I recently led a one hour workshop on “Why Baptist Preachers Can’t Dance.”  This is not an area in which I have any expertise—which made it more fun.  Here are my notes. 

 

            A year and a few months ago, the dean said to me, “At the Self Lectures, the preaching professor leads a session on the topic the Self Lecturer has chosen.”  Chuck Poole was the lecturer last year.  His topic was “Preaching Prophetically.”  It was a piece of cake.  I led a discussion on Jesus preaching his first sermon at Nazareth, the prophetic sermon that almost ended at the bottom of a cliff.  The people who came to the workshop were magnificent.  They were articulate. They offered fascinating and helpful insights.  I hope you’re half as good as they were, but I have to admit it was pretty easy for all of us.  We had such a clear concrete topic with which to work.  I was so grateful to Chuck Poole.

            This year my friend Robert Smith did not make it so easy with “Doctrine that Dances.”  Doctrine is a fine word, but it’s not in the Bible very often, and it’s not in the most interesting texts.  It shows up in 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, and in Titus three times, oh boy.  At least doctrine is in the Bible.  Dancing is not even mentioned in the Bible used by the church in which I grew up.  The titles of Robert’s lecture are wonderful for those attending, but the poor professor who is supposed to match the topic isn’t helped that much by “The Preacher as an Exegetical Escort” or “The Preacher as a Doxological Dancer.”

            So I’m about to speak on a topic on which I have no expertise.  I am every bit as qualified to lead a discussion on quantum physics or 19^th century French poetry, as the subject which I’m about to address—“The Doctrine of Dancing” or “Why Baptists Preachers Can’t Dance.”  My original title was “Why White Preachers Can’t Dance” but clearer thinking prevailed.  

Show of hands—how many of you have been to a dance?  I understand that for almost everyone, raising your hand saying, “Yes, I’ve been to a dance” is no more shocking than, “Yes, I’ve used an ATM” or “Yes, I’ve looked around the sanctuary while everyone else’s eyes were closed for a prayer” but your background is more sophisticated than mine.  There were moments growing up when I could not have imagined a seminary classroom in which people could say without shame or threat of expulsion, “I dance.”  This a high point in my religious pilgrimage. 

Churches tend to define themselves by what frightens them.  Every church has opinions about what’s dynamite and what’s a sparkler.  The churches of my childhood were afraid of cussing, smoking, drinking, and dancing.  We divided the saints from the sinners by their proximity to those explosive materials. 

            Every ethical question had one indisputable answer, and it was abundantly clear that dancing of any sort was a sin for which we should not bank on forgiveness.  Two-stepping was the fast lane on the road to perdition.  This zero tolerance policy was not to be questioned.  We knew how bad people were by how much they moved when they listened to George Jones.

When I was in high school one Sunday night at church—by the way, every time I use the phrase “Sunday night at church” I feel grateful for God’s deliverance—Susan Alexander, a high school senior, and her mother wanted to speak to my father, the pastor, about an important matter.  Susan wanted to go to her prom.  She explained that she understood the evils of dancing and would not under any circumstances dance, but she would like to attend to be a witness, to show that Christians can have fun without dancing. 

Susan’s mother did not share this view.  She felt that the Bible was clear on “Shun from every appearance of evil” and if God had believed there should be an exception for high school dances God would have written it in. 

My father never hesitated.  He said with great disappointment, “Susan, if you’re not going to Baltimore, why do you want to get on the train?”

My parents’ feelings about dancing have not softened through the years.  Do any of you remember the movie Dancer, Texas Population 81?  It’s the PG story of the little town of Dancer, Texas.  I couldn’t get my parents to see it, because the title was too suggestive.

My freshman year at Baylor I was part of a backyard Bible club at Good Samaritan Baptist Church.  Every Tuesday afternoon we told Bible stories and played with about thirty children.  After four weeks or so, the leader of our Bible club, who I considered a saint, suggested that the workers, eight Baylor students, needed to get together to get to know each other.  Kimberly Smith, a junior I had heretofore thought of as a decent person, said, “I know.  Let’s go kicker dancing.” 

My jaw dropped, but I assumed that the others would reply, “No, we don’t think we’ll be spending a Saturday night on hell’s doorstep warming ourselves in the flames, though it’s certainly interesting that you would suggest it.” 

But to my horror the other six, including the saint, nodded their heads in agreement and said, and this disgusted me, “Sounds like fun.” 

I still assumed these people weren’t going to Baltimore, but they were planning on getting on the train.  You might wonder why I didn’t say, “I’m not sure that a trip to a honky tonk where there will probably be cussing, smoking, and drinking as well as dancing is appropriate for a Bible club.”  I expected to hear myself shout, “Stop the train” any second, but I didn’t.  Some mysterious power held me back. 

All week I felt like Caesar deciding whether or not to cross the Rubicon.  Somehow I knew that if I did, I could never go back.  After five days of wrestling with an angel or a demon, on Saturday night I saw a woman dancing who looked just like Susan Alexander’s mother.  I learned that I cannot dance, but it’s not for religious reasons.  My parents made me so that the rhythm gene is not just underused or defective, but completely missing.  I learned that “Cotton Eyed Joe” which is what the band at the West Fraternal Auditorium made every song sound like, isn’t my favorite song.  And I learned that I will always be rethinking what’s dynamite and what isn’t.  Maybe we should be afraid to board any train that might take us away from God’s joy. 

I’ve confessed that I was 18 when I finally got to my first dance, did anyone else stay off the dance floor for religious reasons?  There may be someone here with a word of testimony.  Who grew up in a church that frowned upon dancing?  How did you experience that?

When my oldest son was eleven, my wife and I were asked to chaperon the sixth grade dance.  Carol thought this would be a chance for me to grow in my faith and put my phobias about dancing behind me, so she said, “Sure, that’d be great.”  It may surprise you, as it did us, to learn that Graham wasn’t thrilled to learn that we were all going to a dance.  He seemed to view the dance as the equivalent of a death sentence.  The irony wasn’t lost on me, a child who was forbidden to dance, now raising a child who refused to do so.  Reverse rebellion is not pretty. 

            Graham tried to make us feel guilty.  He told us that the biggest boys in the sixth grade had announced that anyone whose parents chaperoned the dance would be given a swirlie after gym on Monday. 

Graham did appreciate it when I agreed to introduce myself by saying, “Hi, I’m not Graham’s father.”

            In the days before the dance I practiced my lines in my strongest chaperon voice. 

“Put that out.”

“Just what do you two think you’re doing?”

“Hey, what are you pouring in the punch bowl?”

I took the Puritan motto as my own, “Someone somewhere is having a good time and it must be stopped.”

            I also wanted to give my son some helpful pointers.  I tried to think back to dances I went to when I was young, but of course, there were none. 

I offered a couple of clever first lines:  “So, do you come here often?” 

“Doesn’t this song remind you of Jimmy Buffett?” 

“See that cool guy over there.  That’s my dad.” 

On the way to the dance, Graham saw me put a notebook in my pocket and said firmly: “Dad, you can’t write, preach or speak about this.” 

I said, “Son, I’m going to be talking about this ten years from now.” 

            When we arrived at Lake Air Middle School, we asked the parents in charge:  “Should we be checking id’s or taking pictures or showing reluctant eleven-year-olds how to bust a move?”  We were told to sit quietly.  Our only responsibility was to look old.  

When we entered the wonderland that was the cafetorium, the fog machine was working its magic.  Balloons floated to the ceiling, the floor was covered with ribbons.  The light show was vaguely reminiscent of the four-colored red, green, orange, and blue spinning wheels that illuminated our Christmas trees in the 1960s. 

            The dance turned out to be five or six clumps of sixth graders, all of the clumps all male or all female, standing around the edges of the dance floor.  Every once in a while four or five children would hold hands and hop in the middle as if they had pogo sticks while everyone else stared at them.  I couldn’t believe my parents thought missing this was a statement of religious conviction. 

They really needed chaperons who could dance.  Some of the not yet old enough for acne boys played with the balloons, feeling as out of place as Tiger Woods at a wedding, Miley Cyrus at the Oscars, the pope on the Jon Stewart Show, Brian McClaren at the Southern Baptist Convention, or me at a dance.

            The disk jockey had a sign in front of him that said, “The Hottest DJ,” which was helpful because I would never have guessed.  He yelled into his microphone, “Lake Air Middle School, what’s happening?” “Scream if you don’t like school,” and “I still haven’t seen a white guy dance.”  Whenever he said, “Now we’re going to slow it down” the crowd booed. 

            There was a break dance contest and a John Travolta dance alike contest.  When I was in high school in 1977 I could never have imagined that my sixth grade son would also listen to the Bee Gees. 

            At one point, near the end, just after I’d finished my third bag of Doritos, Graham came over to where we were sitting quietly and cynically said, “Being a chaperon sure looks like hard work” to which I was kind enough to respond loudly, “I wish your father was here.” 

            The dance was another step in my continued reflection on what God might be teaching me on my journey from thinking Jonathan Edwards was soft to dancing with the stars.

When you look in the Bible you find several enlightening stories about dancing.  In Judges 21, the elders of the congregation suggest that the unmarried men in the tribe of Benjamin go and hide in the fields at Shiloh where they are having a feast.  When the dancing starts each man is to grab a dancing girl, carry her off, and make her his wife.  It’s not a good text to read at sixth grade dances.

            The Psalmists tell us to praise God with dance.  Ecclesiastes assures us that there is a time to dance.  In Jeremiah, God promises that hurting people will dance again.  John the Baptist lost his head over Salome’s dance.  In Luke, Jesus said, “We played the pipe and you didn’t dance.”  All of these texts are illuminating in their own way.             

            But I ended up with the story of David dancing before the ark in 2 Samuel 6. 

            We’re going to work with this dancing text as though preparing to preach on the doctrine of dancing.  These are the steps to a sermon that the preaching students in the room have memorized and learned to love: Dancing Your Way to the Pulpit

1. Imagine the story.

2. Study the text.

3. Explore the meaning.

4. Decide on the key idea or purpose.

5. Design the sermon.

6. Look for what you’ve found in the text in the world.

7. Write the sermon.

8. Prepare to share the sermon.

            The first step is to imagine the story.  Anne Lamott was asked, what does a poet do?  She answered, “First, we listen.”  The first thing preachers do is listen.  Before you read what anyone else says, before you start thinking about what you’re going to say, you listen to the story. 

Everyone should have a copy of 2 Samuel 6.  We’re going to stand and read the text aloud.  Don’t stay together.  Don’t listen to anyone else.  Be as expressive as you can be.  Over do it.  Be dramatic and while you read, picture it, with all five senses.  When you finish I’m going to ask, “What do you see, hear, touch, taste and smell as you read 2 Samuel 6?”  Okay here we go.  

 

2 Samuel 6 (David Dances the Ark into Jerusalem)

 

David again gathered all the chosen men of Israel, thirty thousand. ²David and all the people with him set out and went from Baale-judah, to bring up from there the ark of God, which is called by the name of the Lord of hosts who is enthroned on the cherubim. ³They carried the ark of God on a new cart, and brought it out of the house of Abinadab, which was on the hill. Uzzah and Ahio,^* the sons of Abinadab, were driving the new cart ⁴with the ark of God;^* and Ahio^* went in front of the ark. ⁵David 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.

6 When they came to the threshing-floor of Nacon, Uzzah reached out his hand to the ark of God and took hold of it, for the oxen shook it. ⁷The anger of the Lord was kindled against Uzzah; and God struck him there because he reached out his hand to the ark;^* and he died there beside the ark of God. ⁸David was angry because the Lord had burst forth with an outburst upon Uzzah; so that place is called Perez-uzzah^* to this day. ⁹David was afraid of the Lord that day; he said, ‘How can the ark of the Lord come into my care?’ ¹⁰So David was unwilling to take the ark of the Lord into his care in the city of David; instead David took it to the house of Obed-edom the Gittite. ¹¹The ark of the Lord remained in the house of Obed-edom the Gittite for three months; and the Lord blessed Obed-edom and all his household.

12 It was told King David, ‘The Lord has blessed the household of Obed-edom and all that belongs to him, because of the ark of God.’ So David went and brought up the ark of God from the house of Obed-edom to the city of David with rejoicing; ¹³and when those who bore the ark of the Lord had gone six paces, he sacrificed an ox and a fatling. ¹⁴David danced before the Lord with all his might; David was girded with a linen ephod. ¹⁵So David and all the house of Israel brought up the ark of the Lord with shouting, and with the sound of the trumpet.

16 As the ark of the Lord came into the city of David, Michal daughter of Saul looked out of the window, and saw King David leaping and dancing before the Lord; and she despised him in her heart.

17 They brought in the ark of the Lord, and set it in its place, inside the tent that David had pitched for it; and David offered burnt-offerings and offerings of well-being before the Lord. ¹⁸When David had finished offering the burnt-offerings and the offerings of well-being, he blessed the people in the name of the Lord of hosts, ¹⁹and distributed food among all the people, the whole multitude of Israel, both men and women, to each a cake of bread, a portion of meat,^* and a cake of raisins. Then all the people went back to their homes.

20 David returned to bless his household. But Michal the daughter of Saul came out to meet David, and said, ‘How the king of Israel honoured himself today, uncovering himself today before the eyes of his servants’ maids, as any vulgar fellow might shamelessly uncover himself!’ ²¹David said to Michal, ‘It was before the Lord, who chose me in place of your father and all his household, to appoint me as prince over Israel, the people of the Lord, that I have danced before the Lord. ²²I will make myself yet 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 honour.’ ²³And Michal the daughter of Saul had no child to the day of her death.

 

As you imagine this story,

What’s the weather like?  What’s the temperature?

David takes 30,000 men on the first excursion – how many have beards?

What color is the new cart?

What kind of song did you imagine the lyres, harps, tambourines, castanets and cymbals playing? 

What does it look like when Uzzah dies?  Heart attack or passed out?

Where did they put the ark in Obed-edom’s house?  (I assume he doesn’t have a garage)

            How does his wife feel about having the ark in the house for three months?
            At the second attempt, how many do you have carrying the ark to Jerusalem?

What color is David’s linen ephod? 

            Is David’s dancing more like a Pentecostal worship service, a liturgical dance on Easter or American Bandstand? 

Were there children in the crowd?  How old is Michal, David’s wife?

Who plays Michal in the movie version?  Angelina Jolie or Beyonce?

Who plays David in the movie? 

What kind of cake did you picture?

            What kind of meat?  Fried chicken or barbecue?

            What does David expect when he goes home?

What captures your attention?

What surprises you?

What does the passage make you feel?

When you imagine the story, it raises all kinds of questions—historical questions that you then take to the commentaries, to the scholars.

            The second step is to study the text. Here’s some background. 

            One of themes in the books of Samuel is the history of the ark of the covenant.  At one point the Philistines captured the ark, but then they returned it because it was wreaking havoc on them. 

When this story begins, the Hebrew tribes have been neglecting the Ark since back in 1 Samuel 6, about twenty years earlier.  The decorated gold box was powerful in and of itself, but more than that it was a symbol of God’s presence.  It was unthinkable that the ark should be stored in a private home on the edge of Israel.  Once Jerusalem had become the city of David, it made sense for the ark to be housed there, as a sign of God’s approval.

            This first attempt to bring the ark ends horribly. The point for the writer is that they have not paid enough attention to God’s holiness. 

            30,000 is often considered too high a number to be taken literally.  The parallel account in 1 Chronicles talks about military leaders, but here in 2 Samuel it seems to include representatives of the different tribes.  The point is that the occasion is big time pageantry, a praise band and a choir. 

            The phrase, the ark of God, which is called by the name, sounds awkward, but it makes it clear that God is not to be located in the ark. 

            When verse 3 mentions a new cart, it sounds fine to us, but for the first readers it indicated a lack of respect.  The description in Exodus (25:12-14) is of an ark fitted with rings and poles, so it was meant to be carried by poles.  If it was carried that way, it wouldn’t have needed to be steadied or touched. 

            The cart went slow enough to allow dancing and singing.  It’s hard to translate the names of musical instruments.  The first two in verse five are stringed instruments, the other three are percussion. 

            The first celebration ends in tragedy.  Uzzah, by handling the ark, committed sacrilege.  This is harsh to us and harsh to David, who was humiliated.  Everything had been going great for the king.  Now he’s angry with God. 

The new name for the threshing floor, Perez-uzzah, means “The Lord has broken Uzzah.”  David blames God and is afraid of God, so he gives up on the ark.  Earlier in his story, David had experienced God’s protection and presence, but now he backs away from God’s holiness.

            Obed-edom is probably a Levite who is entrusted with the ark.  Over the next three months, God blesses Obed-dom.  David starts to think he was wrong to give up.  He could use some blessing. 

            Verse 13, those who bore the ark implies that this time men carried the ark in the right way, with poles.  Even so after only six paces, David offers a sacrifice, just in case, a prayer for a safe journey.

            Then David danced, the word means whirling.  David is no less enthusiastic than on the first try in verse 5, but now he has learned that enthusiasm is not enough.  He also needs to take God seriously. 

            He replaces his royal robes with a linen ephod, the priestly dress.  The shouting and the trumpet are signs of religious fervor.

            At this moment of David’s greatest triumph, when the ark has successfully entered Jerusalem, Michal takes exception.  Her idea seems to be that the king should avoid mixing with the people.  She despised him for the qualities that made him great, his devotion to God and commitment to worship.

            David offers burnt offerings and peace offerings.  The peace offerings were not consumed on the altar, but were returned to the people for the feast.  It was the main course for the party. 

            A cake of bread is a flat loaf of bread.  A portion of meat is hard to translate, it may be “a cake of dates.”

            David goes home, excited at what a great day it’s been.  Michal’s sarcasm is thick.  David had killed 200 Philistines to get to marry her.  She liked the brave warrior.  She doesn’t care for the jubilant, worshipping king.  Her marriage had already been falling apart and it’s never good again.

            David responds by insulting her father.  He says he is more concerned about honoring God than increasing his own popularity, which is about as high as it could get.  Michal’s childlessness implies that she and David had no more marital relations. 

On your way to the sermon, you imagine your way back into the story and then you take seriously the historical questions, before you begin to explore the meaning.  Work on what it says before you begin asking, “what does it mean?”

        The third step is to honestly think about what the story does. 

            What does this story say to you?  Someone tell us, What might God be saying to you in this passage?  What do you hear? 

When do you feel God’s presence calling you to this kind of celebration?  When do you feel like dancing? 

            How should the church read the story? How is this like worship at your church?  How is this unlike worship at your church? 

When do you feel this kind of joy in worship?

            What does this story have to say to the world?  How is this different from what most people think about faith?

            What in this text would you want to share?

        The fourth step is to figure out not what the text says, so much as what the text does.  When asked how many points a sermon should have, one teacher answered, At least one.

        Find the key idea for a sermon on this story.  What is the main hope of the sermon you would preach on this text?  If your central idea is too fuzzy to fit into one sentence, then the sermon is going to end up fuzzy. 

        In ten words or less, what could be the purpose of a sermon on this story in 2 Samuel? 

        The key idea might be something as simple as:

        Life is hard, but God invites us to celebrate. 

        The fifth step is to organize what you’ve discovered and design the sermon.  You arrange your wonderful ideas into an outline that helps listeners experience what you’ve experienced in listening to the story. 

            There are lots of ways to arrange sermons.  One way is Paul Scott Wilson’s four pages of the sermon.  His suggested outline is trouble in the world, trouble in the text, good news in the text, good news in the world.  You would gather your thoughts around those four movements and given your main idea—Life is hard, but God calls us to celebrate—your outline would come out something like this: 

1. We easily succumb to boredom and dullness. 

2. King David was tempted to skip the celebration,

3. But David felt God with him and danced in celebration.

4. God calls us to celebrate God’s joy. 

Then you look for stories or examples that connect the Bible to our lives.  Many ministers carry around notebooks to write down anything that might be anything, collecting ideas about the way God is at work in the world.  With this text, you might find yourself looking for stories of people who refused to dance and stories of people who learned to dance.  Some of your stories would be metaphorical, but some might be literal.

            When I went looking for ideas about dancing and God’s joy, I came across this poem by the Catholic priest, Andrew Greeley.

Teenage God

That God exists the world is not proof

But a metaphor for who She really is,

an unrestrained adolescent, showing off,

an excessive, exuberant, playful whiz,

Determined gamester with the quantum odds,

An ingenious expert in higher math—

This frolicsome and comic dancing God

Is charming and just a little daft.

Will God grow up?  Will she become mature?

In the creation game announce a lull,

Her befuddled supplicants assure

A cosmos that is quiet, safe, and dull?

Can God be innocent of romance?

No Way!  On with the multi-cosmic dance!”

Some churches would find this poem delightfully whimsical, but there are other churches where this might raise questions, “Why is the preacher quoting a Catholic?”  “Did the preacher say God was a woman?”  “a teenage girl?”  “Was God dancing in the poem?”  “How can anyone believe that God invented math?”

            In preparing to preach this story you might remember the Angel Monet quote, “Those who danced were thought to be quite insane by those who could not hear the music.”  People of genuine faith can look insane.

You might want to muse on the popularity of Dancing with the stars.  How could a show starring Buzz Aldrin, Kate Gosselin and Chad Ochocinco be in the top ten?  It’s got to be the dancing.  

            You’ve got lots of country songs about dancing.  Lee Ann Womack, “And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance.  I hope you dance.”

            You’ve got the wisdom of bumper stickers – “dance like nobody’s watching.”    

The great atheist Friedrich Nietzsche argued, “I would believe only in a god that knows how to dance.”  In this story in 2 Samuel, God dances. 

You look around for what you’ve seen in the text.  Where have you seen the anger of Michal or the joy of worshipping God?

We used to call this illustrating the sermon, but the stories we find don’t illustrate the point, they are the point.  They are the story embodied.

            When it comes time for the seventh step, composing the sermon, every preacher has a different routine.  I used to write on legal pads and I still start that way—staring at the text, panning for gold, hunting for my church, my life, or God in the story.  I now write most of each sermon at the computer.  In between periods of actually typing words, I wait for the Spirit to fill the open places.   

            Bathe every step in the process in prayer.  Find your own best ways to prepare.  I speak every sermon out loud four or five times before I preach it.  It’s the best praying I do.

            Good preachers love preparing, thinking, pondering, imagining, hoping, and believing that something will happen.  They learn that not much is better than getting to say, “I’ve been listening to the Bible and listening to the Spirit.  This is what I believe God wants us to hear.”

            With this text it might come out something like this:

            It’s nine o’clock on Tuesday morning at the First Baptist Church of the biggest city in a state where Baptist churches outnumber gas stations.  The worship planning meeting is about to begin.  The staff gathers around a long oak table.  The minister of administration wears a brown three-piece suit.  He has a cup of coffee—black, no sugar.  The minister of youth is in cut-off shorts and a Hard Rock Cafe T-shirt.  She has an iced caramel macchiato espresso.  They don’t sit together.

            The meeting always begins with the pastor reading the text for the next Sunday’s service.  This week’s reading is from 2 Samuel 6.  When he gets to the part about David dancing girded with a linen ephod, the minister of children giggles.  The pastor explains that the focus of Sunday’s worship will be God’s kind of joy.

            Then he eases into an idea he knows some of them aren’t going to like: “I know we don’t usually do this, but since the service is on joy, I’d like for us to actually, briefly welcome one another during the welcome time.”

            The minister of administration warns, “We are losing our sense of reverence.”

            The minister of senior adults, ignoring the minister of administration, suggests that they greet one another as they did in the early church, “The Lord be with you,” “and also with you.”

            The minister of preschoolers has a different idea: “Let’s say ‘God loves you and I do, too’ and then hug.”

            The look on the minister of administration’s face makes it clear that he’s not in favor of hugging under any circumstances.  The pastor drops the idea of welcoming one another.

            They agree that there ought to be a lot of music in a service on joy, but they disagree over the opening hymn.  The minister of senior adults wants Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee.  The minister of youth makes a case for Lord of the Dance.  The discussion heats up until the pastor, who often referees, says, “We’ll sing them both.”

            The staff discusses several scripture readings.  The minister of children wants Psalm 2:4, “God who sits in heaven laughs.”  The idea of God laughing strikes the minister of administration and the minister to the extremely wealthy as sacrilegious.  Then the minister of special ministries reads Psalm 149—which doesn’t include laughing—but mentions dancing in worship.

            For the gospel reading, the minister of the middle-aged wants John 15: “I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.”  It’s okay, but the minister of youth finds the passage on which they agree—Luke 7—where Jesus complains that he played the flute and they wouldn’t dance.

            The children’s minister says that she is open to suggestions for the children’s time.  The minister of administration complains, as he does each week, that a children’s sermon is inappropriate in formal worship:  “It is uncouth and unrefined.”

            Everyone ignores the minister of administration.  The associate minister of youth says that in keeping with the dancing imagery in the text he would be willing to perform a speech from the movie Footloose that he has seen twelve times.  Without any prompting, he begins: “Dancing is a celebration . . . of just about everything. Aren’t we told in Psalm 149, ‘Praise God’s name with dancing’?  And there was King David in the book of Samuel . . . leaping and dancing before God.  In Ecclesiastes we’re told, ‘There is a time to dance.’  That’s the way it was in the beginning, the way it’s always been and the way it should be, now and forever.”  The associate minister of youth does look like Kevin Bacon, so it’s with regret that the staff passes on the children’s time from Footloose.

            The pastor asks for quotations to be printed in the order of worship to direct the worshippers’ attention to joy.  The minister of education, who considers himself an expert in pithy quotes, and whose suggestions are rejected each week says, “I have three profound, insightful quotes: Will Rogers, ‘We’re only here for a spell, get all the good laughs you can’; H.L. Mencken, ‘Puritanism is the impulse to punish those who have a superior capacity for happiness’; and Mark Twain, ‘The good life is good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience.’”

            The pastor isn’t sure that Rogers, Mencken, or Twain capture where he hopes to go.  Fortunately, the minister of the arts offers a quotation from Mechthild of Magdeburg:  “I cannot dance, O Lord, unless you lead me.  If you wish me to leap joyfully, let me see you dance and sing.”

            The service looks good.  It has a clear focus, but there’s also movement and variety.  They need something more, but what they need can’t be typed into an order of worship.

            On Sunday morning, the pastor of the First Baptist Church stands to preach.  The service has gone well.  When they sang Joyful, Joyful, the associate youth minister, who thought it high church, didn’t look joyful.  When they sang Lord of the Dance, the minister of administration, who thought the song low church, grimaced.

            Now the pastor reads the scripture and begins a sermon that he knows is too dependent on Frederick Buechner, but it’s too late to worry about it now: 

            “Israel adored David like no other king Israel ever had.  The story of how he captured Jerusalem helps us understand why.  Jerusalem was a major plum for the young king—a town in the hills considered so untakable that the people of Jerusalem had a saying to the effect that a blind man and a crippled man could hold it against the U.S. Marines.  Just to remind people who it was that had finally taken it, David’s first move was to, with all humility, change its name to ‘The City of David.’

            “David’s second move was a brilliant maneuver for giving his victory the stamp of God’s approval.  He brought out the ark.  Anyone who’s seen Raiders of the Lost Ark knows that no one knows what was in it, but it was as close as Israel ever got to an official symbol of God’s presence.  David had the ark processed to Jerusalem and made a parade of it, complete with horns, harps, and cymbals, not to mention himself high-stepping it out in front.  Buechner says that David looked ‘like the Mayor of Dublin on Saint Patrick’s Day.’  When they came into town, they found that David had set up a big tent with refreshments.  Just so nobody would forget who was picking up the tab, he did most of the praying himself.

            “So far it was nothing a good public relations director couldn’t have dreamed up, but the next thing was something else again.  David stripped down to his skivvies, and with everybody looking on, danced.  Maybe it started out as just another public relations ploy, but not for long.

            “With trumpets blaring and drums beating, it was Camelot all over again.  For once David didn’t have to drag God in for politics’ sake, because it was obvious that this time God was already there.  How they cut loose together, David and God, whirling around before the ark in such utter abandon that they almost caught fire.  The service wasn’t turning out exactly like David had planned.  Something was happening that wasn’t in the order of worship.”

            At this point, the pastor’s mind starts to wander.  His thoughts often meander during sermons, but not nearly as much as those of his listeners and never too far from the text.  He thinks of David in the middle of a worship service dancing in his underwear.  Then he wonders, “What would happen if I stripped down to my boxers and danced a jig?”  Would he do a disco step or a pirouette or two?  Could he remember how to do the Macarena?

            Then he realizes that the dance itself would not be the primary issue.  Being in his underwear would be the attention grabber.  Would people go running out of the sanctuary or would they finally move to the front rows?  He could imagine Mrs. Lyles beckoning the head usher, “Would you please call the police?”

            What would the deacons think?  Would the minister of administration faint?  Would mothers cover their daughters’ eyes?  Would the minister of counseling rush to the front to talk to him about his stress level?  

            Then he catches the eye of his wife seated on the second row.  Whatever Michal said to David was nothing compared to what his beloved wife would say.  Would she call her parents?  No, she would call his parents.  What would his children think?  They had seen him dance in his boxers, but it had been a while.

            Then for reasons that he was never able to explain, he realizes that he is wearing the boxer shorts his wife gave him on Valentine’s Day— the ones with the big red hearts.  That’s when he starts laughing.  Have you ever gotten tickled at the worst possible time?  This is Mary Tyler Moore at the funeral of Chuckles the Clown.  Maybe you’ve gotten the giggles during a wedding and the harder you try to stop, the more you laugh.  The pastor is shaking with laughter that starts at the bottom of his feet and takes over his whole body.

            He realizes he’s in trouble.  The minister of administration is not smiling.  The preacher tries to explain that he’s laughing because he just imagined how they would react if he danced like David did.  A few members of the congregation chuckle nervously, but not many.  He tries to regain his composure, but then pictures himself dancing and starts laughing again.

            He isn’t going to be able to get back to the sermon.  He wishes that he had listened to the scene from Footloose.  He needs something to wrap it up.  He remembers a quote from Martin Luther.  Still giggling, he says, “Martin Luther argued, ‘If you’re not allowed to laugh in heaven, I don’t want to go there.’” 

            Judging from their reactions, most of the people at First Baptist Church don’t share Luther’s opinion.  They aren’t laughing.

            When the service is finally, mercifully over, most of the people go out the side door so they won’t have to speak to the pastor. 

            When he gets into the car to drive home, he expects his wife to give him the dressing down that Michal gave David:  “You really did yourself proud this time, laughing boy,” but instead she starts laughing.  She tries to make sense of it all:  “We try so hard to keep everything under control that we miss the fun of it.  We plan.  We program.  We work.  We don’t dance enough.  We don’t laugh enough.  The foolish, laughing, dancing, holy moments are a taste of the goodness of God.”

Let’s close with a prayer.

God, help us to take seriously what you take seriously and celebrate what you celebrate.  Teach us to laugh and sing.  Thank you for the promise that there is a time to dance.  Amen.

 

Why Baptist Preachers Can’t Dance

Brett Younger