And I do have a moment of pause – is that
me? And then I remember – yes – I am
indeed filling in for Ryan's church tomorrow and covering his preaching
duties. I am the preacher. And this initial interaction is fine – I
don't have too many flurries of insecurity about being the “young dancing lady preacher”…but
as the night progresses I realize that Ryan's entire congregation is sitting
quietly in their seats as we dance the night away and every thirty minutes or
so another person comes up and says, “so I hear that you are preaching
tomorrow?” And all of the sudden I feel
like an astronaut on the moon—like no one has inhabited this space before
me--this is surely one giant leap for “Young Dancing Preachers” everywhere as
Ryan and I dance the night away in front of a bunch of more tranquil Mennonite
congregants.
And I wonder to myself – have I compromised my authority and
confidence in the pulpit? Have I somehow
discredited my presence as a preacher, a spiritual guide? Will they take me seriously in worship or
just have flash backs of our funky dance moves from the night before?
I wonder if David has any of these questions running through
is mind when he thought back on his goofy dance routine. I have decided that this dance party with old
friends can in fact be a perfect metaphor for what we do together in worship on
Sunday mornings and in life when we encounter the divine.
First let's imagine the story from David's perspective. When I think if David dancing before the ark
I like to imagine a child dancing. I was
tempted to show you all this video of one of our family gatherings recently
when my 4 year-old nephew and two 2 year-old nieces had an impromptu dance
party. They swing their hips and flail
their arms and even fall down on their faces when they get really into it and
they do all this with an intensity that I don't even know how to capture in
words. And I wonder if this is what the Jesus
imagines when he says “have faith like a child.” David's goofy unfiltered dancing reminds us
that when we gather in worship (which isn't limited to Sunday mornings!) we
must come before God with our real funky selves. Rumi the mystic poet writes, “Do not seek
any rules or method of worship. Say
whatever your pained heart chooses.” There are so many images in scripture when God says, I don't want your
sacrifices, or your achievements, or your best self, I
want your heart, I want you just as you are. God says in affect, “I don't want your performance of faith or
spirituality, I want YOU.” So how do we
love God? We let ourselves follow the
dance lessons of David, we stop performing and let
ourselves be authentic before God.
And so the question is when is the last
time that you were truly authentic before God? Even if your authenticity
is doubt or despair? Even if you
authenticity is irreverent or embarrassing? God wants our honest selves not some pious, fake portrayal of who we
are. God loves us for who we are and
when we try to be someone else it is probably annoying. Authenticity is God's favorite posture in
this dance, not perfection, which bring me to my next point.
What about Michal, David's wife, perspective? When is her dance lesson for us about how to
love God? Michal points out that David's
authentic worship before God also reveals that he is imperfect. You see a few chapters earlier, the text says
that Michal fell in love with David and that David married her. But it doesn't say that David fell in love
with her. And since Michal is Saul's
daughter, the former kind of Israel, you have to wonder if this is a purely
political move to solidify David's spot on the throne. And now Michal perhaps sees this scene with
the ark a bit differently than others. After she criticizes him, David says “I did not dance before your slave
girls – I danced before my Lord – the one
who chose me to be king above your father, Saul.” And perhaps she thinks to herself, he
married me to secure his place on the throne of my father, what is to stop him
from using the Ark of God as a political ploy?
What is Michal's dance lesson? Michal has the perspective to see that even
though David is dancing with abandon in awe of God, he is still imperfect. He is still concerned with political power
and manipulating those around him (which we find in full force a few chapters
later when David seduces Bathsheba). Michal
teaches us that when we dance with our true funky selves in worship before God,
we inevitably have a few missteps a few moments when our rhythm and our moves
are totally off base – which is okay!
But here is the most important thing, even when God sees us
dancing with abandon and sees our limitations and our faults and even at times
God glimpses our worst selves, God sees us with love and grace. In many religious traditions and perhaps in
the tradition of your childhood, our flaws and imperfections are often met with
a ton of RELIGIOUS GUILT. And that
RELIGIOUS GUILT is not a positive experience. It is an experience of shame and alienation both from God and the
church. But here is the key, in true
worship our flawed dance steps draw us to God's healing grace, where we hear
the voice of God say to us, it's okay beloved, I've got that one covered or I
love you even when you screw up, when we are so caught up in our funky dance
moves that we fall on our face. Our
dance missteps do have consequences, but that God's love is unconditional and
miraculous.
David calls us to let go, to be ourselves, to be real in
front of God and in front of one another – which is a beautiful portrait of
worship
Michal calls us to be honest and be aware of our missteps. To participate in the good kind of confession,
the kind that is cathartic, the kind that names a reality. A practice of confession
that leads us into reconciliation with God without loading us up with tons of
RELIGIOUS GUILT.
And our last dance lesson comes from a Krista Tippett interview. Krista hosts a program on NPR called On Being. In this particular interview she speaks with Fatemah Keshavarz, a professor of Persian and
Comparative Literature at Washington University in St. Louis about the life and
writings of the Sufi poet and theologian, Rumi. Rumi practiced a form of meditation that included spinning in a circle
with his arms spread as expression of joyous devotion. The order of Sufi
Mystics called the “Whirling Dervishes” comes from this tradition…
Krista Tippet asks Fatemah Keshavarz in this interview about what Rumi's poetry and
legacy meant to her growing up…
Ms. Keshavarz: So for me, he came into the
picture as someone who said, "OK, you've read the text. You know the
words. You've looked at the history. Now, transcend all that. Put it aside and
live it. Encounter it." If you ask me to think of a few words that, for
me, describe his poetry, one of them is it's an encounter. You come face to face with something. I'll never
forget. I was once reading an ode or
poem that described beautiful birds. You know, some can sing, some are
colorful, and so forth. And I was enjoying the walk in the aviary. And suddenly
it was as if he said, "Well, what kind of a bird are you?" All of a
sudden, I realized I can't stay on the margins. You have to join in. And I
think, in a way, the whirling is exactly a reflection of that. So he kind of comes
into the tradition with all the intellectual legacy,
but he says that's not enough. You have to do something else with it. Face it,
play with it, dance it, bring it into your everyday
life.
And this is worship – that encounters God and we get pulled in – we realized
that we can't sit by on the margins – we have to dance! We have to interact and bring this truth into
our everyday living.
So how to commit to the spiritual practice
of being “ourselves” before God? When we let down our guard
before God and before one another. And how can our flawed dance moves help us to feel connected to God and
not alienated from God with a ton of religious guilt? And lastly, how can worship draw us into an
encounter with God, where we realize that when we watch God whirling, we find
ourselves tapping our toes. Worship is
encountering God's dance moves and then being drawn into the dance. So go now listening for God's rhythm and may
we all be caught up in the sacred dance of Christ's love. Amen.
