Proper 10 B + Dance + 7.14.24

 

Melissa Campbell-Langdell

All Saints, Oxnard

(2 Samuel 6:1–5, 12b–19; Ps. 24; Ephesians 1:3–14; Mark 6:14–29)

As many of you know I was at Camp Stevens this week along with 80 campers and at least 40 staff, including 7 wonderful youth and kids from All Saints, Oxnard who were campers and counselors. At camp one of the things we love to do is to gather almost every evening to sing. We call it community gathering, and we meet in an amphitheater with little lights strung up and we sing together and a chaplain will usually do a chat. Afterwards, we walk under the stars toward our cabins. We have a songbook that we use for our music which has a mix of religious, 60s protest and more recent popular music songs. One of the team leads this week loves to dance and picked “The Lord of the Dance” as one of our songs one night, not quite realizing that it covers such weighty matters as the Devil and Good Friday. He encouraged us to all get up and dance like crazy during the refrain. Little Abigail Lin-Perez was killing it! I was swaying, you all know how I dance, which is goofy.

And then we got to the hard parts, and it felt strange, getting up and dancing while then singing about Jesus’ death and suffering. Which, as I was reflecting back on the experience, got me thinking about this week’s gospel. The beginning mentions John the Baptist’s death. But then Mark backs up, as if he realizes he hasn’t told us the whole story, and tells us how the daughter of Herodias danced so well that Herod wished to offer her anything.
I like the depiction of this in the recent series “The Chosen.” I have often thought of this as a seductive dance, which felt weird as Herod was her father. But in “The Chosen” they have decided to make it a gymnastic-style dance of whirling and amazing feats of leaping and jumping. And in the show, you see Herodias, king Herod’s daughter, also known as Salome, practice and practice, and then her mother (Queen Herodias) has her practice again. If it were just for the joy of it, it would be glorious, but it is sinister because Queen Herodias is using her daughter’s gift to manipulate Herod. He is probably expecting Salome to ask for baubles or a chariot, but she asks for something much darker. John the Baptist has badmouthed her mother, and as a queen in an unstable political position, she won’t stand for it. He must be silenced. For Queen Herodias, it is all about imposing her will on others. But here we also have the dancing and death, hand in hand. John dies and it is tragic, but here the dancing is tainted by the use of it. It isn’t just joy made into movement, but it is a tool for the obliteration of another life.

By contrast, David’s dance in front of the ark is definitely joyous in the reading from 2^nd Samuel today. He has learned the hard way in the scripture before and between this passage that one cannot rush this process or in any way mis-use the holy ark of God, and so he slows it down and dances. Michal cannot see his joy as good, because most likely to her it looks a little undignified for a king, especially because he is not fully dressed. But I love this part because we see the true joy that David has in serving God. Reading this, we are invited into a dance with our God also.

But it’s hard to dance with the devil at your back. As we dance into this thing called a faith journey, we must remember that, as it says in the funeral liturgy of the Book of Common Prayer, “In the midst of life we are in death (492).” The followers of John grieved his passing and suffered, even as Salome had just been dancing. Even David’s more joyous dancing in front of the ark is tainted by what is left out of this passage, because a person stumbles and dies, touching the ark. In life, we will have loss, like the sadness of losing Michael Hill last week from the English service and Miguel Jacobo from the Spanish service. Others have also lost relatives and friends recently.

And we will also always have scoffers. Those who are cynical like Queen Herodias who try to even manipulate that which brings joy to bring them political power. But also those who put too much stake in propriety like Michal who think there is only one right way to be.

But don’t let those scoffers get you down. Dance anyway! Because, just like we danced with fervor at camp, and just like David danced with all his might, we must dance too. We must find joy. Because it is there, in our faith, and in our relationship with God, if we seek it. And it is found especially on days like today, when we experience the joy of baptisms. In Baptism, we honor the death and the resurrection of Jesus and we are welcomed into his life through a symbolic death to the life of sin. These rituals help us be connected to God and one another. But sometimes we have to get out of our own way first. If we put our will in front of a sense of God’s guidance, we will step out of line. Sometimes, we will experience grief. So give yourself time to grieve as you need to. It’s okay to slow the verse down. And then, when you are ready, try to abandon yourself to the dance and seek the Spirit’s wisdom. In doing so, you may not only find joy, but you may also find your purpose and a way to move forward in this dance called life. Amen.