"It's Time To Dance"

2 Samuel 6:1-5, 12b-19

Mark 6:14-29

“It’s Time to Dance!”

By Ken Sauer,

Parkview United Methodist Church,

Newport News, VA

www.parkview-umc.org

A friend of mine told me that he was recently talking to a group of Christians when he suddenly blurted out: “Isn’t your life a dance before the Lord?”

He says that the folks in the room just looked at him like they didn’t know what he was talking about.

Now mind you that these were Christian folks…

…but they still couldn’t (at least at that moment) relate to what my friend was feeling.

Why is this?

Has life taken the dance away from them?

Have they allowed the pressures of this life…

…the worries of this life…

…the stressors of this life to steal their dance before the Lord…

…to kill their joy…

…their “life to the full” as Jesus has promised all of us?

And what about you and me?

Has life taken the dance away from us?

Did we start dancing before God a few years ago or many years ago…

…but somewhere along the line trip up our feet and give up the dance?

In our Old Testament Lesson for this morning we find David dancing “before the Lord with all his might.”

And his dancing is contagious as the “entire house of Israel” joined him “with shouts and the sound of trumpets.”

And I think that when we allow our lives to be a dance before the Lord…

…when we really live into our calling as Christians…

…that is our calling to be followers of Christ…

…our lives are contagious.

Others see something in our lives that they would like for themselves.

Isn’t that what happened to you somewhere down the line?

Didn’t you meet someone who was so filled with the joy of the Lord…the dance of the Christian…that you wanted to join in the dancing?

That’s usually how the Gospel is spread.

We are witnessed to by another person who is dancing before God and we become curious as to what they have that we don’t.

That’s what happened to me when I was just 18 years old.

I met a young man who was about my age who was filled with the joy of the Lord and he was dancing because of that joy!…metaphorically of course.

He didn’t have to say anything to me.

We became friends and all I knew was that he was a Christian.

He had really, truly and fully committed his life to the Lord.

And I had never really met anyone in my age group who had done that…who was living the dance.

He wasn’t perfect nor was he holier than thou…he was just a person who had been radically changed by a commitment and personal relationship with Christ.

And that is a lot like the way David is in our Old Testament Lesson.

In David we see a man who has been metamorphosed by his relationship with God!

Remember back in 1 Samuel chapter 16 when Samuel is summoned by the Lord to go to the house of Jesse in Bethlehem in search of the next King of Israel?

Well he goes and Jesse brings out his seven oldest sons for Samuel to inspect.

And none of them are the one that the Lord has chosen.

So Samuel asks Jesse, “Are these all the sons you have?”

And Jesse’s reply?

“There is still the youngest, but he is tending the sheep.”

Well, that’s David.

Although in that passage David’s name is never even used.

He is just referred to as “the youngest” of Jesse’s sons…just a mere shepherd boy.

David was nameless when Samuel called him forward, but look how he metamorphosed!!!

He becomes this King who dances in his linen ephod before the ark of the Lord!!!

And this is what the Christian life is meant to do to a person.

Following Christ is meant to bring us from anonymity…like David…into full bloom!!!

Has this happened for you?

Or are you somehow preventing God from working in your life?

Are there, maybe, some old allegiances that are holding you back?

Is there something of this world that is keeping you from dancing before God with all your might?

I said that David’s dancing was contagious, but not for everyone…

…not everyone was dancing that day that the ark of God was brought to the City of David.

We read that Mee-cal the “daughter of Saul” and David’s wife was watching David dance from a window.

“And when she saw King David leaping and dancing before the Lord, she despised him in her heart.”

Now Mee-Cal, of course, hated David’s dancing because David had supplanted her father, Saul, as King.

That is the old allegiance that Mee-cal allowed to prevent God from working in her life.