St Columba’s United Reformed Church, Cambridge
Sunday 10th September 2017
Trinity XIII
Sermon: Genesis 18.1-8; Psalm 30; Luke 15.11-25
It is fitting to welcome Cambridge International Club today, as together we mark the end of our sixty and more years’ association. For several decades, the Club’s dancing was one activity amongst many bringing people into cross-cultural fellowship, but it is interesting that it’s dancing that endured longest.
Hard though it might be to believe on the day after Strictly2017 began, dance may not be everyone’s thing, but whether we enjoy tripping the light fantastic or not, dance is a rich analogy of so much in life. First, it so often epitomisescelebration, as we learn from the parable of the Prodigal Son.Just as the Psalmist helped us rejoice that God ‘s love can change ‘grief to joy-filled dance’, [1]so the father’s waiting concluded, he cannot help himself but throw a party. Indeed, it is the music and dancing that alert the elder of the sons to his errant brother’s return. Those of you who know Rosa and Bill well will realise that rarely does one of their celebrations, and even last year when Alistair and Claire had their Silver Wedding, Bill could be seen in a gentle reel.
Secondly, dance is, perhaps, an eloquent analogy for marriage. I am not sure whether Robert and Sheila are ever to be seen waltzing; perhaps they had greater expertise in the twist or the shimmy that were more typical of the swinging sixties when they were courting. Dancers or not, a good marriage is about the co-operation, co-ordination and, in my case, forgiveness, that dancing requires - poor Bethan has bruised toes from my clumsy attempts at even the simplest step. A marriage often benefits from some sensitive dancing around one another, too, until the temperature has cooled.
Thirdly, dance has long been understood as a profound analogy for theology, too. Some people’s understandingsof God are trapped in ideas of distance and awe, of judgement and punishment.For centuries, people have wondered if Abraham’s three visitors were symbolic of God in the three persons of the Trinity, but if they were,they do not come to eat with Abraham and Sarah; they remain outside, aloof, beyond. [2]Whilst I would want to argue for the place of awe and judgement in a rigorous systematic theology, they are nowhere near where I would beginspeaking of God. On the surface of it, nor is the doctrine of the Trinity. Not, that is, unless you find Rublev’s fifteenth-century icon of the Trinity interesting. If you turn to it, as it is on the cover of your order of service, you will see the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit represented in different colours. The contemporary writer, Richard Rohr,[3]wonders about the colours’ significance – the Father onthe left in gold, is perhaps indicative of perfection and fullness;the Sonin the middle wearing blue, perhaps suggestive of sea and sky and thus pointing to the incarnation by which God comes into the world; and the Spirit on the right in green –the colour of nature, of fertility and fecundity, potentially reminding us that the Spirit is the giver of life. These three are inter-dependent, each incomplete without the other. Moreover, Rublevhas them at table – a place of fellowship, ‘infinite hospitality and utter enjoyment between themselves’. [4]It is as if the Holy Trinity are to be understood less as an esoteric attempt to explain the inexplicable and more as if an image of Father, Son and Spirit engaged in a dance. After all, the ancient Greek word that’s often used to describe the Trinity is perichoresis, from which get out word choreography. When people draw this allusion from the icon they sometimes speak of the dance of the three as a ‘circle dance’. Pat Schicker tells me that circle dancing has long been a feature of International Club dances, too. In those cultures where women and men do not dance together, circle or line dances have been an entirely acceptable form, reliant not upon pairings or formation but upon the steps danced. None permanently lead or dominate; all have an equal role and place. Just like the Trinity – equal partners in the Godhead.And there is more. If you look closely at the icon, on the table cloth between the legs of the Father and the Spirit, there is a small oblong. Informed by remains of glue on the original icon, some art historians have suggested that this is symbolic of a mirror, in which, as viewers observe the icon, they see themselves reflected. And so, the gathering at the table is the Trinity andthe viewer; God’s dance is not simply with Godself but with us. Such is the gift of the incarnation. God is not merely with us; God is interacting with us, relating to us, dancing with us.‘Instead of God being the Eternal Threatener’, says Richard Rohr, ‘we have God as the Ultimate Participant – in everything – both the good the painful.’ [5]
This linking of dance with theology is as old as the hills. ‘Whoever knoweth the power of dance, dwelleth in God’,[6] as a Dervish poet has it. The advantage of dance as a gateway into theology is that it is rather less about words than it is about relationship. Words and their meaning are as slippery as eels. Movements, such as dance, are a visceral experience. And when all else is said and done, God, and particularly God’s love, are less to be spoken of than encountered, not least in the circle dance of life.You don’t need to come to St Columba’s very often to know that amongst the music most frequently to be heard here is that of Bach. Wilfrid Mellers (1914-2008) was a twentieth-century musicologist, who had read English at Downing. In his book Bach and the Dance of God, [7]he helps us see that Bach’s music was what he calls ‘dance-dominated’ - that Bach uses many dance forms in all sorts of his compositions. This use of dance forms in music as religiously significant as the Passions are, leads Mellers to say that for Bach ‘it seems music and theology are inseparable, as are pedagogic technique and spiritual allegory.’ [8]So, when Bach is in Cöthen, holding a secular post, with little church responsibility, he still invests his music with religious meaning. This morning, we are hearing various movements from the unaccompanied Cello Suites of Bach. These were written in Cöthen, and may well have been exercises for aspiring cellists – hence Mellers’ reference to ‘pedagogic technique’. Moreover, their inner movements exploit various dance forms, and given the way the ‘cello requires the whole body of the players – torso, arms, legs, shoulders – they are all but dances in and of themselves. But Mellers offers us the idea that they are also wordless analogies of theological profundity. And that is not least true of the Sarabande from the fourth suite inE-flat, which we will hear shortly. After movements that can appear to represent the worshippers’ gradual approach to God,[9]and then, possibly, their praise of God,[10]we eventually reach what has been termed this suite’s ‘centre of emotional gravity’.[11] The Sarabande, in earlier times quite a fast, even racy dance, had gradually evolved into something of a slower, more courtly grace, whilst retaining its characteristic emphasis on the second beat of a triple time bar. James Talbot, a seventeenth century priest and fellow of Trinity College,described a Sarabande as ‘apt to move the passions and to the disturb the tranquility of the mind’. [12]Bach seems frequently to have exploited the latter-day Sarabande’s intensity.So it is that such a solemnity leant itself to adaptation by Bach for the closing movements of both his St Matthew and St John Passions. There, in what for me are such sublime responses to the defining motif of the Christian faith – the crucifixion – Bach’s uses a dance.
Thus, we see how dance is an analogy of life – dynamically expressing thatfellowship and community which hasthe capacity to overcome all the barriers we so easily erect between races, genders and ages;facilitating celebration at life’s moments of especial joy; accompanying us as we endure shadowlands and emerge into renewed light; and eloquently articulatingso much of what we experience of the triune God but cannot put into words.Listen to that E-flat Sarabande now, and let the dance do what mere words rarely can.
Prayer Lord God, three in one and one in three,in whose exquisite choreographywe see not threat but invitation,will you draw us now into that circle dance of lifewhere we are one with you and with each other.And because your Son danced for us the Sarabande of salvation, grant us the hope of your hospitalityfor all time and eternity,Amen
N. P. Uden, 10th September 2017
[1]Psalm 30.11, in the metrical version by Fred R. Anderson Singing God’s Psalms2016 Grand Rapids: Eerdmans pages 30f
[2] Genesis 18.1-8
[3] Rohr, Richard 2016 The Divine Dance: the Trinity and your transformation London: SPCK pages 29f
[4] ibid, page 30
[5] ibid, page 36
[6] Mellers, Wilfrid 1980 Bach and the Dance of God London: Faber and Faber page 16
[7]ibid
[8] ibid, page 21
[9]Bach, Johann Sebastian Cello Suite No. 4 in E flat major BWV 1010 The Prelude
[10]ibid The Allemande and Courante
[11] Mellers, page 23
[12]quoted in Eric Siblin, 2011 The Cello Suites: in search of a Baroque Masterpiece London: Vintage page 153