Dancing in the Ruins

Revised Common Lectionary (7-11-2021: Proper 10)

Old Testament 2 Samuel 6:1–5, 12b–19Psalm Psalm 24

New Testament Ephesians 1:3–14Gospel Mark 6:14–29

In the news this week, we learned that the rescue efforts at the condo collapse in Florida had shifted into recovery mode, after the remaining structure had been demolished. After seeing the images of the wreckage, I confess that I did not share the optimism of the oft-interviewed officials. Where did they get their hope, when the scene was so devastating? I guess I was right, but there is no comfort in that. I was comfortably sitting at home while the officials were actually there.

I keep trying to imagine what it was like during the collapse. Hopefully, those that perished went in their sleep. Hopefully, those left behind are able to move on, even those who await confirmation. How unimaginably horrible, but we have seen so many horrible events in just the past few years. Early in the 20th Century, there were those who believed we could solve anything, that utopia could be created here, that we were in control of this world. Now we grow used to the horrors and senseless death. The body of an immigrant boy washed up on the beach. Truckloads of smuggled people from Mexico found dead. The president of Haiti murdered at home. Over 4 million people have died from Covid-19, and it still ravages certain countries, while others claim recovery. Records for heat are being shattered, crops lost, battles over water rights are heating up. How can we still find hope that our world can get any better?

We’ve all had enough of easy answers to complex questions and platitudes meant to calm our fears. If you haven’t been broken by your own mistakes, you’ll be broken by witnessing all of the horrible things happening to others. The genius of the writers of the Bible and other ancient texts is that they don’t always give us the answers. We are given stories and examples from the lives of folks who screw things up just like we do. We read them and are invited to find wisdom and guidance for our lives, but are not always told just what to do. Instead of being given easy answers, we are invited to think for ourselves and search our hearts for the way forward, if there is one. In the darkness, amidst the ruins, we search for God.

Our First Testament reading from 2nd Samuel 6 gives us one of my favorite images from the Bible, of David dancing with all his might before the Ark as it is brought to Jerusalem:

The Bible for Everyone: A New Translation Chapter 6

When the people carrying Yahweh’s chest had taken six steps he sacrificed a bull and a fatling, 14with David whirling before Yahweh with all his vigour, and David wrapped round in a linen chasuble, 15and David and all the household of Yisra’el bringing up Yahweh’s chest with a shout and with the sound of a horn. 16Yahweh’s chest was coming into David’s Town as Mikal, Sha’ul’s daughter, was looking out through the window. She saw King David jumping and whirling before Yahweh, and she despised him inside.

This seems to be the only time we are told of David dancing. Can we relate to the joy he felt? What today would make us dance with joy?

And what is Mikal’s problem? There always has to be party-pooper! Later we read:

The entire people went each person to his house, and David went back to bless his household. Mikal, Sha’ul’s (Saul’s) daughter, came out to meet David, but she said, ‘How the king of Yisra’el honoured himself today when he exposed himself today before the eyes of his servants’ handmaids, as one of the empty-headed people totally exposes himself!’ David said to Mikal, ‘It was before Yahweh, who chose me rather than your father and his entire household to charge me to be ruler over Yahweh’s people, over Yisra’el. I’ll make fun before Yahweh and slight myself yet more than this and be low in my own eyes, but with the handmaids that you speak of, with them I’ll find honour.’

Is there anything that would make us act like David now? It is hard to see anything to praise God about sometimes, when we only get more bad news. Is it easier to be like David, or more like Mikal?

We are told that what makes David special is that he has a heart for God. Perhaps he is so over-joyed at this momentous occasion, he can’t help but worship God through his dancing. We remember that not everything is going well for David. He has been persecuted by Saul, and has fought many battles with the enemies of Israel. His debacle with Bathsheba is coming, the Philistines are causing problems, and he will face betrayal from close friends and family members. He has more than his fair share of suffering and strife, but he still has a heart for God, even when he knows he has failed Him, even after yet another cause for heartbreak. He not only seeks forgiveness, but accepts the consequences of his sins. He is a great man of God, but is also very human.

This is the man, according to Scripture, who also wrote Psalm 24

The earth and what fills it are Yahweh’s, the world and the people who live in it.

Because he founded it on the seas, set it on the rivers.

Who goes up on to Yahweh’s mountain, who gets up in his sacred place?

One clean as to the palms of his hands and pure in mind, who has not lifted up himself to emptiness and not sworn so as to beguile.

He lifts a blessing from Yahweh and faithfulness from his God who delivers.

This is the circle of people who enquire of him, Ya’aqob (Jacob/Israel) who seek your face.

Lift your heads, gateways; lift yourself up, age-old doors, so that the glorious King may come in.

‘Who is he, then, the glorious King?’—Yahweh the vigorous one and the strong man, Yahweh the strong man in battle.

Lift up your heads, gateways; lift up, age-old doors, so that the glorious King may come in.

‘Who is that, then, the glorious King?’—the glorious King is Yahweh of Armies.

This man could write such glorious words, but commit the worst of crimes. To varying degrees, that’s how all of us are. Cursed by sin, yet saved by grace, able to see the greatness of God amidst the ruins of our lives. We are called back to God, on our knees, reconciled to Him in utmost humility, starting over yet again, but with a clean heart. No matter how far we fall, we can still have the hope in Jesus to be lifted back up. When the world seems to only hold horror and destruction, we can still trust in God to redeem it.

I doubt this would be of any comfort to those who are mourning those who were lost in the condo collapse and elsewhere. Sometimes the world is so shitty nothing helps, especially platitudes. David’s example, following the death of his unnamed first son with Bathsheba, the fruit of his adultery, is to pay the price and then move on. Pretty much everything is downhill from there, but David remains a man of God.

In The Captive, Marcel goes to yet another social gathering full of posturing and attention seeking, but where a late work of the composer Vinteuil is performed. During a break in the performance, Proust writes:

I was indeed like an angel who, fallen from the inebriating bliss of paradise, subsides into the most humdrum reality. And, just as certain creatures are the last surviving testimony to a form of life which nature has discarded, I asked myself if music were not the unique example of what might have been — if there had not come the invention of language, the formation of words, the analysis of ideas — the means of communication between one spirit and another. It is like a possibility which has ended in nothing; humanity has developed along other lines, those of spoken and written language. But this return to the unanalysed was so inebriating, that on emerging from that paradise, contact with people who were more or less intelligent seemed to me of an extraordinary insignificance...once the music was interrupted, the people who were present seemed utterly lifeless.

Marcel Proust. In Search of Lost Time [volumes 1 to 7] . Kindle Edition. Book V.

Here again is David dancing before the ark, lost in the inebriating joy of being in God’s presence. For a moment, problems are forgotten, hope is restored, the heart soars and the mind is quiet. It is the joy found in the arts, literature, the sciences, or wherever your heart sings in response to what to you is more sublimely glorious than anything else.

For some of us, that sublime joy is found in God, in the Bible, in worship. I have also experienced it while reading the great books of other faith traditions and in spending time in nature. In spite of naysayers, even in defiance of what seems to be contrary to logic and current cultural norms, we keep chasing after the sublime. After yet another horrific event, after yet another senseless loss of innocent life, we cling to belief that there is something better, something that we perhaps can touch in this lifetime and share it with others. Something (or some things!) that gives our life meaning and the courage to dance in the ruins. Yes, we have to come down from the mountain top, but the experience carries us through the valleys.

In our Gospel for today, John the Baptist is beheaded, but the Kingdom of God marches on. Bad things will continue to happen, but we push onward. As Paul reminds us in Ephesians 1, we have been chosen by God to participate in His plan for our world:

He chose us in him before the world was made, so as to be holy and irreproachable before him in love. He foreordained us for himself, to be adopted as sons and daughters through Jesus the king. That’s how he wanted it, and that’s what gave him delight, so that the glory of his grace, the grace he poured on us in his beloved one, might receive its due praise.

In the king, and through his blood, we have deliverance—that is, our sins have been forgiven—through the wealth of his grace which he lavished on us. Yes, with all wisdom and insight he has made known to us the secret of his purpose, just as he wanted it to be and set it forward in him as a blueprint for when the time was ripe. His plan was to sum up the whole cosmos in the king—yes, everything in heaven and on earth, in him. The inheritance and the spirit.

In him we have received the inheritance! We were foreordained to this, according to the intention of the one who does all things in accordance with the counsel of his purpose. This was so that we, we who first hoped in the king, might live for the praise of his glory. In him you too, who heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed it—in him you were marked out with the spirit of promise, the holy one. The spirit is the guarantee of our inheritance, until the time when the people who are God’s special possession are finally reclaimed and freed. This, too, is for the praise of his glory.

Ephesians 1:4-14. The Bible for Everyone: A New Translation

Reading this makes my heart sing, transporting me beyond the ruins into the sublime. No matter what happens, God still loves me and has a purpose for me. And for you! Paul’s vision of God’s Creation, how it works and our place in it, sings the glories of God. How am I to respond, what am I to do, to share this with those who need to touch it, too?

What would you do for God that would incur Mikal’s scorn? Where is your sweet spot, where you touch the sublime, and dance for joy? How far will you go to glorify God?