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.
And this old allegiance caused her to feel hatred in the midst of what God was doing in the lives of so many.
What old allegiances, what baggage do we hold onto?
What things cause us to feel hatred when we could be dancing?
And by the way, we all know that hatred is not pleasant.
It eats away at us. It kills our joy. It flings us into utter darkness!
For some folks feelings of hatred are brought about by the “sting” of the Truth.
That appears to be what happened in our Gospel Lesson that Sherry read for us earlier.
John the Baptist…that great prophet of God is beheaded!
And the reason?
Because John spoke the Truth and it brought out the worst in those who would rather live in the darkness than the light.
And that’s the same way it is with Christ is it not?
Jesus is the One Who comes telling the Truth, but He is hated and murdered because the Truth that He speaks is so real.
When we are confronted by Christ in our lives there is no doubt that we will sometimes hear things that we don’t necessarily want to hear.
We will hear things that will convict us.
We will hear things from Christ about the way we are living or the way we are not loving that will cause us to either repent and reach for Christ’s Redemption…
…allowing Christ to change us…
…allowing that metamorphosis to begin…
….allowing ourselves to begin the dance of the Christian…
…or we will turn away…
…angry and mad.
What old allegiances keep you from hearing Christ in your life?
Christ is knocking on the door of all of our hearts.
Is there anything…is there any old baggage, any prejudice, any addiction…anything at all that is keeping us from opening the door and allowing Him to come in and re-arrange the furniture…
…maybe throw some things out?…
…Do a little or major bit of cleaning house…
…making some room in our lives for a dance floor?
So David was dancing before the Lord with all his might and Mee-Cal looked at him and hated him for it!
Was Mee-Cal’s hatred for David going to ruin and stop David’s dance?
It could have, you know?
We often let the opinions of others and the trends of this world stop us from dancing.
A colleague of mine recently told me that there are several families in his church who don’t like him for whatever reason.
But is that going to stop him from doing ministry?
“No way!” he told me.
If we were to let the opinions of others dictate whether or not we are going to live into our calling as Christians…none of us would be dancing!!!
Another minister friend of mine told me that if he’d ever listened to his family he never would have gone into the ministry.
They didn’t want him to go into the ministry because they wanted him to make money instead.
What’s holding you back?
What’s holding me back?
If we read a little farther in 2 Samuel chapter 6 we find that after everyone has gone home Mee-Cal confronts David and tells him that his dancing is reprehensible and “vulgar.”
And David’s answer: “I will celebrate before the Lord. I will become even more undignified than this…”
Let’s not let anyone or anything stop us from dancing!!!
Life is too short and the Lord is too good!
There are so many things we can get caught up in.
There are so many things that we can allow to cause us to lose our joy.
Life is hard.
But God’s grace is sufficient for us to embrace that peace which transcends all understanding and that joy that doesn’t make any sense which only comes from a personal relationship with Jesus Christ our Lord!!!
I was having a filling repaired a few days ago when my dentist made the statement: “When I get to heaven, the question I’m going to have for God is why He put nerve endings in teeth!”
All I was thinking while he was saying this and drilling was…
… “Good point, but thank God that He did provide us with some amazing pain killers!”
We can choose to look at this life anyway we want.
We can choose to join the dance or we can choose to hold onto our old allegiances and our old baggage and watch from the sidelines…despising those who are doing the dancing…
…not understanding what in the world there is to dance about.
Most scholars would agree that it is most likely that Psalm 24 is what the folks were singing as they danced before the ark of the Lord.
It goes: “The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it; for he founded it upon the seas and established it upon the waters.
Who may ascend the hill of the Lord?
Who may stand in his holy place?
The answer?
“He who has clean hands and a pure heart…”
That is none of us, my friends…
…until, until we repent and allow Jesus to forgive us through His mercy and His abounding grace!!!
Only through Christ’s grace are we enabled to dance!
Only through God’s grace are we given the roadmap to God’s Holy Place.
Only through God’s grace are we so thankful to the God Who loves us so much that we can indeed dance!
Do we want that grace?
Do we want that “vindication from God” our Savior?
Look at David.
He had been an anonymous nobody.
His only prospect in life had been watching the sheep out in Jesse’s field.
But because of God’s grace he was given a great and victorious life!
Psalm 24 ends with:
“Lift up your heads, O you gates; lift them up, you ancient doors, that the King of glory may come in.
Who is he, this King of glory?
The Lord Almighty—he is the King of glory.”
My friends I hope you dance.
