SERMON OF JULY 12, 2009
M. Bruce McKay
Pilgrim - St. Luke=s United Church of Christ
"We’re All in the Dance"
Psalm 24, II Samuel 6:1-5, 12b-19

 I don’t know if any of you have noticed.  I try not to be too obvious about it.  When we’re singing a song that creates the opportunity to also clap our hands - I keep my eye on Roy.
 I don’t stare at him directly, but try to watch him out of the corner of my eye, hoping that nobody sees me do it.  That way I have a better chance of clapping my hands with some semblance of rhythm. 
 It may come as a surprise to some of you, at least those who haven’t been around here more than a week or so, but I’m not terribly musical.  I can’t play an instrument.  I can’t sing. I can’t clap with any kind of rhythm.  And God knows I can’t dance. 
If you have any doubt about the dancing just check in with Phoebe after the service. 
So here we are on this second Sunday where I’m supposed to talk about my personal experience of God’s presence, dealing with a text that’s all about playing instruments, singing, clapping and dancing. 
Now it wouldn’t be so bad if the one doing the dancing was some minor character on the stage of God’s salvation history.  It wouldn’t be so bad if it was someone whose name most people had never heard and those who had heard it couldn’t pronounce.  It wouldn’t be so bad if the person doing the dancing wasn’t Israel’s greatest king and someone to whom Jesus himself was related! 
It wouldn’t be so bad if King David wasn’t the featured act in this royal production.  Nor would it be so bad if he went about it the way most of us most of the time go about worshipping God – with the best manners we can muster along with the least possible motion.  But here he is, the greatest King in the history of Israel, making the King of Pop’s best routines seem pretty tame and mild mannered.
You see why this isn’t a text I would have chosen to illustrate how I have experienced God’s presence in my life? 
I’m much more comfortable quietly taking my place among God’s “frozen chosen” in the United Church of Christ and settling for the quietest form of praise possible.
 I’d be much more comfortable, applauding the powerful, awe inspiring presence of God by using sign language for applause rather than clapping, especially if the clapping required any kind of rhythm. 
Imagine how different this scene in ancient Israel would have been if David led the arc through the streets of Jerusalem, inviting people to join him in applauding God’s presence in their midst by doing this…. (raise both hands, palms forward, wiggling fingers – that’s the way to sign “applause”).
 
David is dancing like there’s no tomorrow because he’s in the very presence of the God who had blessed him and all the people of Israel beyond their wildest dreams. 
The ark is mentioned 200 times in the Hebrew Scriptures.  It’s called by many different names – including:  “the ark of the covenant,” “the ark of testimony,” “the ark of Yahweh.”
It’s described as both a simple wooden box and as an elegant, golden shrine. 
No one is exactly sure when it first appeared and no one knows where it is today, despite what Indiana Jones might have to say.
The ark was seen by the people of Israel, at various times, as an extension or embodiment of the presence of God, as a source of safety and protection in time of war, as a container for the stone tablets of the law, and as a throne for the invisible presence of God.
Many think that Moses was the first to use the ark, as a container for the stone tablets he received on Mt. Sinai.  The ark was present when the people of Israel crossed the Jordan into Canaan after years of wandering in the wilderness.  The ark was present when judges ruled the tribes of Israel and when they went into battle against the Philistines.
For several years, following their victory in battle, the Philistines held the ark.  For 20 years before and during the reign of Saul, Israel’s first king, the ark was at the house of Abinedad. 
Today’s text tells the story of the ark’s return to Jerusalem, 8 years after David became king.  Having made Jerusalem the political capital of a united Israel, the presence of the ark now made it the religious capital as well. 
Following David’s reign Solomon would place the ark in the “holy of holies,” – the inner sanctuary of the temple built while he was king. 
Hundreds of years later, when the city and temple were destroyed by the Babylonians, the ark disappeared from history.  Its location ever since has been left to the imaginations of God’s people, including Hollywood script writers. 
But we’ve passed today’s part of the ark’s story – the story of God’s presence among God’s people that day the ark entered Jerusalem.
If you had to select one word to describe what it’s like to be in the very presence of God – based on today’s text – what would that word be?
Here’s a clue – “David and all the house of Israel were dancing before the Lord with all their might, with songs and lyres and harps and tambourines and castanets and cymbals.” (II Samuel 6:5)
What word describes what it was like for David and all the house of Israel to be in the presence of God that day in Jerusalem as the ark entered the city?
Joy!  David’s heart and the hearts of all the people were exploding with joy! 
There are 13 Hebrew roots found in 27 different words for joy in the Hebrew language. 
 
Anyone here ever been to a Conservative or Orthodox Jewish wedding?  At the one such wedding I’ve attended it was very clear that people didn’t have my awkwardness or inhibitions when it came to dancing.  It was like the whole place was throbbing with music and dancing.  It was like nothing I’d seen since watching Saturday Night Fever with a much younger John Travolta.   This is what was going on in the streets of Jerusalem!
David got so caught up with the music and dancing that he stripped down to a linen ephod – a sacramental loin cloth worn by priests performing their duties.  When his wife Michal, the daughter of Saul, saw him leaping and dancing half naked down the street it was more than her proper Presbyterian (or Methodist or Baptist or UCC) upbringing could take and “she despised him in her heart.”
Michal, like more than a few of us, would have voted for welcoming the ark into Jerusalem in a more restrained and proper manner – perhaps with signing the applause of the people.
Frederick Buechner, the Presbyterian author describes the scene this way:  “How they cut loose together, David and God (Yahweh), whirling around before the ark in such a passion that they caught fire from each other and blazed up in a single flame' of magnificence. Not even the scolding that David got from Michal afterwards could dim the glory of it" (Peculiar Treasures – A Biblical Who’s Who p. 23).
But it wasn’t just David and God dancing with all their might – it was all the people and God – all the people shouting, dancing, playing instruments inspired by the irresistible, irrestrainable, irrepressible Spirit of joy present that day in Jerusalem!
There was a story in Friday’s Buffalo News about a Senior Prom at the Brompton Heights Assisted Living Residence in Amherst.  Ten girls who will be entering their freshman year at Williamsville North this fall and are members of Girl Scout Troop 362 planned and participated in a prom for the seniors at this Amherst Residence. 
The girls researched the big band music of the 1940s and 50s, they learned how to waltz and fox trot, put on their best dresses, and danced the night away with the seniors living at Brompton Heights.
One resident who attended her own high school prom in 1951 said, “It’s wonderful!  All my friends are here!” 
Another resident whose granddaughter was one of the girls on the dance  floor said, “Everyone here loves music.  If there’s music, people will be here.” (“Sweeping the Seniors off their feet”, Buffalo News, July 10, 2009, p. B1)
Like David and the people of Israel that day in Jerusalem, those at this Senior Prom knew the joy of being in the very presence of God – when all you can do is dance to the music.
Beneath the beat of Bennie Goodman and Glen Miller there was a deeper experience last Thursday evening at Brompton Heights – just as there was a deeper experience that day in Jerusalem beneath the music of the harps, tambourines, castanets and cymbals.
There was the experience in both celebrations of the very presence of God!
There was the experience in both celebrations of a joy that the world can’t give and the world can’t take away!
There was the experience in both celebrations of a truth that only God fully understands and that truth is that “We’re All in the Dance.”
Watching a movie last week called “Paris, Je t’Aime” I heard the song with this title for the first time.  It goes like this:
Life's a dance, we all have to do
What does the music require?
People are moving together
Close as the flames in a fire

Feel the beat; music and rhyme
While there is time.

We all go 'round and 'round
Partners of lost and found
Looking for one more chance
All I know is,
We're all in the dance.

I had a dream years ago in which I was talking with my father, who’s now been gone for nearly two years.  In this dream, I asked him if he had any regrets.  “Only one,” he said, “I never really had a chance to dance.”
My father, like me, loved music but wasn’t musical himself.  It took lots of coaxing from my mother and a few martinis before he’d move onto the dance floor. 
Like Michal, he would have thought David was making a fool of himself that day when the ark entered Jerusalem.
And yet, like Michal and David and all the people of Israel – and like the residents at Brompton Heights and the members of Girl Scout Troop 362 – and like each of you and me there was a longing in his heart for the joy that only God can give – the joy that reminds us that somehow our joy will be incomplete until there is joy finally for us all – the joy that reminds us that “We’re All in the Dance.”
One day, not long after arriving at Union Theological Seminary in NYC, I was riding downtown on the subway.  Every seat was taken and a few others, including me, were standing.  I was at the rear of the car and began looking at the rich assortment of people on their way home, or going to work, or heading to school or to wherever the Broadway Local was taking them.
They were an incredibly diverse group of people representing all sorts of ages, races, ethnicities and economic conditions.   This mini United Nations, despite its diversity, seemed bathed, for a moment, in one light – a light that was timeless and unchanging – on a subway ride that was temporary and changed at every stop. 
In this light I saw vividly that we are all one.  I knew  then that “We’re All in the Dance.”   And I felt grateful for that awareness – very, very grateful. 
There was something in my gratitude that day that I can only describe as joy - irresistible, irrestrainable, irrepressible God-inspired joy!
“We are All in the Dance!”
One of the few times in recent years that I’ve found myself dancing was at a nephew’s wedding last summer in Lake Placid.  The groom’s father, Nick, has been in a wheelchair for many years following back surgery that left him a paraplegic.
During the reception one of his son’s friends wheeled him onto the dance floor and began moving the wheel chair to the music.  I’d never seen so much joy on Nick’s face in all the years I’d known him.
“We’re All in the Dance” – and sooner or later we all need help finding our way to the dance floor, because we live in a world that is intent on telling us one way or another that we are not all in the dance.
There was something about the Senior Prom last Thursday night that I didn’t mention.  It was there on the front page of the paper’s City and Region Section – just above the article.  It was a picture of Herman Woods, an elderly African American man dancing with Taylor Brown, a member of Girl Scout Troop 362. 
Not too long ago and not too far away Herman Woods would have gotten himself in all kinds of trouble by dancing with Taylor Brown, who despite her name, is white.
A black man dancing with a white woman in the segregated south before the Civil Rights Movement could have gotten the man beaten or lynched. 
It’s taken our nation centuries to realize that in terms of race, “We’re All in the Dance.”  
We’re still on that journey in terms of race, class, gender, disabling conditions, sexual orientation and sexual identity. 
God knows we have a long way to go.
And God knows we’ve come a long way as well.
We take another step on this journey toward joy – toward the fullness of God’s presence in our lives and in our world - whenever we realize that “We’re All in the Dance” and celebrate that knowledge, like David and the whole house of Israel, with all our might!
I can’t clap.  I can’t sing.  I can’t play an instrument.  And I can’t dance.
But I can tell you that I have known joy in my life!
I have known the joy of seeing other human beings fully alive and I’ve known what it’s like feeling that way myself!
I know that the earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein!
I know that “We’re All in the Dance!”
I know that “We’re All in the Dance” together with one another and with God!
I know that we all live and move and have our being in a God whose love for us is revealed most fully in the One who said simply to love one another as he loves us so that his joy may be in us and our joy may be full! (John 15:11)
May it be so! 
Please God, may it be so!
Amen!