To Live is to Dance; July 11, 2021; YLLC

My husband, Steve, and I are dancers.  Our first real date was a ballroom dance lesson.  Steve likes to say he grew up on the MN iron range where polka is a full contact sport.  We take tango lessons in Mexico and typically jump at any chance to dance.  We’re both really looking forward to post pandemic dancing to live music again. I love how alive I feel when we’re dancing.  I love the “flow” of dance, the way the brain stops analyzing and the body and the music meld.

If you have ever been to a music in the park event you might have seen a dancer or two.  Oh, I know, it is usually a sedate crowd, mostly older people well settled into their collapsible lawn chairs.  But the audience is often punctuated by a few young children and even an aging hippie or two, who, like the children, still feel free to dance.  Unimpeded by self-consciousness they move to the music, twirl, lift their hands and shake their booty to the beat. 

I agree with Friedrich Nietzsche, a 19th century philosopher who said, “Without music, life would be a mistake… I would only believe in a God who knew how to dance.” Snoopy put it more simply, “To live is to dance, to dance is to live.”  It would be simplistic though to just encourage one to dance, at all times.  Ecclesiastes 3: 4 tells us, “There is a time to weep and a time to laugh; a time to mourn and a time to dance.”

We see that contrast in today’s first lesson.  The scene is the moving of the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem, complete with a description of King David cavorting and dancing with all his might, dressed in only a linen ephod, a sort of apron like garment.  From a distance, Queen Michal, looks on with disdain. At first glance it seems that Michal, David’s first wife and the younger daughter of David’s rival, Saul, is scandalized by David’s public dancing.

In the next passage they have a big fight in which they speak caustically to each other, as any estranged spouses might.  I’d love to go on a long diversion here and tell you all about the way Michal had been mistreated over and over, used as a pawn between two power-hungry men.  But that would be another sermon.  I invite you to read 1^st and 2^nd Samuel from start to finish if you haven’t already.  It’s juicier than any TV mini series you’ve ever seen. 

My point in bringing up the contrasting attitudes of David and Michal, though, is to show how shaped by our own perspectives we all are.  We think of David as the successful and bright king of Israel whose close connection to God guided him through his reign, even though the bumpy patches caused by David’s very evident flaws. In today’s text he is jubilant, fully alive and rejoicing, dancing his heart out. 

On the other side of this story is Michal, the rightfully disdainful victim of a lifetime of violation. Any one of us might be scowling from a window, too, if we had been so treated. We come at life from our own particular experiences. Our circumstances play a huge role in whether we dance with all our might or scowl, looking on with resentment and loss. 

This past week I was feeling good—I had my sermon done early.  It was all about praise and rejoicing.  I was going to encourage you to dance like children in the park, to find a way to loosen up and feel the grace of God.  But, then my circumstances changed. 

My mother had been having some apparently manageable medical concerns.  She had a surgery scheduled for a week from tomorrow.  My sister and I had it all worked out who was going to be with her when throughout her recovery. Then in the pre-op physical they found some disturbing results. We all wound up in St. Cloud on Weds through Friday as my mom underwent an urgent and unsuccessful procedure to open her bile duct. She has since been referred to the University of Minnesota hospital for a more complicated procedure, hopefully tomorrow or Tuesday.

All of a sudden, my happy and light sermon didn’t seem to cut it.  That’s how it goes.  Sometimes we’re David, sometimes Michal.  Sometimes we can dance with joy and at other times the music is somber, filled with anxiety or loss. 

As I stood with my dad by my mom’s bedside on Thursday, as she was coming out of the anesthesia the doctor told us about the cancer they found.  A few hours later the Doctor returned to reassure us that the malignancy seems to be localized and small and may be resect-able.

Later, as the Doctor was telling us about the referral to a larger hospital he said, “Don’t worry, I will not abandon you.”  And I heard the comforting words of Jesus to his friends in John 14: 18, sometimes translated I will not leave you comfortless, or orphaned, or abandoned.  Those words were like music to me.  Although I still didn’t feel anything like dancing, I knew that my mother and father and I, my sister and her family, my husband and my kids–and all of us, are held in the gracious embrace of God’s love.  No matter what, we will not be abandoned.  I was so grateful that I could hear the voice of God in that moment. 

Over a quick bite to eat later in the day my dad said something like:  “We’re on a new path, we don’t know where it’s going, but we just need to follow the path.”  And again, through those words I heard the gospel.  One of the blessings of being a pastor is that I have so many prayers memorized from the various liturgies I’ve led over the years.  As my dad spoke I heard Luther’s evening prayer… 

O Lord God, you have called your servants to ventures of which we cannot see the ending, by paths as yet untrodden, through perils unknown.  Give us faith to go out with good courage, not knowing were we go, but only that your hand is leading us, and your love supporting us; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

My mom and dad are staying with my sister in the cities right now.  Pastor Doug was ready to step in and lead the service today. But I knew it would be good to be here in this gathering today, even if it meant re-writing my sermon.  I know that message I bring to you today has a deeper meaning than the one I had previously prepared. 

There is a song that’s not in the Lutheran hymnal, but many of you may have heard it.  It’s called “Lord of the Dance” and it was written by English songwriter Sydney Carter in 1963. The melody is from the American Shaker song “Simple Gifts”.  It follows the idea of the traditional English carol, “Tomorrow Shall Be My Dancing Day,” which tells the gospel in the first person voice of Jesus, portraying Jesus’ life and mission as a dance.

Carter was inspired partly by Jesus, but also by a statue of the dancing Hindu deity Shiva which sat on his desk. He “did not think the churches would like it at all. … Carter saw Christ as the incarnation of the piper who is calling us, who dances that shape and pattern which is at the heart of our reality.”

If I had figured this out earlier in the week we could have sung this song today, but since I just finished this sermon last night you’ll just have to put up with the words as my closing today. 

I danced in the morning
When the world was begun,
And I danced in the moon
And the stars and the sun,
And I came down from heaven
And I danced on the earth,
At Bethlehem
I had my birth.

Dance, then, wherever you may be,
I am the Lord of the Dance, said he,
And I’ll lead you all, wherever you may be,
And I’ll lead you all in the Dance, said he

I danced for the scribe
And the pharisee,
But they would not dance
And they wouldn’t follow me.
I danced for the fishermen,
For James and John
They came with me
And the Dance went on.

I danced on the Sabbath
And I cured the lame;
The holy people
Said it was a shame.
They whipped and they stripped
And they hung me on high,
And they left me there
On a Cross to die.

I danced on a Friday
When the sky turned black
It’s hard to dance
With the devil on your back.
They buried my body
And they thought I’d gone,
But I am the Dance,
And I still go on.

Dance, then, wherever you may be,
I am the Lord of the Dance, said he,
And I’ll lead you all, wherever you may be,
And I’ll lead you all in the Dance, said he

They cut me down
And I leapt up high;
I am the life
That’ll never, never die;
I’ll live in you
If you’ll live in me –
I am the Lord
Of the Dance, said he.