This week's sermon...
Dancing Partners
preached by the Rev. Virginia Ann McDaniel
March 13, 2011
READ: Ecclesiastes 3:1-4
When I realized a few weeks ago that my ministry with you was drawing to a close, I knew at once that the title of my final sermon would be “Dancing Partners.” The image came as kind of a surprise to me. You all know that singing is one of the things I do pretty well, and that I get a great deal of enjoyment from singing. What you probably don’t know (because I have carefully kept it hidden from you) is that I am a lousy dancer. So why the image of “dancing partners” and not “singing together”?
(Don’t worry. We’ll get to the second scripture reading in due course.)
When I was in junior high school, my parents inflicted ballroom dancing lessons on me. And since my parents are here this morning, it gives me great pleasure to be able to say to them, “Thanks a lot! I hated dancing class!” It was one of those things that as a young person you don’t have a say in. It was something “everybody did,” and so I had to do it too. I remember it very well—our elementary school gymnasium smelling faintly of dirty socks, the teacher, Mr. Richards, and his assistant Miss Laurie, a Ginger Rogers wannabe, those horrible scratchy 45s with Cha-Cha and Waltz they played on the record player. I dreaded Thursday evenings.
The one saving grace was that the girls were required to wear white gloves. I know some of you women grew up wearing gloves; it’s what proper ladies did. But when I was twelve or so, in the mid 1960s, owning a pair of white gloves wasn’t something everybody did. Maybe you had a pair from Easter. If not, you had to make a special shopping trip to find them. It was just one more reminder of how little you wanted to take part in these dancing lessons. But quickly you realized what a benefit the gloves were. We were ahead of our time actually. Wearing gloves prevented us from ever actually having to touch a boy. Excellent! We liked to say our gloves kept us from getting cooties. Whatever. I think my dislike of dancing started back then.
When I graduated from seminary almost 20 years ago, one of the gifts I received was this silly little figurine. It is one of the “California Raisins.” Remember them? In a clever series of TV ads several years ago, the raisins danced in a chorus line, singing, “Heard It on the Grapevine.” In case you aren’t close enough to see it, this California Raisin is outfitted in a graduate’s cap and gown and here, written across the diploma it’s holding, are the words, “You really danced through it.”
“You really danced through it.” That seems to suggest grace and competence, skill even, qualities that you associate with dancing. It struck me as more than a little odd that somebody would associate me with dancing—that they could have viewed me as getting through those messy years—raising two young children, working part time, and attending graduate school—with anything like grace.
That same year, when I left my student pastor position, I received many notes and cards. Here’s one that I’ve kept. The picture is a row of young ballerinas, maybe five or six years old, dressed in pink leotards and tutus. Four of the young dancers stand in a formal pose at the barre, backs to the camera. Only one is turned toward the camera. She has a slightly surprised expression on her face, as if to say, “What am I doing here?” or, more likely, “Oh no! Out of step again!” I’ve kept that one and pull it out from time to time because it’s a better picture of what I feel like as a dancer.
Parish ministry, it turns out, is actually a lot like dancing. You go to seminary to learn some steps, maybe a fancy move or two, but you don’t know how it will actually work out until you meet your partners and start dancing together.
When I first met with the Session here, more than five years ago, I wasn’t sure I knew the steps I needed for ministry in a small town. Maybe you all didn’t know what steps would be required either. But we approached each other, you and I, and took our first tentative steps, and before long, we found we were dancing.
To be partners in a dance requires mutuality and trust. There needs to be a sense of balance and timing, of leading and following, of leaning out, off balance, and trusting that your partner will counter the motion with an off-balance motion of their own. During the past five years, some of us brushed up on footwork that had gotten rusty from lack of practice. Others of us have stood alongside another to learn a new movement from someone who already knew it well. There have been stumbles along the way, to be sure—some stepped-on toes, some crossed signals, a leap or two that fell flat, a dropped partner. But that’s because we were practicing new steps together. There have also been grace-filled moments when one of us attempted a leap and then there was the other, in place, to make the catch.
Have you noticed how smooth the dance has become? Gradually coming to trust each other, we found we were moving more freely because we were hearing and moving to the same music. Sometimes hand-in-hand, sometimes back-to-back, sometimes twirling in different directions, sometimes holding each other close, we discovered that we could even improvise new steps. And as we became more confident, we found that our practice time was rewarded as we realized that dancing together is actually fun!
But now it is time for us to change partners, even reluctantly. This dance we have shared, as joy-filled and invigorating as it has been, was not to last forever. Soon you will have another dancing partner, perhaps an interim pastor, and then settled pastor whom I pray will be a good partner for you for a long time to come. I am going to try out my steps—some that I knew from before and many that you have taught me—in a new community of faith. As I go, I will take treasured memories of this place and each one of you, and of the sometimes chaotic, mostly graceful, dance we have done together. It has been a privilege to share this dance.
* * * * *
In scripture, “dance” is used most frequently to contrast the state of mourning, just as “joy” is contrasted to “sorrow.” The well known verses in Ecclesiastes we heard earlier make this contrast:
For everything there is a season…
a time to weep and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn and a time to dance…
I know that today feels more like a weeping and mourning time than a laughing and dancing time, as we prepare to say goodbye to each other. But let me remind you of the promise of God to be with us through all our times, and especially in our times of grief. “You turn our tears to dancing; you turn our sorrow to joy,” we read in Psalm 30. Then there is this wonderful passage from the Old Testament book of Zephaniah:
Shout for joy, daughter of Zion; shout aloud!
Rejoice; exult with all your heart…you have nothing more to fear.
Yahweh, your God, is with you.
God will rejoice over you with happy song;
God will renew you with love.
God will dance with shouts of joy for you, as on a day of festival.
Not only is God with us and for us, God will bring us through the times of adversity and when a new day comes, God will join us in celebration, dancing in our midst. The God who brought the Hebrew people out of captivity is the same God who brings us through our trials. The God who collected the Israelites after the devastating time of exile by Babylon is the same God who picks up our broken pieces and puts us together again. The God of scripture is the same God who desires us to dance with freedom and with grace, because we were created to dance!
There is one more image relating God to the dance, but you won’t find it in your pew bibles. It comes from the Acts of John, an apocryphal book which was not included in the scripture collected to form what we know as the “New Testament.” In this short book is a hymn which the author records that Jesus taught his disciples on the evening of their last meal together. It’s keenly appropriate for us today as we recall that it is Jesus who calls the steps to the dance.
from The Apocryphal Acts of John
So Jesus told us to form a circle, holding one another’s hand. And he himself stood in the middle and said, “Answer ‘Amen!’ to me.”
So we began to sing the hymn, and to say, “Glory be to the Creator.” And we circled around him and answered, “Amen!”
And Jesus said, “Grace dances; I will pipe. Dance, all of you.” And we said, “Amen!”
And Jesus said, “I will mourn; lament all of you.” And we answered, “Amen!”
“The One sings praise with us,” he spoke, and we responded, “Amen!”
“To the Universe belongs the dance.” “Amen!”
“Whoever does not dance does not know what happens.” And we all said, “Amen!”
The hymn reminds us that our worship is also the music and dance of life, the song of the earth joining with the song of the Host of Heaven. By the very act of our gathering together each week, we position ourselves around the One who stands at the center of our lives, answering with all our hearts, “AMEN!”
Did you recognize the images in the hymn? Although this scripture didn’t make it into the “authorized version” of the bible, the hymn has survived two thousand years and has had a life of its own. In the Middle Ages it appeared as the carol, “Tomorrow will be my dancing day.” More recently, it has become familiar in Sydney Carter’s hymn, “Lord of the Dance.”
(Sing to them)
They whipped and they stripped, and they hung me high,
But I am the One who will never, never die,
And I’ll dance in you if you’ll dance in me,
For I am the Lord of the Dance, said he.
Dance, dance, whoever you may be.
I am the Lord of the Dance, said he.
And I’ll lead you all, wherever you may be,
And I’ll lead you all in the dance, said he.
The God who raised Jesus on the third day is the very same God who will take today’s sorrow and transform it to joy. It is the Resurrection God who dances on the grave of death, reminding us that there is more to life than what we can see. It is the Christ who embodies God’s continuous outpouring of love. It is the One who bids us to come and to sing and to dance with him in the dance of our lives.
Let us rejoice for the dance we have shared, and let us keep on dancing, with the One whose love and whose forgiveness and whose grace teach us the steps of the dance of life every day.
Thanks be to God!