Sermon for the Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost

Texts:
Exodus 16:2-4, 9-15;
Ephesians 4:1-16;
John 6:24-35.

There’s a worship song called “Dance With Me”. It used to be a favorite at Christian Summer Camps. “This is holy time. We’re gathered together to worship you, to love one another. And as we pray, and as we sing, and as we dance, and as we dream, O Lord I beg of you, just this one thing. Won’t you dance with me, throughout the heavens and beyond the sea. Up on the mountaintops. Roll with the breeze, come carry me. Oh Lord, won’t you dance with me.”

Dancing is good for our health. From ballroom to ballet to breakdancing, folkloric to flamenco and everything in between. Muscles, joints, minds, and even our digestion benefits from dancing, if you can believe it. And of course your spirit benefits too.

Dancing does not come naturally to everyone. Some of us are slow to catch the beat, or have bodies that do not move fluidly. But that doesn’t mean that we should never try.

As the camp song suggests, dancing is deeply spiritual. Miriam, sister of Moses danced when God freed the Israelites from Pharoah. (Ex. 15:20) David danced before the face of God when the Ark of God’s covenant was finally carried to Jerusalem (2 Sam. 6:16). Ecclesiastes reminds us that there is a time to mourn and a time to dance (Eccl. 5:4). Psalms 149 and 150 say that God is praised in dance. When the Prodigal son returned to his father, there was dancing (Luke 15:25).

No doubt there’s a connection between David’s happy dance and the wonderful celebration of Simchat Torah. On this Jewish holiday every year, people bring out the scrolls of the Torah – the revered books of the Hebrew bible – and dance with them, sometimes in the streets. Canadian

Rabbi Tvi Freeman wrote: “This is a Jew: someone who dances with G-d’s book.” “It is ours, and we belong to it and we have danced with it for three and a half thousand years.”

The Sufi mystical tradition of Islam features dancers who twirl around accompanied by haunting music. For many minutes they turn their bodies as they circle around one another and they never become dizzy. It is prayer. One hand reaches to heaven and the other to earth as they offer their bodies as conduits for God to flow through. It is blessing for all.

So it comes a surprise that dancing can be a threat. It has sometimes been seen as bad news for good order, and an invitation to moral turpitude. Now there’s a word for you. Turpitude. It sounds bad and it’s supposed to. Any grave violation of the accepted standards of the community. The Devil’s work. That’s turpitude.

Protestant Christianity has had a rocky relationship with dancing. There was a 1980s era movie “Footloose” in which a young man challenged a town’s ban on public dancing, enacted by well-meaning town council members led by the local minister. That’s not fiction by the way. For years it was illegal to hold a public dance in Lynden, Washington. Because dancing might lead to all kinds of chaos. Turpitude, don’t you know.

But what does any of this, from dancing to turpitude, have to do with the scriptures today? Well, everything! Because let’s call the lesson today: Learning to Dance with God.

Even though Miriam danced in praise of God in Exodus 15, by the next chapter the Israelites were complaining about God. For the record, they were accusing God of turpitude. Of leading them out only to starve them to death.

God answered with a deluge of bread. And shortly thereafter with quail too. A balanced diet of protein and carbohydrates, sufficient for each day’s need. So they could live without anxiety.

This was a test. Would the people follow God’s instruction, trusting this daily supply? Would they learn to dance with God again? The word Torah, the book of God, is synonymous with instruction. Rabbi Freeman said, “For this is a Jew. One who embraces the Author within the book, the teacher within the teaching…and it is with him that we dance.”

Could the people let go of their fear of scarcity enough to join a holy dance? Would they let God be their divine partner leading the dance? To embrace blessing and peace rather than uproar and negativity?

This is essentially the same question that is in Ephesians 4. Can we dance in holy community with one another and with God? Or will we be distracted and pulled apart by schemes and arguments, appeals to piety and promises of power?

Jesus came to teach the world to dance. Setting bound bodies free from whatever keeps us immobilized. We follow Jesus. Gentleness, humility, patience, are steps we take together, becoming a limber body of baptized people, learning to dance. The tune for God’s dance has been sung by apostles, evangelists prophets pastors and teachers of every generation. Dancing endless grace and love. For the health of our bodies, minds, and spirits.

This is the work Jesus came to do in us and through us. To teach the world to dance with God. Do not imagine that God’s work is harder or more laborious. It is not a performance to dazzle or impress. It is simply learning the steps to an eternally circling movement within God’s wise, just, and right instruction, trusting God’s daily provision, to satisfy all our hunger and thirst.  Amen.