So there we were, stretched out on a patch of nature’s green carpet at the Arboretum the other night for Cool Thursdays—a Dallas summer tradition, and a Dallas summer oxymoron, don’t you know?! The setting was beautiful, the company wonderful, and the music? Well, the music was Motown. ’Nuff said. But here’s the thing about Motown music—The Temptations, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, The Four Tops, The Supremes—you know what I’m talking about: I don’t care if you are white-skinned. How do you sit there and not move? I’ve got to believe everyone in their heart of hearts wanted to just get up and kick off their shoes and move to the beat with someone they loved. But, no, we all sat there and talked about how the one or two people who did brave the crowd. She just wants to be seen. He’s just an exhibitionist. Shameful.
The Puritans live, I tell you. And we are they. What is it about our fear of dancing? I could understand it if it were a Baptist convention, but no. Maybe it’s just that dancing is somehow still associated with sex in a way that always seems a stretch to me.
One of Bruce McIver’s dearest friends (and a friend to this church, too) was Grady Nutt, the comic who used to be on Heehaw! until he died suddenly some years ago. Grady liked to tell about growing up in a small town of mostly Baptists and Methodists. When the school dances would be held, the Baptists wouldn’t be able to go because their parents heeded their preachers who always said that “dancing will make you want to go to the bushes.” So, Grady said, the Methodist kids would go to the dances, and the Baptist kids would go straight to the bushes.
We have two stories from the Bible today, one from the older testament and one from the newer, that could lead us to wonder what dancing really leads to. Both cases involve people losing their heads, but the outcomes are very different. Let’s look more closely.
King David decides to bring the ark of covenant to Jerusalem. You remember that the ark was made to specification by Moses during the journey of the children of Israel from Egypt to the Promised Land more than 200 years before David’s time. It held the Ten Commandments and, symbolically at least, the presence of God. It was a small portable tabernacle for God to dwell in. The people carried it wherever they went as if to say that they could be the people of God only insofar as they acknowledged God’s demanding presence among them.
For decades the ark had resided in the northern hill country with the priestly caste. But as time went by, power shifted politically, from informal power with judges over the tribes and prophets reminding them of the covenant to formal rule with a king over all the tribes. With the change from King Saul to King David, the place of power shifts, too, moving to the hilltop citadel of Zion, the city of Jerusalem. David makes a festive ceremony of retrieving the ark from its safe but now irrelevant haven in the hill country. The procession to Jerusalem is a great royal parade, with David himself accompanying the ark alongside musicians of all kinds.
David loses his head in the process. He forgets how important he is. He strips to nothing but a linen ephod, which is like saying he’s out there in his BVDs, half-naked. He’s dancing round the ark with all his might, the text says. He is completely lost in the music (which is why I think it was Motown—soul music, right?). He gets carried away with joy, worshiping God with all his heart.
One of David’s wives watches this spectacle from a window and shakes her head in disgust. David has lost his head, but she won’t lose hers. She knows what a king is supposed to do and not supposed to do; after all, she is the daughter of King Saul. She despises David in her heart, it says. Why, do you think?
Isn’t it for the same reason some people despise the president of the United States if he wields a hammer to build a Habitat house or plays the saxophone on The Tonight Show or rolls up his sleeves and clears brush on his ranch? He’s acting below the dignity of the office. Even I get this from time to time. As a preacher you can do some things normal people do, but you’ve got to be careful about being too normal. My kids even get this. A school friend of Jillian’s surprised her one day in the middle of a disagreement: And you’re supposed to be a preacher’s kid? Well, yes, but she’s first just a kid. Get a grip!
What was David’s purpose? It was more than dancing for personal pleasure or glory; it was dancing for the pleasure and glory of God. The whole point is that David worshiped truly because he did exactly what Michal despised: he forgot who he was. He lost his head, but he didn’t lose his heart. He was so unself-conscious that he didn’t care what anyone thought except God.
At one level we ought to hear this text as encouragement to do the same in worship. When you come into this room, if you are more worried about what the people about you think about you than about what the God about you thinks about you, then you are right there with Michal in the window, being a more of a spectator than a worshiper. If you can hardly push the sound out of your mouth when you sing for fear of a sour note and a stare from someone in the pew in front of you, then you are too careful, too full of care. Let yourself go. Sing, pray, let your soul leap before God, if not your feet. And if you are sitting there trying to judge the performance of those who sing or direct or read Scripture or pray or preach, then you are too much with Michal in the windowsill still. It’s not about how well or poorly this one or that does in front of you; it’s about how well or poorly you do in front of God.
What David did was quite tricky. He was doing more than worshiping God; he was bringing a symbol of the divine into the center of his political realm. This can be meaningful or manipulative, even now. For David to leave the ark where it was might suggest that he was trying to forge a new future apart from the history of Israel that began with Moses. He could have developed a more secular rule. But by bringing the ark into the midst of his realm, he ran the opposite risk of using God for his own purposes instead of the other way round.
We wrestle with this all the time in this country. How much should politicians trot out the name of God, talk about their faith, make an issue of their religious lives? Some do it too much for personal gain, others too little. Some are too timid to invoke faith in the public square, worried that they will alienate part of their constituency, while their opposites use faith to build their base. Listen, I don’t want—and none of us should want—any politicians using religious language or talking about how much they pray or read the Bible if they give little evidence that biblical priorities have found a place in their politics as well as in their hearts. And churches must resist the temptation to support politicians or criticize them on such shallow grounds. We must mind our own business, which is our Father’s business, Jesus said. And sometimes that gets into the business of business or the business of government. We must speak about whether we are caring for “the least of these” in society.
David did just that. He did not pander to the upper crust, much to Michal’s chagrin. In fact, later when Michal confronts David about this, she tells him what a disgrace he has made of himself even before his servants’ maids. David answered: I have danced before the Lord. I will make myself more contemptible than this, and I will be abased in my own eyes; but by the maids of whom you have spoken, by them I shall be held in honor. David understood that ordinary people would revere his humility more than his loftiness. And he made offerings not only to the Lord but also to the people. He gave them food and cared for their needs.
Contrast this with another king—or would-be king. Herod Antipas was the son of Herod the Great, who fancied himself King of the Jews in Jesus’ day. The boy wants the title of king, which even his father could not lay true claim to—and less so himself. He tries to complete his father’s rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem, in order to make himself seem like King Solomon of old. John the Baptist preaches against him, however, because he took his brother’s wife, Herodias, for his own. Herod is annoyed but fascinated by this wily wilderness prophet who speaks without fear to power. His wife is furious. She wants his head.
So at Herod’s birthday bash, when he is good and drunk and has lost his head, so to speak, and when his stepdaughter, Salome, pleases him with her dance—which is no doubt seductive and suggestive, he pledges to give her whatever she wants, up to half his kingdom. She consults her mother and then asks for John’s head. Herod loses his head one more time before John loses his. In order to save his own honor for the stupidity of his pledge, he orders John’s head on a silver platter. Idiot.
David loses his head by nobly forgetting himself. He sacrifices his honor for the sake of the glory of God and the welfare of even the humblest in his kingdom. Herod loses his head by remembering himself. He sacrifices John for the sake of his own glory, to the shame of his kingdom.
B. J. Thomas sang a song years ago called “Using Things and Loving People.” The song gets it right, saying that things go right when you have the right priorities. When you are loving things and using people, you are dishonoring God, the people you belong to, and yourself.
David got it right. He worshiped God with all his heart. He loved his people without cronyism. He used things to bring broader welfare for everyone. Herod used religion to secure his own position, and when John the Baptist would not cooperate, he looked out only for himself.
So what does dancing lead to? Well, it depends. In one case it leads to worthy worship and righteous rule, in the other case to murder and shame for everyone. See, it’s not the dancing per se that automatically leads to one thing or other. It’s what’s in your heart before God. In the end it’s better to lose your head than to lose your heart.
So, shall we dance?
under the chosen Sunday to hear audio of sermon (mp3 format) (beginning March 11, 2007).
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