“Worship’s Dangerous Dance”Pentecost 7b
For Plymouth Congregational UCCJuly 12, 2015
Rev. Dr. Mark Lee2 Sam. 6:1-19
King David, in around the year 1000 BC, is at the peak of his power. He prevailed in the civil war against the dynasty of his predecessor Saul. He captured Jebus, a Canaanite city that was on the boundary between the southern and northern tribes, and renamed it as his capital Jerusalem.
All that remained was to bring the Ark of the Covenant into his capital. This was the sacred box made by Moses, it contained the tablets of the 10 Commandments, and was the focal point of Israelite worship. The Ark had a checkered recent history, having been lost in battle to the Philistines, who found it too hot to handle and sent it back. It had resided at the estate of a certain Abinidab since then.
Bringing the Ark into his capital is the culmination of David’s life’s work – he has consolidated his kingdom by force of arms and guile of diplomacy, he has curried favor with the priestly establishment, he has always been devoted to God. Now he gets to bring the most sacred thing in the whole country, the central symbol of God’s blessings, into his new capital.
So David assembled a convoy, and had the Ark put on a specially made oxcart to bring it up to Jerusalem. What an exciting parade, trumpets leading the way, drummers drumming, priests and soldiers marching, as it slowly made its way up the road. The festivities were going along quite well, until they came to a rocky patch of road. Suddenly, the cart swayed wildly, and it looked like the Ark might fall off. A man named Uzzah jumped up, and grabbed the Ark to steady it --- and promptly dropped dead.
What? The text says that “the anger of the Lord burst forth” upon him. But wasn’t Uzzah trying to do a good thing, keeping the Ark from falling? Admittedly, a non-priest wasn’t allowed to touch the Ark, but still…..
This part of the text is so problematic that the editors of the lectionary left it out of today’s assigned readings. I put it back in, because, as one commentator said, “You know that what when the lectionary guts half a dozen verses from the middle of the story… that the juicy stuff is in the deleted material.” (Scott Hoezee, Luther Seminary)
But I still don’t quite know what to make of it, beyond the idea that God is far wilder, less domesticated, more uncontrollable, and less predictable than we imagine. So we try to confine God to neat theological boxes, tame God with carefully constructed liturgies, prune God down to fit our prayers, and hope that the mystery, the power, the unimaginable supernova that birthed the universe doesn’t burst upon us.
As writer Anne Dillard says,
“Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return. ”
David was angry with God for bursting upon Uzzah. More than that, he was afraid to bring such an unpredictable and dangerous thing into his new capitol. So he quickly parked it at the home of a foreigner, Obed-edom the Gittite .But the unpredictable God did something else unexpected: Obed-Edom’s entire household – his gardens and fields, his flocks and servants, his family and businessexperienced unprecedented blessing. Word of this came to David, and David definitely wanted in on it. So he reassembled the priests and Levites, the musicians and singers, and the whole populous, and again set about bringing the Ark into his city.
He throws caution to the winds. If God can be weird, unpredictable, and over-the-top, so can David. So if God can be wild and untamed, he can match that --- and off comes the crown, off comes the armor, off comes the royal robes, he dons a priestly ephod which amounts to little more than a linen apron, and fires up the band. And he dances, dances, dances with all his might.
There is no holding back, no worrying about who’s watching, it is all the clash of cymbals, the beat of the drums, the riffs of trumpets; the view of the sky and the dip to the ground, spinning and jumping as fast as his feet will go. Every muscle of his body is thrown into the dance, arms raised to heaven, feet marking time, legs flying this way and that. As they enter the city, the music gets louder, bouncing off of the buildings; the sweat pours off, David claps his hands and clicks his heels.
He is not alone, the crowds join in, shouting and singing and dancing, the parade moving up the hill of Mt. Zion to the tabernacle, the tent prepared for it. Completely out of his head, totally into his body, music and spirit spinning him like a holy fool, he leads the procession. Every fiber of his body was electrified with the thrill of worshiping God. ………
…………………………………..
I wonder why we dare not worship that way. I know that in my own religious upbringing in the Methodist church, worship was much as we have it here: decent and in order, carefully scripted, highly cerebral, beautifully aesthetic, but always well under control. We were not like those “Hallelujah Baptists” down the way who shouted, waved their arms, made a spectacle of themselves, and let their emotions carry them away, to the detriment we believed, of their minds and middle-class propriety. Nobody was going to get an endorphin high in our worship and mistake that for the presence of the Holy Spirit!
Paradoxically, we had no problems with school dances, while the hallelujah Baptists forbade social dance. I think it had more to do with a deep fear of the body, shared both by us and the Hallelujah Baptists, that setting the body free in dance would have unpredictable results. What results? We didn’t know, but weren’t about to find out.
Dance taps into our anxiety around religious ecstasy. Dance can be subversive, even scary. I spent some time looking for a video clip to show for this sermon. It was interesting trying to find something. Veggie Tales had a truly corny David busting wild dance moves. Richard Gere’s big-screen David was a bit underdressed for Sunday worship, though captured David’s exuberance pretty well.
Looking for dance clips, Flashdance, Footloose, Fame, Dirty Dancing, Whitney Houston,EDM, even Riverdance all came up. Watching these, I realized something of the power of letting our bodies express our feelings. Kenny Logins leads a youthful revolution against small-mindedness in Footloose. Patrick Swayze’s Dirty Dancing set the bar for PG-13 rated sensuality. Flashdance showed how individual grit and determination can triumph against an oppressive, classist, industrial system. Riverdance shows the power of a whole community of dancers coming together to create something beautiful. “Dancing With the Stars” couples technical expertise with inspirational stories.
And heavens, if disabled Iraq war vet Noah Galloway, who has only one arm and one leg,can dance, there’s no reason I can’t!
Before I knew it, I was tapping my toe, feeling a lump in my chest and wiping away a tear. My heart and body were way ahead of my mind, tapping into streams of sensuality and longing. As the song goes, “some dance to remember, some dance to forget,” and I was remembering.
I suspect that part of the reason we put a lid on how ecstatic we dare let ourselves experience the divine, is that we are afraid not so much of the highs as of the lows. In order to experience the heights, we need to grant possibility to the depths. If dance leads to intimacy, we have to make room for loneliness. If we want to experience intimacy with God, that means we have to create equal space for silence from God.
The Ark was the symbol of God’s presence --- but also was set apart, screened from view, given limited access, and could deal death as well as life. It is much safer to work from a narrower bandwidth – don’t get too joyous, and you wont’ get too sad. The hazard, of course, is that cuts us off from a both the human and divine. St. Irenaeus, said “The Glory of God is humanity fully alive.” We let our fears truncate both our humanity and God’s glory. We need ecstatic experience, and if the church won’t provide opportunities for it, then we leave it to the broader culture to fill it in with everything from dance raves and sports spectacle to psychedelic drugs or extreme political affiliation. Remember Kathy Matea singing,
“You’ve got to sing like you don’t need the money
Love like you’ll never get hurt
You’ve got to dance like nobody’s watchin’
It’s gotta come from the heart if you want it to work.”
Reclaiming our bodies for worship has other benefits for our life together. If we cease to treat our bodies as just something to carry our brains around with, we’ll probably treat them better. Treating our bodies better – feeding and resting and exercising and all – will also lead to treating other bodies better.
When we realize that the essential person is the whole person, mind and soul and body, we will be more concerned that they have what it takes to thrive. Nutritious food, safe living situations, clean water, adequate healthcare – all of these are bodily issues. Worship that engages our bodies leads us into the justice work that protects all bodies.
When David finished leading the dance and celebration, he made thanksgiving sacrifices to God, whichthen fed the whole people. The story tells us that everyone, both women and men, got a share of meat, a loaf of bread, and even a dessert of raisin cake.
Our final hymn today is Lord of the Dance, which imagines Jesus as a dance-leader calling us all to join him in celebrating the sheer physical joy of being alive. If you want to tap your toes, tap them! If you want to sing at the top of your lungs, sing! If you want to clap, clap! If you want to move to the music, move! If you want to dance, dance like nobody is watching!
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
For I am the Lord of the dance said he!