Dance with All Your Might
Dance with All Your Might,
July 12, 2009
by The Reverend Dr. Richard P. Smiraglial
We do the things we have to in life. Simple enough—it is just how it is— we have to do the things that need to get done. Like me, I have to preach today, despite this Gospel about John the Baptist and the platter. So often in life there is little choice about what we have to do. But always in life there is choice about how we go about it and how we get it done.
A little more than a year ago I got to go to Greece, actually to Heraklion in Crete, for an academic conference. I flew in from Amsterdam late on a Sunday afternoon. And as is often the case I was a little out of sorts from the trip. Since this was my second visit to Crete I was very excited to have a better chance at experiencing its most excellent culture. So a bit after sundown off I went. I headed out from my hotel and turned in the direction I thought would take me to the plaza in the center of Heraklion where I knew there were many tavernas. And sure enough soon I was walking up the hill past a church. I was a little surprised to see it ablaze with light, it was glorious on a spring evening, the doors flung open, candles blazing inside and even outside in the plaza. But no people. That seemed odd.
But just as I was wondering about that, I heard a brass band. It confused me, but it also delighted me. After all I played in bands when I was a kid and I love parades. The sound was clearly coming toward me, so I moved on up the hill past the church toward the sound. And just around the next bend was the most amazing thing. Here was the band, together with acolytes carrying torches, thurifers waving incense, and about a thousand people in the parade. I knew at once that it was really a procession to the church. I knew because I learned about this in seminary. Once upon a time every Christian worship service began in this way. And sure enough there they were— a good twenty or so priests, three bishops, behind them the Holy Sacrament and behind the Sacrament more acolytes and torches and incense, and behind them the boy scouts and the girl scouts and then the army. And behind them the congregation.
It was amazing and I just stood there in total awe. Because it sure worked. The power of the Holy Spirit in the streets was palpable. You could see the very power of God on the faces of the people in the procession. What a marvelous way to celebrate not only your faith but also your witness to your faith. Now our processions here are proper and dignified— but so far no brass brands!
Well, we do the things we have to do in life. And we have a choice about how we do them. We have a choice about whether we just march through the day, or whether we go all out embracing the experience fully. Because when we do embrace life with enthusiasm we soon discover the power of the presence of God within us and among us. My friends, the fullness of human experience, is the threshold to the presence of God.
In the Old Testament lesson today we have something of a liturgical procession as well. David is bringing the ark of the covenant to his new capital in Jerusalem, both as a sign of his faith in God who has anointed him, and as a sign of the power of God to unite the kingdom. The details are all there in the lesson, even the instruments in the band! But the important part is this: it says that David and his procession “danced before the LORD with all their might.” They danced before God with all their might. Now it doesn’t say they danced in a particular way, or that they danced properly or according to the rubrics. Rather it says they threw themselves fully into it, and the reason was to stir up in themselves the presence and the power of God.
“Lift up your heads, O gates; lift them high, O everlasting doors; * and the King of glory shall come in” [Psalm 24: 7, 9] After all, we all could use a bit more ready access to the presence and the power of God. It is not as though the world as we have created it in our own images is perking along very well. We have created our own dimension of existence in which power and prestige and pride and wealth are the gods we pay heed to in every moment. We have created a world in which there is only a semblance of equality for all of God’s children, in which there is violence and hunger and war, in which even the old and the sick cannot rely on a helping hand. So it is up to us my friends to make a choice about which dimension we plan to live in— ours, or God’s. And if we choose to live in God’s dimension, then we have to embrace it with everything we’ve got.
After all, as Paul reminds us: we have been blessed in heaven, we have been chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world we have been destined for adoption as the children of God we have been marked as Christ’s own forever, and we have been given the knowledge of the mystery of God’s will for us. We are the blessed children of God, ummm, except when we choose not to be. What is this mystery of God’s will for us? That we should love God and that we should love one another. Easy enough to repeat. Very hard to do. Especially hard to do with all your might. And yet, that is what Jesus taught us— not that we should just love God but that we should love God with all our heart and soul and mind. Not just that we should love each other but that we should love our neighbors as ourselves. That this love we should have for God and for each other must somehow come from within, from the wellspring of God’s Spirit that is in each of our souls.
And that is how it is that the fullness of human experience is the threshold of the presence of God. When you live life to the fullest then God is not only with you but the power of God is able to work in and through you. Choose the other path, and well, that is how Herod wound up the victim of his own pride, and John the Baptist with him; choose the other path my friends and you pull the house down with you.
My friends the great mystery of God that we have been given as children of God is the power of love. If we live in God’s dimension then love flows in and through us from us and to us like life-blood. And that my friends is the love that can transform the whole of creation. Love is the power of God, flowing in and through you when you choose to live in God’s dimension. And boy is that tough. It means you have to have respect for that guy who leaps in front of you in line at the supermarket. You have to have respect for the people sitting to your right and to your left now, who are different from you. And you have to let the love that God has given you, flow through you so that it embraces them too. That’s why we are here today my friends, to learn the ropes of God’s dimension, to learn what it means to live fully in the power of God’s love.
The seventh verse of our psalm is this: ”Lift up your heads, O gates; lift them high, O everlasting doors; * and the King of glory shall come in.” It means, light the torches, strike up the brass band, fling the doors open, dance before God with all your might, and the power of God will work miracles in you. Amen.
