First United Methodist Church of Reno, Nevada
Rev. John Auer
July 13, 2003
"Footloose and Fancy: Danced If We Do, Danced If
We Don't"
What another synchronicity, that when we chose the hymn "Lord of
the Dance," we had no idea the hand bell solo would be "Simple
Gifts!" Then last night the philharmonic closed its first act in
the park across the street with "Lord of the Dance!" I wanted
to stand up and shout out, Come back tomorrow for more!
Martin Buber says, All real living is meeting! John Auer adds, All
real meeting is relationship! All real relationship is power! All real
power is a dance! A Holy Ghost dance! A Jubilee dance! And that's the
end of this sermon! Amen!! Come on! Don't you wish. Sit down. We got at
least 12 more minutes. Just to warm up! We are just getting the hang of
this congregation-and-preacher dance together. The first few steps have
been great. Thank you for all the good will.
Actually, Emma Goldman says, If I cannot dance, I cannot join in your
revolution! John Auer adds, Yes! No dance, no dice! No joy, no justice!
No jubilee, no shalom! If there is no dance, no cosmic dance, no
all-embracing, all-encouraging, all-enhancing, all-enriching movement
to this thing called "life!" Called "living!" And if
I am not part of it! If I do not count, if I am not crucial and vital to
"life" in my way, no matter what my struggle, no matter what
is happening to me, to us, at any particular moment, -- danced if we do,
danced if we don't! - Then I'm taking back my body, such as it is. For I
have a place in the dance!
God is not done with me yet. I need to believe that God is not done
with me yet! God is not done with you yet! God is not done with us yet!
God is not done with anyone yet. God is not done with anything yet. And
we, who are not God, have not seen anything yet! What I love so much
about God, this old Dance of Life, is what I read about God in the paper
just this week! What does Karl Barth say? We do our theology with the
Bible in one hand, the newspaper in the other. The gospel, the good
news, always is news! Our God is making all things news!
It was under the headline "Astronomers Find Oldest, Most Distant
Planet!" Of course, God, who made it, always knew where it was. But
we are just finding it out! And that's what I love about God! All the
secrets, all the surprises! Oldest of secrets! Most distant of
surprises! Here it is, 13 billion years after, 5600 light years away, --
and we are just finding it out! Sisters and brothers, how about this
God! New stars, real stars, are being born as we speak! New species are
appearing! Even though too many also are disappearing, with too much
thanks to us! The one species, among so many, that has yet to find our
place, our nature, our movement in the whole dance of life. In life!
With life! For life!
If we had read the psalm assigned for this morning, number 24, we
would have been shouting out (Will you shout with me, please?),
"The earth is God's! And all that is in it! God makes the earth!
And all who live on it!" That is who we are! We are those who live,
and move, and find our very being in the life, in the dance of the One
who is 13 billion years old, and counting! The One who is making us new,
and news, in this very moment! The One who is making us up as God goes
along. Even God may not know what the end's going to be. What do we say?
We do not know what the future holds. We only know who holds the future!
What a God! What a Creator! The worship of and with, in and for such
a God has no right to be boring! Annie Dillard says if we really knew
how loaded, how explosive worship can be, ushers would hand out crash
helmets and strap us into our pews! We call upon all of creation to be
present to us in worship! Our resources are illimitable! We ask each one
of us to bring all we can to worship, all we can possibly bear, and we
hope not to feel any need to check any part of ourselves at the door.
Songs! Lyres! Harps! Tambourines! Castanets and cymbals! Guitars and
tubas! (Yes, I did once, but not any more!) And everything else about
us. What a life, what a meeting, what a relationship, what a power, what
a dance! What a Holy Ghost dance! What a Jubilee dance! Footloose and
fancy! Danced if we do, danced if we don't.
As our two stories show us this morning, there are dances of life,
and dances of death. There are dances that consecrate, dances that
desecrate. There are dances that celebrate public interest, dances that
consummate private interests. There are dances that circulate life, and
give life again and again, --and dances that only consume life, and take
life once and for all. David's dance here, with "all the chosen men
of Israel," though he is prince, is primarily the dance of a
priest, bearing the Ark, the word of God in behalf of all of God's
people.
Herod's dance, for it really is Herod's dance, is purely the dance of
a prince: autocratic, expedient, self-serving, -- whatever will keep him
in power. Matthew Fox might say, Herod's dance, the dance of princes, is
like "Jacob's Ladder" - hierarchical, each one over another,
with room only for one at the top! Whereas David's dance, the dance of
priests, is like "Sarah's Circle" - equal, mutual, each one
beside another, with room always to take in one more!
The dances of princes work even against themselves. We hear that
Herod is drawn to John, personally, -- respects John, even protects him.
But when it comes to saving face, among other parts, from the risk of
looking weak in the eyes of his "fat cat" contributors, and
the real Roman powers behind his throne, Herod abandons John glibly and
gladly. John, as a prophet, is much more trouble to Herod than John
could ever be worth. The prophet is more often the danced upon than the
dancer. But God, as Jesus knows only too well, takes up the cause of the
prophet. Herod and any other prince in power, and we know many of them
today, may silence the prophets, but not the God of the prophets.
We may kill the messengers, but the message will never be stopped.
Martin, and Malcolm, and Medgar, and Fred, -- fallen prophets taken up
by their God. Bonhoeffer, Gandhi, Allende, Biko, Harvey Milk, Mendez,
Romero, -- fallen prophets taken up by their God. The North American
religious women, the Jesuit priests and their household, all of the
disappeared and the detained, the dominated and the exploited, the
occupied and the incarcerated, the persecuted and the executed, --
fallen prophets taken up by their God. Not one of their names is lost to
the Dance of Life. It appears that the dance is ended. The head of state
has the head of the prophet! It sounds like such a familiar refrain:
"When his disciples heard about it, they came and took his body,
and laid him in a tomb." It appears that the dance is ended. We
know the dance goes on
In a moment I am going to ask us all to name all the kinds of dancing
we can think of. Take a moment to see what comes to mind, then we will
call some of them out. Dance seems so basic, so indispensable, so
irreducibly part of every person, every people, every culture, every
nation. Dance is literally where we meet the ground. We are embodied,
connected with roots. We are the most "down to earth." Dance
is where we plant our feet, where, and with whom, we stand! What I stand
for so I can stand myself, as Martin Sheen likes to say of his public
witness. Dancing is so elemental, so universal. The drum sounds the
heartbeat of the whole cosmos. Where is the drum, the dance, in our
worship?
How many of us are dancers? Of any kind? How many of us are closeted
dancers? Dancers nobody else can see? Or dance with? How many of us are
dancing spirits in danced-out bodies? Believe me, you've got a preacher
whose spirit is always dancing, often in many directions at once! But
one who needs the help of the body to stand. I've learned to dance
falling down. I could become a brand-new event in the Outdoor Games!
Falling is a liturgical act for me. Chronicle columnist Jon Carroll
once dubbed me "pope" to his Church of the Falling Down. I
remember the Ecumenical Institute's words to the song: "I am always
falling down. But I know what I can do. I can pick myself up, and dust
myself off. And dance in a world brand-new!" We hold this dancing
treasure of us in such painfully earthen vessels. Special thanks to
those of the church who pray for us, and our world, in our pain every
week.
Some of the more literal biblical calls to worship and praise God in
dance are cited in our "Words of Meditation" from the movie
Footloose. More figuratively, the dance of the biblical God seems to be
a "coming out" dance, a "bringing out" dance - an
Exodus dance, bringing us out from every bondage, -- an Easter dance,
bringing us out even from our own tombs! These are the very
dance-shaping experiences of the peoples of Israel and the early church.
We, in turn, are a "coming out" people, a "bringing
out" people in our times and places, our circumstances and
conditions.
How can we wonder, how dare we doubt that the dance of our God in
this world today is a dance of liberation! A dance of resurrection and
of restoration! The raising of whole new peoples to life out of worldly
death. Listen! When the United Nations, God love and sustain it, formed
just over 50 years ago, how many nations as members were there? Just 50!
How many are there today? 192! And counting! Bonus question: Who is the
192nd? East Timor! With a lot of support from our annual conference.
These are, literally and figuratively, changes of biblical proportions!
What else is God doing in our time, if not re-peopling God's whole
earth, re-embodying God's own self, God's own dance, in peoples the
world has long since abandoned, denied, abused, and neglected?
How many more peoples are emerging even now? Out of Indonesia? Out of
the Middle East? The Kurds! The Palestinians! Out of Africa? I just saw
a long list of tribes in Liberia alone. Not nearly so simple as we'd
like to think. Russia? China? The Philippines? Who knows even about
South America? And every people with their own dance! Is the United
States of America immune? Parenthetically, is the United Methodist
Church? The biblical God proves again and again to be no respecter of
arbitrary and artificial boundaries and borders.
God must love differences, God makes so many of them! How else to
account for the stories of Babel and of Pentecost? How do we help our
own peoples, our own nation, and tongue, and color, and creed, learn to
be one among many again? Are we not, my brothers and sisters, looking
for a church, as well as a state, that is not afraid of differences?
That is not afraid of diversity? That is not afraid of changes? That is
not afraid of complexity?
Let's bring this on back to us and finish it up now. What kinds of
dancing have we come up with? Shout them out! I'll bet (Is this a
betting place? Where we practice bettor belief?) There are as many kinds
of dances as there are persons here! And each of us is our own dance.
How many can we name? Fast. Slow. Ballroom. Ballet. Belly. Hula. Folk.
Square. Taxi. Marathon. Fancy. Gandy. Aquatic. Liturgical. Disco. Sun.
Rain. Fire. Ghost. Holy Ghost! Irish. Latin. Calypso. Go-Go. Circle.
Table. Line. Clog. Tap. Break. Jazz. Modern. Postmodern. Trance.
Hokey-Pokey. Bunny Hop. Dances with Wolves! The dances, the dancers, the
dance all go on and on.
All I am asking this morning is for each of us to claim our dance.
Everyone of us has a life to live, a song to sing, a dance to dance, to
the glory of God and the Lord of the Dance! It may take us a lifetime to
find our one song. You know me, Johnny One-Note! The philharmonic did
that one, too! Johnny Jubilee! Tubby the Tuba! Whatever it is! Harry
Chapin says of his wannabe opera singer, "Mr. Tanner," in the
story song of that name, He didn't know how well he sang. It just made
him whole! It just makes us whole! God is not done with me yet. God is
not done with you yet. God is not done with them yet, whoever
"they" may be! God is not done with us yet. Is that right? God
is not done with us yet! Will you say that with me, please? God is not
done with us yet! One more time? God is not done with us yet!! Thank
God! And, amen.
