– The Rev. Zach Sasser
“There are only two types of people. Those who dance, and those who do not.” At least that is according to Drax, a character in the illustrious movie, Guardians of the Galaxy, vol 1. This does not stop Peter Quill – a man abducted from earth at age 10 whose only cultural references are from the 1980’s – from attempting to get his beloved to dance with him by telling her about one of Earth’s greatest heroes, Kevin Bacon.
He was, of course referring to the movie Footloose, in which Bacon’s character challenged a town council to repeal a local ordinance prohibiting dancing with the following argument:
“From the oldest of times, people danced for a number of reasons. They danced in prayer or so that their crops would be plentiful or so their hunt would be good. And they danced to stay physically fit and show their community spirit. And they danced to celebrate. And that, that is the dancing that we’re talking about. Aren’t we told in Psalm 149: ‘Praise ye the Lord. Sing unto the Lord a new song. Let them praise His name in the dance’?…It was King David. King David, who we read about in Samuel, and, and what did David do? What did David do? What did David do? ‘David danced before the Lord with all his might, leaping, leaping and dancing before the Lord.’ Leaping and dancing! “
OK, so maybe using David’s histrionics as a justification for a high school dance is a bit of a stretch, but it gets at something fairly central to who we are as creatures of the Creator. Our bodies are fundamental tools for expression and experience, and yet they are so much more. We have embodied selves. Even so, our bodies are the key to experiencing even that which is beyond our naming or our control. Sometimes we just have to move in response to a rhythm, to a beat, to a wave of sound that carries emotional weight or inspires hope that gives meaning to the current struggle of living.
I think that is why I told my daughter, when she was a toddler, that every time you hear music you have to dance. Those were magical days. Any time we passed a store, or went to a restaurant, or heard something in the grocery store we would dance. I think the thing that I loved most, apart from the joy of a parent seeing your child grow, was the permission that she gave me to move freely and expressively whenever she reminded me that I needed to dance, too!
It still happens every now and then, but now that she is older (and I am decidedly less cool) it is more likely that I see her dance in class or on stage. I can certainly understand Herod’s joy at seeing his daughter perform for his guests. I can see how he might even want to protect her from others by offering her land and power. I can’t exactly see how the head of a rival might be a good idea, but then again, I don’t have a dungeon, to begin with.
Of course, empathy for Herod isn’t exactly the point of pairing these texts together. The purpose is to show us how true devotion strips us of our illusions of power and how destructive it is to hold onto those illusions. You could also say that our readings ask us to answer three vital questions about life:
Why do we dance?
How do we dance?
When do we dance?
Our Old Testament reading starts out with David dancing like Prince Ali entering Agriba in the movie Aladdin. “Prince Ali! Mighty is he! Ali Ababwa. Strong as ten regular men, definitely! He faced the galloping hordes – a hundred bad guys with swords. Who sent those goons to their lords? Why, Prince Ali!”
David’s power and wealth were on display until the cart wobbled and Ahio got fried for trying to steady it. From that point on the entire tone changed. It went from hordes of musicians to a trumpet. He went from leading an army to leading a small group who carried the ark, followed by a bull and a calf (which he sacrificed). He went from refined pomp and circumstance to a simple linen ephod, which is basically an apron.
Incidentally, this passage always reminds me of camp. There’s a song called undignified, and our song leader, Kyle, always tells the story of David and the way his wife criticized him for embarrassing her. He tells them David was dancing in his underwear, and that he told his wife, “Oh yeah? I’ll get even more undignified than this if that’s what I need to do to honor God!” Then we all sing this song about this story and jump and shout and experience a freedom you only get in the company of others who love the Lord.
The thing is, David’s change is not just for show. It results in a total transformation from glorifying self to glorifying God, and that results in the experience of a beloved community where “the whole multitude of Israel, both men, and women, to each [were given] a cake of bread, a portion of meat, and a cake of raisins.”
David danced to glorify God. He danced by letting go of all that honored him in order to honor God, and he danced at such a time as the people could be served through his reckless abandon.
Salome, on the other hand, represents the other choice. She represents, as one commenter said, the squandering of the opportunity for redemption. She’s kind of like an “Anti-Esther,” who said, “perhaps I am called for such a time as this to be even more dramatic and ask for his head on a platter!”
You may wonder why this story is in here. I mean, it’s a little more Game of Thrones than Gospel of Jesus, right? Her story is important because it’s the meat in the “Markan sandwich”. That’s because right before this story we have the disciples going out under the authority of Jesus to heal and cast out, and right after it we see Jesus serving a very different kind of banquet – one that feeds thousands off of the abundance of generosity.
So, Salome dances because she has an audience, and rather than cede power she takes it and abuses it and is never heard from again. Meanwhile, John’s disciples do not scatter as Jesus’s will. They take his body and bury him. In some ways, this prefigures what will happen to Jesus. In some ways, it points to what is required of us, and that’s a good thing. Hear it now in the words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer from The Cost of Discipleship.
“The cross is laid on every Christian. The first Christ-suffering which every [person] must experience is the call to abandon the attachments of this world. It is that dying of the old [self] which is the result of [our] encounter with Christ. As we embark upon discipleship we surrender ourselves to Christ in union with his death—we give over our lives to death. Thus, it begins; the cross is not the terrible end to an otherwise god-fearing and happy life, but it meets us at the beginning of our communion with Christ. When Christ calls a [person], he bids [that person] come and die. It may be a death like that of the first disciples who had to leave home and work to follow him, or it may be a death like Luther’s, who had to leave the monastery and go out into the world. But it is the same death every time—death in Jesus Christ, the death of the old [person] at his call.”
I don’t say that to scare you. If anything, I say it to encourage you. I say it to encourage you with the realization that death and resurrection are not something that we have to wait for in the distant future. They are part of the present and constant calling of God in our lives. They are the rhythm that moves us. Death and resurrection, brokenness and reconciliation are the cause behind our tapping toes. They are the smile that leaps up when we sing I Danced In The Morning.
You know, I think there is a reason that song stirs so many of us. I think it’s because it gives us a glimmer of the humanity and the divinity of Jesus, and it also gives us hope that we are part of something that started long before us and will go on long after us. The other thing that I think we like about it is that it expresses our good and Reformed belief that everything God came to do through Jesus was accomplished on that cross.
And now everything that we do is in response to what God has done for us. That’s why we dance. We dance in gratitude to God for all that God has done for us. We don’t dance to glorify ourselves. We dance to glorify God. Why? Because that’s what God created us to do.
A word of caution, though, we must not stand in judgment of those that do not dance. Ours is only to invite. If we find ourselves doing otherwise, then we will be more like Salome than David. While it may seem farfetched, it’s not a stretch to say that the more we claim to be special because we are chosen and beloved by God, the more likely we are to turn a blind eye to the pain and suffering of others – the more likely we are to call for a head on a plate.
If we truly are dancing to glorify God, then the way we dance is to love and respect the dignity of those around us. If we are truly dancing to glorify God, the more likely we are to dance whenever we hear music, and our music becomes the sound of need. It becomes the sigh of a friend. It becomes the hunger of a stranger. It becomes the spaces and places in our world where redemption is held back by selfishness, and sometimes – I confess – I hear that music by looking into the mirror.
The beautiful thing is that the music of need and greed and hunger for bread and for righteousness has a baseline that just won’t stop. It has a seductive, steady rhythm that tells us over and over like waves crashing relentlessly that we are loved. Before the oceans were cast about, love thought of you. Before the hills sprang up, love thought of you. Before you told your first little white lie and before the first time someone disappointed you, love thought of you.
That’s the music that we hear from the cross. That’s the dance that began before you, holds you in its sway today, and will be here after you. So, when life comes at you hard and fast, be ready to dance. Be ready to become a little undignified in order to put God first and be ready to dance.
When you see someone in need and you aren’t sure how to help, just be ready to dance. Be ready to see that person as a person and be ready to be seen for who you are – Child of God.
For we dance to glorify our God. We do it by demonstrating the love and grace and mercy that secures the health and dignity of all of God’s creation, and we do it anytime we hear the music of the opportunity to love as we have been loved. It’s just that simple, and it’s just that hard. Amen.
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