Sermon Series:  

   COME ALIVE! BODY, SOUL, HEART AND MIND
             “Dancing With All Your Might”
                   2 Samuel 6:1-5, 12b-15

A Sermon by the Reverend Odette Lockwood-Stewart
 

When have you danced “with all your might?”  

A dance of victory, community, ecstasy, creativity... ?

2 Samuel 6:5, “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.”

What kind of passion called forth such praise?  ... What kind of promise flowed through that dance?

Loving God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength means dancing with all of your might.

In the last three weeks millions of people around the world have remembered Michael Jackson.  

Poet Maya Angelou wrote a tribute to him that reads in part
... Sing our songs among the stars and walk our dances across the face of the moon... We were enchanted with his passion because he held nothing.  He gave us all he had been given...”

In the midst of a redundant cacophony of media and celebrity, in a whirlwind of artistry, artifice, prophecy, mystery, praise, profiteering, sorrow, grief and passionate movement, let’s return to the ancient story:  “David danced before the Lord with all his might; ...  So David and all the house of Israel brought up the ark of the Lord with shouting, and with the sound of the trumpet.”

The new king, David, brought the ark of the Lord to Jerusalem. The ark was a sacred chest made of acacia wood said to contain the tablets of the Ten Commandments.  The ark was a visible symbol of the presence of God in the midst of the people of Israel.  The full name of the ark, 2 Samuel 6:2, was, “the ark of God which is called by the name of the Lord of hosts who is enthroned on the cherubim.”

This ark, Israel’s symbol of God’s real presence and power, had been lost in defeats to the Philistines. The ark was recovered after military victories over the Philistines that also marked the end of the house of Saul.  

David brought the ark to Jerusalem, a new location, a political meeting place between the tribes of Israel and the tribes of Judah. The procession of the ark, the dancing, the gathering of 30,000 brought the spiritual and political center of the people together in Jerusalem.

Was this passionate public dancing faithful praise? Or was it a strategic staging of David’s claim to religious history and a play for unity? Was it an act of faith in prophecy and promise? Or was it a manipulation of piety, personality and politics?  It may have been all of these, David was as complex as we are, but all these came together in a dance of passionate worship.

Passionate worship is the work of the people of God.  No matter how magnificent or mundane the music, the sanctuary, the liturgy, it is the people who bring passion to worship.  I’m not talking lukewarm, self-conscious worship.  I’m not talking about slick prayers and obligatory offerings.  I’m talking about dancing with all our might – dancing in the Spirit as we offer pain, celebrate joys, and struggle together with things that matter most.  We bring our whole being and bodies before the Lord.

Passionate worship comes from desperate circumstances in which we find ourselves, in which we lose ourselves.  Passionate worship comes from gratitude for what God has done and is doing in us and through us and in spite of us.   Passionate worship comes in the stillness of humility and in leaps of joy and ecstasy.

Passionate worship is David’s dance.  Frederich Beuchner wrote that in this dance David and God, “cut loose together... 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.”
                                               (from Peculiar Treasures)

We dance in the presence of God.  

Imperfect beings, imperfect bodies, imperfect movements, meditations, words, work, imperfect love, beauty, dancing with all our might...

After reflecting on recent changes at Epworth, a member of the community shared this quote with me from William Sloane Coffin: “Most church boats don’t like to be rocked; they prefer to lie at anchor rather than go places in stormy seas.  But that’s because we Christians view the Church as the object of our love instead of the subject and instrument of God’s.  Faith cannot be passive; it has to go forth – to assault the conscience, excite the imagination.”                                                                    (from Credo)

The church ... we ... are not the object of God’s love (though God loves us).  The church ... we ... are the subject ... acting as instruments of God’s love in and for the world – it’s not about what we get, it’s about who we are, and what we do.

When I began in ordained ministry in the 1970s one consistent area of concern identified in my practice of ministry was my lack of “self-care” particularly in the area of physical health and well-being.  Hmm. It is an occupational hazard, evidently.  Pastors are not good health insurance risks.  Pastors tend to place other needs and others’ needs above rest, solitude, exercise, and healthy habits. Hmm.  More than 30 years later, I still grapple with that one.

But last month I participated in a program at St. Helena Hospital to help me change my choices and face the realities of diabetes. While I know what to do, I do not do it. In order to dance with all my might before God I am unlearning some long held habits of the heart. Care for body as a spiritual practice.

Care for the body is not only a personal journey ... care for the body of Christ ... and care for the body politic are spiritual practices as well.

Recently I have been writing and speaking about the issue of Health Care that is before us now in the United States with particular historical urgency. In this Kairos moment, this season of deliberation and decision in the public square, voices of faith need to be raised. And we need to put our bodies where our voices are.

Our United Methodist Social Principles affirm health care as a basic human right and governmental responsibility.  In the 2008 General Conference we passed legislation calling for swift passage of single-payer health care system that will cover everyone.  50 million people in the U.S. have no health insurance.  This is not a season to rely on competition for profit, but rather collaboration and accountability for care of the body.

In this economic crisis, and precisely because this crisis gives us the opportunity to go to the very roots:  we must change the system completely.   Such an opportunity has been put forth in HR 676 National Health Insurance Act.  

Of the thirty countries in the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development, the U.S. ranks number one in the amount we spend for health care – two and a half times as much per person.   We rank near the bottom of these same 30 countries in life expectancy, infant mortality, and preventable mortality. We have fewer hospital beds, fewer doctors and nurses per capita, and in the U.S. loss of employment often means loss of health insurance.  The United States is the only one of the OECD nations that relies on a market-based “system” for health care – care for health a market commodity instead of a social service.

On June 10th, Dr. Marcia Angell of Harvard Medical School testified before the House Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor and Pensions, that we are “the only nation in the world with a health care system based on dodging sick people...and with the highest overhead costs in the world.”

Right now, we need a few people from this congregation with passion on this issue to participate in national conference calls. (*If you are interested in being a part of these calls or actions, please contact me to receive briefing sheets.  I also 50 resource sheets on faith values and the health care debate available now from our ushers. Both of these were prepared by PICO People Improving Communities through Organizing, our National Interfaith Network along with Sojourners in Washington DC).  Let us not be a silent 70% majority when we are being told that our elected officials are not willing to entertain a comprehensive affordable national health plan!

In Methodist history, dancing was forbidden in church.  This prohibition was part of disembodying praise and witness, as well as isolating dance from communities of faith.  The irony and blessing has not escaped me that this summer Stage Door Conservatory is rehearsing the musical “Footloose” in the Fellowship Hall of this church!

King David intentionally brought together human and divine power and presence.... brought together different tribal lands into one people... and restored the Ark of God to the center of the lives of the people.

Loving God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength means dancing...with all our might.  May it be so with us in passionate worship and public witness.