The scriptures: announced, accepted, actioned

Deuteronomy 4.1-2, 6-9 Observe these laws and customs that you may have life

James 1.17-27 Accept and submit to the word

Mark 7.1-8, 14-15, 21-23 You put aside the commandment of God, to cling to human traditions

 

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Running through our three readings this morning a clear theme, that of considering the word of God in the scriptures, and how believers are to relate to that word.

 

They’re hard hitting readings that invite some probing questions.

 

Do the scriptures so capture our minds, bodies and spirits that we seek ‘to read, mark, learn and inwardly digest them’?

 

Are they, as Psalm 119 says, ‘a lantern unto my feet : and a light unto my paths’ (Psalm 119.105)?

 

Can we say of scripture, ‘O how sweet are thy words unto my throat : yea, sweeter than honey unto my mouth’ (Psalm 119.104): in other words, is reading scripture a source of delight, wonder and sweetness to you?

 

Do we, as the letter of James commends, place ourselves under the word of God and not seek to impose our own wills upon it?

 

It even leads us to consider what, if anything, can we dispense of; when are we abandoning the commandment of God and holding to human tradition.

 

We ask all these questions with the conviction that Holy Scriptures are the ‘lively oracles of God’ are they’re referred to in the Coronation Service.

 

The Bible is not one inspired book among many or simply a guidebook of a moral or ethical way to live.

 

To call a book, or collection of books, Holy Scripture, as we do the Bible, is to say something profound about it: it is the conviction, and assertion, that the text conveys more than simply what is written.

 

It’s to say that - in the case of Holy Scripture – the texts bear the intentions, teaching and commandments of God: it is a revelation of the will and purpose of God.

 

This is what Moses is doing in our first reading: revealing the commandments of God.

 

The teaching he gives is something complete in itself, hence why the people are commanded not to add to it or subtract from it.

 

And the commandments in the scriptures are to be transmitted through the generations: ‘make them known to your children and your children’s children’ (Deuteronomy 4.9): they’re worth passing on.

 

The task of the Church’s proclamation through her preachers, her teachers, through parents, grandparents, through all of us, is to enable that word to reverberate through the generations.

 

So, the word is announced: announced to us a gift from God, that is in turn to be announced to the community of faith and to the world.

 

That’s why scripture is the heart of the first part of the Eucharist: it is announced.

 

So too it is accepted and received.

 

The letter of James tells us, ‘…rid yourself of all sordidness and rank growth of wickedness and welcome with meekness the implanted word that has the power to save your souls’ (James 1.21)

 

There’s a quite a bit to unpack!

 

The preliminary to welcoming the implanted word is to rid ourselves of sordidness and rampant wickedness. To be able to welcome God’s word we place ourselves under its authority.

 

Again, the Eucharist mirrors this by calling us to confess our sins so that we can be both reconciled to the Lord and to one another, but also so that we don’t impose upon scripture our own projections, but we wait - like Samuel and St Peter, in the words of a gospel acclamation - whispering, ‘Speak, Lord, your servant is listening, you have the words of eternal life’

 

It is in that spiritual state that we come to accept and receive the word before us.

 

Welcome with meekness the implanted word. I guess many of us don’t like the word ‘meekness’, it sounds a bit pathetic, simpering, weak.

 

It is, though, the posture of humility, in which we use our two ears in proportion to our one mouth: the word is to be heard above the clamour of personal priorities and whims.

 

Meekness is the spiritual posture of the Blessed Virgin Mary, receptive and willing, that says, ‘I am the handmaid [the servant] of the Lord; let it be unto me according to thy word’ (Luke 1.39)

 

And this word has ‘the power to save your souls’.

 

There’s the crux of it.

Fidelity to the scriptures has the power to save your eternal identity before God, to restore you, to heal you, to open you up to the ways of heaven now and in the life of the world to come.

 

Wow. Wow. Wow.

 

So, we have the word of God announced; the word of God accepted.

 

But let’s just catch our breath.

 

The word of God refers to texts on the written page and also to the Word (capital ‘w’) of God, Jesus Christ: indeed, one bears witness to the other.

 

Jesus Christ, who is soaked in scripture, is the fulfilment of it.

 

Our fidelity first is to the person of Christ. As he himself says:

 

You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life. (John 5:39–40).

 

One of the great problems of contemporary Christianity, perhaps the biggest challenge for the Church, is that so many people don’t actually read their Bibles: ‘is this not the reason why you are wrong,’ Jesus says to the Sadducees elsewhere, ‘because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God?’ (Mark 12.24)

 

Let’s get back to our Bibles!

 

So, the movement in our readings today is that the scriptures are announced and accepted; and they are also actioned.

 

The spirit of the scriptures is put into action when we seek to orientate our lives to God and remain faithful to Christ; when our hearts are moved and cleansed from all defilement, and are presented as a holy and living sacrifice to God.

 

The gospel reading reminds us that we can do all sorts of external actions to give the impression that we are following the commandments of God, we can even honour Christ with what we say, but our hearts can remain far away.

 

Left to our own devices we slip readily into evil intentions, ‘abandoning the commandment of God and holding to human tradition’ (Mark 7.8)

 

When scripture is actioned then we see the fruits true religion, as James puts it, ‘pure and undefiled before God, the Father’ which he describes as ‘care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world’. (James 1.27)

 

That’s why we need to interpret the world - culture and society - through the eyes of scripture and not interpret scripture through the eyes of the world.

 

So we have the word of God, announced, accepted and actioned.

 

Announced by God through revelation and inspired authors.

 

Accepted by believers as the lively oracles of God.

 

Actioned by those who seek to serve the will of the living Word of God, Jesus Christ.

 

There’s the commission for the new week, to pick up your Bible and be soaked in the living word of God and invite the Holy Spirit to lead you to the ways of Jesus Christ, the Word… made flesh.

To whom can we go?

Joshua 24.1-2a, 14-18 We will serve the Lord, for he is our God

Ephesians 6.10-20 Put on the whole armour of God

John 6.56-69 Who shall we go to? You are the Holy One of God

 

 

Simon Peter answered Jesus, ‘Lord, to whom can we go?’ (John 6.68)

 

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The last verses of this morning’s Gospel reading are poignant, and stinging:

 

When many of his disciples heard it, they said, ‘This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?’ But Jesus, being aware that his disciples were complaining about it, said to them, ‘Does this offend you? (John 6.60,61)

 

There are echoes here of the people of Israel in the Exodus from Egypt, murmuring and complaining to and about Moses, declaring that they preferred their life in captivity as slaves to the new freedom that God has delivered them into.

 

Despite God overcoming the Egyptians; despite being led by a pillar of cloud by day and pillar of fire by night; despite being led through the parted waters of the Red Sea to deliver them; despite God feeding them with manna from heaven, the daily bread they were given by the Lord who provides: still the Israelites grumbled.

 

Our first reading alluded to the fact that the Israelites had wandered away from the Lord their God. (Joshua 24.14-18)

 

You’ll recall that the Israelites constructed a golden calf, an idol of their own making, that was to be their object of worship, even as Moses was receiving the commandments from God on Mount Sinai.

 

‘Is that what you want?’ asks Joshua, ‘choose this day whom you will serve…as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD’. (Joshua 24.15)

 

There’s the crucial question, ‘is that what you want?’

 

Jesus knew that among his disciples - that wider band of those who have been following him - there were some who just did not believe:

 

Because of this many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him. So Jesus asked the twelve, ‘Do you also wish to go away?’ (John 6.66,67)

 

What does your heart say when Jesus asks, ‘Do you wish to go away?’

We are invited to respond to the same question, albeit for our times.

 

Peter says, on behalf of the Twelve, ‘Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.’ (John 6.68,69)

 

With Peter, believers see the vacuousness of any way, other than that of Jesus Christ.

 

Other ways, and their ideas - the so-called Zeitgeist - can seem very seductive: ‘influencers’, the powers that be, the rich and famous all are captivated by the ideas of the moment.

 

Is that what you want?

 

Passing idols, ideologies, fantasies, fears and fads: all can distract us from the living God.

 

The Christian life is not just about rejecting things - though it certainly includes that - it is about embracing Christ, about desiring to know Christ: as St Paul puts it, ‘that I may know Christ and the power of his resurrection…’ (Philippians 3.10).

 

Echoing confession of faith at Caesarea Philippi, ‘You are the Christ, the Son of the living God’ (Matthew 16.16) Peter says:

 

there’s nowhere else to go. But more than that, you, Jesus, have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.

 

This is the culmination of the teaching of John 6, that Jesus is the Bread of Life on whom we feed, and that this is so much more than just something we think, but something we embrace and receive through Christ’s presence in what we see as bread and wine, and what he teaches becomes his body and blood.

 

Peter’s declaration moves us from seeing belief simply as a mental act, to belief and faith as a whole-body experience.

 

The move of the eighteenth century was to say ‘I think, therefore I am’, in other words my mind is me.

 

If that is what moves us, then we too will reject Jesus’ teaching in John 6.

 

If Christ moves us, then we will know that we can feed on Christ; we can imbibe Christ; we come to know him at a cellular level.

 

We are not disembodied brains - thinking machines - after all, we love, we desire, we express ourselves in song, movement and gesture: there is so much more of us to feed!

 

Only to be fed with ideas and thoughts will not ultimately feed us. We will continue, as John 6 is telling us, to be hungry unless we feed on Christ.

 

And we need to keep on being fed, otherwise we fall away and find other ‘food’ that cannot satisfy but that can lead us away from the living God: that is why we receive the sacrament week by week, if not day by day.

 

John 6 invites us to encounter and know Christ on a level much deeper than our intellect, thoughts or even feelings, but to know him in such a way that knowledge is hardly the right word, rather it is a becoming knowledge, knowing by becoming as he is.

 

So Christ says:

 

Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me. (John 6.56,57)

 

We abide in Christ and he abides in us when we eat his flesh and drink his blood.

 

This is a becoming, a mystical and contemplative way of knowing, so that our lives are shaped by the love, the truth, the hope, the life of God.

 

St Paul puts it like this in his letter to the Galatians,

 

It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God. (Galatians 2.20)

 

Today our journey through the sixth chapter of St John’s Gospel ends, but do return to it as you grow in knowledge and love of Jesus Christ, the Bread of Life, who invites us to become as he is, that we may come ‘to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that [we] may be filled with all the fullness of God’ (Ephesians 3.19)

 

Christ the feeder and the food

Proverbs 9.1-6 Wisdom builds her house and invites us all to eat her bread there.

Ephesians 5.15-20 Be filled not with wine, but with the Spirit

John 6.51-58 My flesh is real food and my blood is real drink

 

 

 

‘Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them’. (John 6.56)

 

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A powerful medieval image for the Eucharist was known as the ‘pelican in her piety’.

 

It’s is the image of the mother pelican pecking her own breast, piercing it to feed her chicks with her blood.

 

Sadly, this is not actually something pelicans do – although there is an interesting reason why the misapprehension came about, that need not detain us now - but the image speaks of both the call to self-sacrifice by the Christian and of the self-offering of the Son of God realised in the Holy Eucharist.

 

We are to feed others, after the example of Christ, who feeds us with his own lifeblood.

 

That moves us to the sixth chapter of St John’s Gospel, which we have been exploring over the last few weeks.

 

It is a chapter of the Gospel that hinges on Christ feeding his people.

 

It begins with the Multiplication of the Loaves and Fishes as Christ feeds those who are becoming physically hungry; it continues, and goes deeper, with his teaching about the way in which he is not simply the feeder, but he is the food.

 

That’s what the pelican in her piety image points us to: feeder and food.

 

That Christ is both priest and victim, feeder and food, is a key to understanding John 6 and his teaching on The Bread of Life.

 

As priest he offers the sacrifice; as victim he is the sacrifice.

 

The sacrificial nature of the Eucharist is really important in sounding its depths.

 

The crowds ask, ‘How can this man give us his flesh to eat?’

 

Christ is the atoning sacrifice, as the First Letter of John tells us, he is the ‘propitiation for our sins’ (1 John 2.2; 4.10).

 

Only the One who is both fully human and fully divine can effect this.

 

Christ offers himself, sacrificially, for our sins, and for the sins of the world.

 

In Jewish sacrificial ritual, the lamb is the primary sacrificial creature; now Christ becomes ‘the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world’ (John 1.26).

 

It is as priest and victim, food and feeder that he can give us his flesh to eat.

 

But the crowd is not with him on this; and it is a hard saying for us today too.

 

What the crowd is really saying is that they want to understand the Bread of Life on their own terms, not on his.

 

As we reach adulthood we assume that the best way to handle ourselves in the world is on our own terms: let it be done to me according to my word, my preferences, my desires.

 

I am an island and dependent on no one.

 

From Adam and Eve onwards, this has been the conceit of humanity.

 

It’s there in childhood of course; we want to assert ourselves as toddlers, but in infancy we have a glimpse of utter dependence through how we take on food: it is the act of being fed, by self-giving, if not life draining, feeding.  

 

The mother feeds her child through her lifeblood in the womb and through the milk of her breasts: this is not simply the provision of food, as if from a food outlet; this is the deepest nurturing, self-giving human love we can experience.

 

The suckling child simply receives.

 

As adults the idea of someone feeding us is really difficult.

 

That’s for people we’d rather not think about most of the time: children, those with severe disability or the very aged.

 

These last few days I have come to appreciate the beauty and power of literally feeding someone.

 

Alice, my wife, broke both her wrists last Wednesday.

 

She physically cannot feed herself, and so I am doing it for her: it’s an insight into the marriage vow, ‘for better, for worse… in sickness and in health!’

 

What both Alice and I have reflected on is that to feed and receive without a sense of autonomy or independence is something we lose as adults, yet it is a Eucharistic posture.

 

In other words, in the Eucharist we have to set aside our sense of autonomy, that I am an island, and come to realise our dependence, first on Christ, and then our inter-dependence upon one another in the Body of Christ.

 

It is beautiful to feed; it is much harder to be fed.

 

But this is the way of wisdom in our first reading and the example of Christian living in our second reading.

 

Rather than begrudge how God nourishes us and feeds us or resent our dependence on him, the spiritually mature are joyful and have gratitude in their hearts.

 

So, in terms of being fed by Jesus Christ, the Bread of Life, we are not at a fast food outlet, satisfying and indulging our tastes and preferences.

 

We come, not as autonomous units, but brothers and sisters in Christ to be fed.

 

In this feeding we learn our dependence on the source of our life; Christ himself.

 

We glimpse this in the image and icon of the mother nursing her child; in the husband feeding his wife who cannot feed herself; in the priest, and those assisting, administering God’s holy gifts to God’s holy people.

 

In all this feeding and being fed, the food on which we feast is Christ himself: priest and victim, feeder and food.

 

The mystery and wonder of this sacred meal is that our feeder and our food is Christ who promises that ‘[his] flesh is real food and [his] blood is real drink’ and that this nourishes body and soul, putting us in right relationship with him, our Lord and God.

 

‘Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them’ says the Lord.

'I am the living bread that came down from heaven' - John 6 continued

1 Kings 19.4-8

Ephesians 4.25-5.2

John 6.35, 41-51

 

Jesus said: ‘I am the living bread that came down from heaven.

Whoever eats of this bread will live for ever;

and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.’ (John 6.50, 51)

 

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Today we continue our journey through the sixth chapter of St John’s Gospel, the chapter that focuses on Jesus’ teaching on the Eucharist: in which he declares, ‘I am the bread of life’.

 

By way of recap, Jesus has fed the crowds, numbering a good five thousand plus, by his miraculous multiplication of the loaves and fishes brought by a young boy.

 

He then fled to the town of Capernaum, where the crowds followed him, and he is now in the synagogue teaching them about what the multiplication of the loaves and the fishes actually signifies and means.

 

It is teaching that undergirds the celebration of the Eucharist.

 

It’s when we come to learn that the meal that is at the heart of the Eucharist is a sacred meal, a participation in the body and blood of Christ, a foretaste of the banquet of heaven.

 

The sixth chapter of John is utterly decisive about who we believe Jesus to be and what he does.

 

This teaching elevates the Eucharist beyond a simple fellowship meal of like-minded believers, beyond a miracle of feeding lots of people, to being a sacred act that is the source of our deepest communion with the Lord, and the summit, the very peak, of that communion.

 

Of course, Jesus’ hearers could not, would not, accept this teaching. When they hear him teach that he ‘is the bread that is come down from heaven’ (John 6.41b) they dismiss it as delusional human generated teaching, ‘come off it’ they say, ‘we know this bloke and his parents, he can’t be God, or God’s son’ (John 6.42)

 

But Jesus doubles down, answering them:

 

Do not complain among yourselves. No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me; and I will raise that person up on the last day. It is written in the prophets, “And they shall all be taught by God.” Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me. (John 6.43-45)

 

This is divine teaching from which we have the Eucharist, instituted by Christ himself: it is not manufactured, not the invention of pious minds and certainly not made up by the Church sometime after the event.

 

The breaking of bread as a divine act is at the heart of Christian life and practice from the beginning: the Acts of the Apostles describes how the believers met to share the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to break bread and pray (Acts 2.42); and St Paul describes what has been handed onto him, what is already in existence, and describes the Last Supper as what Christians enact when they meet (1 Corinthians 11.23-25) and concludes saying, ‘for as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes. (1 Corinthians 11.26)

 

And as the Eucharist is not simply a meal, Jesus is not simply an inspired guru, not a wonder worker, not a community organiser or social justice warrior: the witness of the Bible is that Jesus is Son of God the Father,

 

This is why this man, Jesus of Nazareth, is Saviour, the one who died for us and our salvation, and for whom the martyrs have given their lives in witness to his saving power.

 

This is so fundamentally important to the Christian faith, and revealed in the Eucharist: Jesus Christ fully divine and fully human.

 

If he is one or the other it’s no use and we should pack up now and go and do something else altogether.

 

If Jesus is only divine, then he doesn’t touch us; if he is only human, he can’t save us.

 

Jesus Christ both touches our lives and saves our souls.

 

This is where we come to seek the life of God; this is where we come to receive the life of God.

 

And bread is the token of this.

 

Mind you, it is not simply a symbol, if by that we mean that it is not the true life and presence of God we receive, as if it were simply a metaphor.

 

Someone once said to the American writer Flannery O’Connor that he thought the Eucharist is ‘a pretty good symbol’ to which she replied, ‘if it’s just a symbol to hell with it’.

 

A symbol does not save us; actual bread does not save us: a person does, the one described as the Bread of Life, Jesus Christ.

 

We pray ‘give us this day our daily bread’.

 

And, as scripture says, something Jesus quotes in the face of Satan himself, ‘Man does not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of God’ (Matthew 4.4, quoting Deuteronomy 8.3).

 

Even physical bread, integral to eating together, does not keep us alive for ever. The people of Israel, fed by manna in the wilderness, are no more; the prophet Elijah, miraculously fed by angelic food was hungry again, the Five Thousand fed with loaves and fishes have long since died.

 

Jesus tells us that the bread that he gives, ‘is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die’ (John 6.50).

 

This bread of the Eucharist is not ‘a pretty good symbol’ but the way in which we feed on the one who says:

 

I am the living bread that came down from heaven.

 

That is why he says

 

Whoever eats of this bread will live for ever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.’ (John 6.51)

 

Let us then come to be fed by the Bread of Life, that we may know the Father and be his life to the world.

My dancing day

Amos 7:7-15

Ephesians 1:3-14

Mark 6:14-29 The death of John the Baptist

 

 

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When it comes to dancing I have two left feet: beware your toes. I would have no future on Strictly!

 

Yet dance is something features throughout scripture.

 

Take Psalm 150:

 

Praise God in the cymbals and dances (Psalm 150.4),

 

or Ecclesiastes:

 

there is… a time to weep, and a time to laugh;

a time to mourn, and a time to dance (Ecclesiastes 3.4).

 

Even the prophet Jeremiah, who is associated with doom and gloom, declares that when God brings the exiles home:

 

…you shall adorn yourself with tambourines,

   and shall go forth in the dance of the merrymakers…

Then shall the young women rejoice in the dance,

   and the young men and the old shall be merry.

 (Jeremiah 31.4b, 13)

 

It echoes the moment the people of Israel had crossed the Red Sea from slavery in Egypt to freedom in the Promised Land, where we read:

 

Then Miriam the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took a tambourine in her hand; and all the women went out after her with tambourines and dancing. (Exodus 15.20)

 

So, dance, in the Bible, is associated with joy and praise of God.

 

Yet it’s something we don’t do in our tradition of worship.

 

In the ancient Ethiopian Church, after the Liturgy, the whole congregation dances; priests and people in robes and finery.

 

It is dance as jubilation and praise.

 

Dance, at its best, shows poise and strength, elegance and grace.

 

Dance connects us to deep rhythms that our bodies, without words, want to express.

 

Dance can be beautiful, graceful, elevating hearts and minds to a higher good.

 

And of course, sometimes dance is just exuberant fun and enjoyable, associated with a wedding, a party or perhaps even a football victory: will people be dancing in the streets of London or Madrid tonight? We’ll see!

 

As with all good embodied actions dance can be distorted and disfigured.

 

Dance can be used for seduction or display and be extremely sordid; the dancer can become an object of inappropriate desire, even if intended.

 

At that leads us to our gospel reading this morning.

 

It is a tale of three dances.

 

The gospel passage only describes one, but that dance echoes to two other biblical dances.

 

In the first dance,

 

‘When Herodias’s daughter came in and danced, she pleased Herod and his guests.’ (Mark 6.22)

 

This girl’s dance, she’s traditionally known as Salome, is offered to a tyrant: a violent, adulterous, brutal and lustful man.

 

And there is something very creepy about a man like Herod, and his fellow – male – guests finding the dance of a young girl pleasing.

 

It is a dance that leads to the death of John the Baptist.

 

John, though, is also recorded as a dancer: that’s our second dance.

 

When Mary the Mother of the Lord, pregnant with Jesus in her womb, came to visit her cousin Elizabeth (pregnant with John), St Luke tells us that the unborn John leaped with joy - danced – in his mother’s womb (Luke 1.41).

 

This echoes our third dance.

 

 

This is when the Ark of God was brought back to Jerusalem (2 Samuel 6). The whole city rejoiced and, according to the second book of Samuel:

 

David danced before the Lord with all his might; David was girded with a linen ephod. (2 Samuel 6.14)

 

David wears the linen ephod of a priest, though he becomes a king; John was descended from a priestly line, though he becomes a prophet.

 

David danced when God’s presence carried in the Ark of wood came near; John danced when God’s presence in the womb of Mary came near.

 

These two dances are dances of praise to God.[1]

 

Salome’s dance takes place during a debauched feast, and we can imagine her being pressurised into it.

 

Herod’s blithe and casual exercise of power - promising what is not his to promise - is the mirror image of the sovereignty of the One whom John came to proclaim.

 

Herod’s life is caught up in murder and infidelity.

 

He killed rival relatives to become king; he bumped off his brother Philip that he could take his wife, Herodias, referred to in the gospel – indeed that is why John was in prison in the first place, because he condemned Herod for it.

 

Herod’s feast is a parody of the feast of life that we celebrate now in the Eucharist; it is a feast of death.

 

There is a dance deep in the heart of what we do now.

 

I don’t mean we’ll get out of our places and boogie on down, rather our bodies respond to the deep rhythm of God’s life and love, because he comes as our Sovereign and Saviour.

 

David danced in his presence; John danced in his presence: we move our bodies to respond to him.

 

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The TV dramatisations of Jane Austen novels generally have a scene during a dance when the dashing young gent comes and asks the bashful, overlooked young lady to dance.

 

They dance, and he sweeps her off her feet on a journey of love eventually consummated in marriage.

 

There is a medieval carol, ‘Tomorrow shall be my dancing day’, that narrates the story of salvation and draws on the biblical imagery of Christ, the bridegroom, being joined to his bride, the Church.

 

The carol depicts Christ as our dancing partner, the one who sweeps us off our feet to be one with him.

 

The Gospels portray Christ as Bridegroom, and John the Baptist describes himself as ‘the friend of the bridegroom’ (John 3.29).

 

The Bridegroom says in the carol:

 

Then up to heaven I did ascend,

Where now I dwell in sure substance

On the right hand of God, that man

May come unto the general dance.

 

Christ wants to dance with us, his bride, not into the danse macabre of Herod’s banquet but to draw us into the banquet of his life and love, to be fruitful with him, the Author of Life Divine.

 

 

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[1] It’s worth noting that David’s dance also generated resentment – in the heart of Michal, Saul’s wife, because she saw her husband’s rival as priest and king.