Dancing in the Presence

 2 Samuel 6:1-5, 12b-19; Mark 6:14-29

Many of the preachers and scholars whose work I read or skimmed while reflecting on today’s story of David seemed eager to speculate about why we – ordinary American Sunday morning churchgoers – don’t dance ecstatically like David every time we get together in the presence of God.

This is not a thing I wonder very often myself. 

How about you?

But we could. We could wonder about what it would be like to be so full of joy in the presence of God that our bodies just move. That we find ourselves dancing in the aisles. Dancing in the streets.

And David’s story, today – as he goes dancing along the roads of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem, inviting the whole world to see and share his joy in the nearness of God, felt and seen in the ark of the covenant – David’s story could make us think more intentionally about what it is like for us to respond to the presence of God.

For some of us, it might be a sense of awe and wonder that makes our minds and bodies go still – or that sparks curiosity and energy to discover more. For others, the experience of God’s closeness, presence, and power finds expression in singing, or making music with our hands, our whole bodies. Some of us find that the nearness of God changes our behavior – that we just begin to treat others and ourselves with more compassion, or we begin to speak up where we used to be silent, be silent where we used to speak. Some of us experience the presence of God and begin to pray in new ways, or laugh, or cry for what seems like no reason at all.

Several of you have commented to me how much it helps you sense God’s presence to worship here, in this building, with others around you. Others have reported your surprise at discovering God’s active, full presence in some new way of praying in the last year or so – by phone, or online, or in private prayer. 

Others of you have talked to me about how experiencing the presence of God is often harder than it looks – not just when we want it and don’t feel it, but even more when we feel it, and respond, and things get… complicated.

Take David, for one example. His ecstatic dancing is a direct response to the powerful joy of being near God’s presence manifested in the ark of the covenant. And it gets him in trouble with his wife, who finds it disgraceful and inappropriate for him to be abandoning his royal dignity.
(Michal seems to have been upset about what David was – or wasn’t – wearing in the dance, but it’s also possible David’s dancing was so enthusiastically bad as to be embarrassing in and of itself. Their already troubled marriage basically ends that day.)

Or take Herod, for another example. Herod (the son of the Herod you know from the Christmas story), is drawn to John the Baptist, and the way John manifests the presence of God. Herod, Mark tells us, felt a sense of wonder and uncertainty as he listened to John – a sense of God’s presence and work which Herod liked, and sought out. But his treating the captive John like a personal prophet and teacher irritates his wife, who doesn’t like being called out as a danger to Herod’s righteousness (for a situation that wasn't entirely up to her in the first place). And then it gets him in trouble with himself.

You or I might also find that the power of the experience of God is…awkward. Challenging.

Maybe a family member suggests your singing is embarrassing, or your tears of joy or relief at God’s presence are weird.
Maybe a friend gets uncomfortable (or makes you uncomfortable) with your desire to pray more, your choice to be at church instead of brunch.
Maybe the compassion stirred in your heart - or the passion for justice or generosity or creativity that’s stirred in your soul - by a close encounter with the presence of God makes it difficult for you to find common ground with old friends.

It’s not at all unusual that people react to the power of God’s presence by wanting to shut it down, or look away. 

Because God’s presence – that sense of the nearness of eternity and unlimited power, right among us as an act of unbounded love, demands a lot of us.
To fully experience the nearness of God requires a vast openness of heart, being wide open and vulnerable to God’s love, increasing our compassion for and love of others.
The experience of God’s eternity in our ordinary world and lives changes us.
To embrace the sense of God’s awesome presence with us often demands costly sacrifices – of our pride, our belief that we can control our own destiny, our desire to manage our environment and our own lives, and sometimes of our reputation, self-image, or the success we desire.

For Herod to keep the sense of wonder and possibility in God’s presence that he got from listening to John would have required him to sacrifice his reputation, self-image, or some political power. To admit in the presence of his political allies and enemies he’d made a foolish promise. And to publicly declare that God’s values – and the protection of an innocent life – were more important than what people would think of him.

To stay in the presence and love of God, David will have to give up the desire to build a temple that would be a monument to David’s own success.

God’s presence is everywhere, all the time – we know that, we’ve been taught it. But we may only experience it sometimes because the fullness of God’s presence is a big demand on our hearts and lives.

And sin – manifesting as the human instinct for self-preservation, and the preservation of our self-image – gets in the way of our fully experiencing and responding to the presence of God.

It interrupts, or limits, or even prevents the ecstatic joy and compelling wonder that God wants us to have as God comes close to us.

Herod’s story is a tragic example of that, today. David’s story – in just the dancing bits we read today –  is an almost comic example of the same. And many of us here have felt some loss at what we sacrifice as we open ourselves to the presence of God, or felt the loss of that powerful presence when the pressures of self-preservation and self-image pull us away.

I’m convinced, though, that God keeps coming close to us, constantly, over and over, because God wants us to experience the compelling wonder, the ecstatic joy, the expansion of ourselves in the nearness of God, that Herod and David model, briefly, in these stories. 

That God wants us to choose, over and over, to immerse ourselves in joy, in raw and uninhibited delight in God’s power and love. That God wants us to enrich ourselves, always, with the sense of wonder and awe, the mystery and challenge of God’s work and will, that expand our senses and our hearts.

So, in honor of David, and those moments in his flawed and complicated human life where he was purely filled with the ecstasy of God’s presence, maybe sing like nobody is listening. Pray as if everything is possible. Dance, if you want to. Laugh and cry and love without restraint. Risk letting go of control.

In honor of Herod, who came close to redemption in spite of himself, and of John the Baptist who was the presence of God for him, believe in miracles, and expect the unexpected. Seek out people who bring you closer to God, who can help you be more like Jesus. And risk being that person for someone else.

Because I know God wants that wonder and growth and joy for you and me.

We may never dance in the aisles here in the middle of the Eucharist, but we can be that full of the presence of God. We can accept the courage that God demands of us and gives us, dance into God’s presence, and invite others to share the wondrous joy.

Faith We May Not Feel

 Mark 5:21-43

“If I just touch his clothes….” 

If I can just touch his clothes, I will be made well.

Are those words of hope, or of superstition? 

Is it firm confidence that drives this bleeding woman into the crowd to get a fistful of Jesus’ power? Or is it desperation? Everything else has failed, nothing works, so there is nothing to lose by trying something ridiculous. Might as well rub the rabbit’s foot or cross your fingers because there’s no actual cure.

The story offers us a possible answer: when her secret reach is revealed, Jesus tells her – and everyone listening – that “Your faith has made you well.” 

Which might sound as if she must have known this would work. 

As if she was confident all along that Jesus was the answer, the only answer she needed.

But I rather suspect that that’s not it. 

I suspect that Jesus might not be praising her confidence – the thing I want my faith to give me in a risky world – but rather revealing to her a faith she didn’t even know she had.

I wonder if this woman actually felt faithful, in that moment when she reached for a handful of Jesus’ clothes.

After all, the culture she lived in had been telling her she couldn’t be faithful for twelve long years.

I hope she didn’t have the experience of Job, where “friends” come along and tell her that the only possible reason she could be ill was because she was sinful, or did something wrong. 

But even with the most supportive friends around her, the ritual impurity caused by her continual bleeding would have kept her out of all religious ceremonies – of the household, of the Temple, of the nation. 

In symbol, if not in intent, her culture is telling her she can’t be faithful. Can’t be righteous, and right with God.

So I suspect she doesn’t actually feel all that faith-full when she tells herself: “I just have to touch him” and plunges into the crowd and stretches out her hand.

She might have felt more like I feel when I bring an umbrella to church because rain threatens a planned outdoor service. My one umbrella won’t change the weather, but it makes me feel like I’m trying, in the face of forces I can’t control.

(Though she’s probably a lot more desperate about it than I am.)

And, well. It works for her.

She feels the change in her body, the disappearance of this burden, the restoration of health.

Jesus feels it too. God feels it.

She might have been “faking it” – telling herself whatever she needed to hear to get through another day, telling herself what she needed to hear in order to take a risk, to act as if things could change when she had twelve long years of evidence that they wouldn’t.

But it works.

Her faith has made her well.

Even if she didn’t really feel faithful.

Even if she didn’t know it was faith.

And that gives me hope.

More even than knowing that Jesus can heal the unhealable.

Because there are a lot of times when my faith doesn’t feel up to the task at hand; to the healing I need, for myself or someone else, or the world.

Plenty of times when my faith doesn’t feel up to resolving a family dispute, or expecting the kingdom of God to come now. Or to explaining to some of my school friends that believing in God doesn’t make me dangerous to human rights.

Maybe you’ve also experienced times when you don’t know how to pray, or how to believe prayer makes a difference.

Or times when faith just feels far away from you, unreal in this complicated, concrete, daily world of tasks and moments and needs. 

So maybe you fake it.

Maybe you go to church when it doesn’t feel important, when you don’t know what you get from going.

Maybe you speak the words of prayer, silently or aloud, when your mind and heart aren’t convinced anyone is listening, or it will make any difference.

Maybe you offer to pray for someone in particular, even though you just don’t know how to do that.

Maybe you tell someone else a story about Jesus you want to believe, but still seems unreal.

And something changes.

The rote words of prayer start to sound real, true, powerful. For a moment, or forever.

Your friend tells you they could feel your prayer surrounding them, strengthening them – that prayer you didn’t know how to pray, but wished you could.

The fantastic story you tell to a child kindles hope in your own heart, and you start to feel a storm being calmed in your own soul, or a dead relationship being renewed and reborn.

It doesn’t always happen the way we expect or want – we often don’t get the rush of physical healing, or snatch life out of death, when we pray. 

And when loss comes anyway, it doesn’t mean we did faith wrong. 

But what this story does tell us, I believe, is that we can actually grow our own faith, make it powerful, so powerful that God feels it – simply by acting on our desire for faith, our need for faith.

Faith isn’t made, or measured, by what we feel, or what we believe we believe.

Faith is made, and grown, and powerful, by what we do when we’re not sure we believe.

When we reach for that robe, put ourselves into places where only faith can work.

I find that so hopeful. So essential.

Because mostly when I really need faith – when I really need to be able to trust that God can heal, transform, renew, give life – is when it is hardest to feel it.

When someone I love dearly has a painful, lingering illness and there is nothing I can do to make it better.

When the overwhelming weight of the world insists we’re never going to get justice, or unity, or peace, or safety.

When the next step in my journey involves trusting someone else – a pilot or a doctor or a guide or a stranger – for something I really need and cannot do for myself. 

I wonder if that’s what Jairus felt, as his daughter lay dying.

When he – a man who could usually get what he wanted, a man respected by the community – could do nothing. 

Was he confident when he begged Jesus, “if you’ll just lay your hands on her….”? Or was he desperate? Nothing he can do, nothing anyone can do. May as well grasp at straws, knock wood, call the miracle man.

 

Death was obviously going to win. Had already won by the time Jairus brought Jesus home.

How hard must it have been, then, to feel like life could return? How hard it must have been to feel faithful, hopeful, trusting when Jesus says “Do not be afraid, only believe.”

And yet, Jairus and his wife allow Jesus to interrupt the funeral rites, watch their neighbors laugh, and bring him to their daughter.

Who lives.

Because they acted as if their faith were real, whether they felt it or not.

It’s not just in times of crisis that it can be hard to feel our faith. For many of us, it can be difficult to feel a deep, guiding connection to the presence and power of God in those times when we are coasting along: when plans are working, when it feels easy to manage the needs and comforts of daily life.

In those times, particularly, the surrender and self-sacrifice that Christian faith requires of us – placing of God’s will ahead of our own, longing to give our whole selves to God and others – those kinds of faith can be hard to feel in the ordinary days.

All we’ve got, on those days, is the acting-as-if, the practice of behaving like our trust in God, our commitment to Christ, is more important than anything else.

Kneeling to confess sins we don’t quite feel are ours, and putting sincerity into the words. 

Saying thanks to God over a meal we chose and prepared and worked for ourselves, and listening to the truth that all we have comes from God.

Taking a small risk in conversation, or in action, because Jesus told us to love our enemies, to give all that we have, to refuse fear and choose belief.

And it works.

We act as if, and feel a power not our own stirring in our hearts, bodies, souls.

The faith we may not feel is still felt by God. Still works to release God’s healing, God’s forgiveness, God’s power, God’s presence into the world.

So how can we not act on it?

What Spirit?

 Mark 3:20-35

He’s out of his mind.

Beside himself.

He’s dangerous.

He’s wicked.

In any case, he’s trouble.

That’s what they are saying about Jesus, today.  The people who should be closest to Jesus – his family of origin, other religious leaders. They’re saying he’s crazy, not safe.

And to some extent, they are quite right.

It’s true that Jesus is trouble. He’s very disruptive.

You and I might not think that preaching the presence of God and forgiveness of sins, or healing the sick is “making trouble.” At least, not until someone does it in a way we aren’t used to, or weren’t expecting.

We would probably be skeptical of someone without a medical or psychological degree seeking out folks with psychotic illnesses, seizures, and degenerative diseases and declaring them cured.

We’d be disturbed by someone who announces that the way we’ve worshipped God, and the rules and rituals we’ve followed all our lives are unnecessary, or even separate us from God.  Heck, we’ve been wrestling with a version of that “unnecessary” rituals question since last March, and it has definitely been uncomfortable!

We get uncomfortable, troubled, when someone changes the rules of righteousness and success and being good people on us. “The tax collectors and prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God before you” sounded to a lot of good, religious, normal people of Jesus’ day like “the lobbyists and the drug-dealers (corporate and street-corner alike) are more holy than you” would sound to us today. As if everything we thought was wrong with society is actually…right with God? That can’t be, can it?

Oh, Jesus is trouble, all right.

Then and now, Jesus stirs up what is stable, pushes our boundaries of safety and comfort, and actively, intentionally messes with us and with the world.

You and I have the advantage of twenty centuries of tradition to help us clearly identify Jesus’ rule-breaking, norm-challenging, radical healing, and novel preaching in the gospel stories as “good trouble.”

It’s harder to do that with what changes and challenges us now.

And so Jesus is talking to us today, not just to the scribes of old, about how we face changes that disrupt what we count on and challenge our comfort and our convictions.

There’s a gift or skill or spiritual practice called “the discernment of spirits” that’s been important to people of faith since before Jesus. It’s how we answer the question of how we know if a certain prophet actually speaks God’s word. Whether a desire we experience, or an idea you have, comes from God or from the devil or from selfish human impulse. Whether the actions and teachings of a certain leader are salvation or damnation.

Jesus is calling that gift and practice of discernment into focus today, because the religious establishment of his time are trying to judge the chaos Jesus is causing by arguing in the synagogue, inviting sinners to holy meals, stirring up crowds that follow him around and have no respect for order or meal times. They see his deeds of power and hear his declarations of God’s will that are opposite to what God’s people have relied on for generations – and that call into question so much of what the scribes themselves believe and teach. 

So they say what’s obvious to them. It must be a spiritual enemy to cause all this disruption.

He’s “casting out demons” using the spirit of demons. This man has the power of evil.

They’re wrong, of course.

You know that. I know that.

But they didn’t know.

Any time our reliable assumptions are called into question, when things that have guided us to good in the past are challenged, it’s quite often hard to tell the good change from the bad. To know whether a new teaching – about sin and forgiveness, about marriage or human sexuality, about slavery or segregation or reparations, about demons or mental illness, about the validity of worship over the internet, about whatever will come next – is of God, and will bring us closer to God, or of evil and will separate us from God.

And the stakes are high.

Any sin can be forgiven – will be forgiven – Jesus says. Except for blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.
The only unforgivable thing is to call an action of God evil. Call the Spirit of God demonic.

This is the one thing we can’t afford to get wrong.

And it’s so easy to get it wrong. So difficult, sometimes, to get it right.

We aren’t on our own in this task, though.

Jesus and the church give us tools for this.

Jesus reminds us to focus on the commandments: Love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind, with all of yourself; Love your neighbor as yourself. 

Those “great commandments” guide us in figuring out the will of God, or what actions and desires are of God, when we’re navigating new territory, or wondering about our old habits and assumptions.

The church reminds us to listen to the voice of tradition, to read and read and re-read scripture, to immerse ourselves in the prayers of the church, so that those time-tested voices seep into our hearts and point the way.  And to listen in community, not alone: to ask others to pray with you and actively listen for the will of God together. Seek community to help us resist evil and choose God in our daily choices and momentous decisions.

We can look for healing – for lasting reconciliation, renewed strength, whole hearts – as indicators that something changing around us is of God.

Most of all, we can ask of absolutely everything “What if this is of God?”

What if this delay in pursuing my dream is actually a gift of God?

What if this interruption of my day is God at work?

What if that reversal of the church’s traditions is a way that God is healing an old and lasting hurt?

What if those people I don’t like are actually…right about something? Actually guided by God?

The answer won’t always be yes.
Some things really aren’t of God.

Many things are. But some things actually are evil, or simple selfishness, greed, and human error. Some things are just… accident.

But if we ask every new thing and every old familiar habit if this is of God; if we explore the changes that challenge us to discover what good might come of them, what forgiveness, healing, growth, love may emerge; if we look for what God might want us to learn, and see, and do, then we will find out what the Spirit of God is up to, even if it’s not what we thought we were looking at when we began. 

If we give every disruption or discomfort or surprise the chance to show us what God might be healing, who God might be loving, where God might be leading, we’ll never make the one unfixable mistake of calling God’s work evil and thus cutting ourselves off from God’s love and healing.

If we are looking for God, expecting God, we cannot lose, even if what’s in front of us is actual evil.

Right in this story, Jesus assures us that evil can’t actually win.

A house divided against itself can’t stand, after all. For evil to do good in order to trick us, evil divides itself, opposes itself, and loses its strength. 

And Jesus reminds us that he is the strong one John the Baptist predicted. The one who comes into the world to tie up the strength of evil and take its power away.

So whether it is evil in front of us, or good, if we ask every challenge and change in our lives to lead us to God, we will find God. We will be the family of Jesus, the chosen siblings of Christ, unbreakably connected to God’s own self in the world and in eternity.

It may be a lot of trouble.

Jesus usually is a lot of trouble.

But it’s good trouble.

The stirring of the world to reveal the presence and glory and forgiveness and unending love of God.

And I wouldn’t want to miss that.
Would you?