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.

Jubilate Agno: the praise of creatures - a sermon on the singing of Britten's 'Rejoice in the Lamb'

'Rejoice in God, O ye Tongues; give the glory to the Lord, and the

Lamb. Nations, and languages, and every creature in which is

the breath of Life. Let man and beast appear before him, and

magnify his name together'.

 

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There are two Hebrew words that come to mind when I hear

Britten's 'Rejoice in the Lamb' and that remarkable text of

Christopher Smart

 

I'll be honest that there aren't many more Hebrew words I know!

The words are 'hallel' meaning 'praise', from where we get the

word 'Hallel-ujah': praise (hallel) God (Jah).

 

'Rejoice in the Lamb' captures a sense of exuberant praise and

glorification of God by all creatures: it's an alleluia!

 

And that leads to my second Hebrew word which is 'nephesh'.

 

This word literally means 'breath' or even better 'life force', or, as

Smart refers to it, 'the breath of Life'.

 

This life force is the breath of life that suffuses all creatures,

animals as much as humans.

 

'Rejoice in the Lamb' is an assertion of the life force in all

creatures and so reminds we human beings that we share

creatureliness with all creatures.

 

Smart takes this as far, but no further, than the Creation

accounts of Genesis, in which of course God declares that 'it is

good'.

 

Again, Smart goes as far as, but no further, than the great matins

canticle the Benedicite, Omnia Opera, 'O all ye works of the

Lord, bless ye the Lord: praise him and magnify him for ever'.

 

The Benedicite suggests that 'angels', 'waters', 'sun and moon',

'stars of heaven', 'showers and dew', 'fire and heat', 'whales and

all that moves in the waters', 'fowls of the air', 'beasts and cattle'

in other words, all created things - animate and inanimate - are

created to bless, praise and magnify the Lord, their Creator.

 

Admittedly cats aren't named in the Benedicite, but there is no

reason why they shouldn't be!

 

The point is that all things in the cosmos are created things, as

am I, as are you, as was Jeoffry, Christopher Smart's cat.

 

Created things ultimately are created to worship and honour the

Creator.

 

This is where theology begins, and ends: God is not a thing, not

an element of creation, but the Creator, the originator, the

generator.

 

That is what Genesis 1 so carefully sets out: the sun and the

moon are creatures, not deities; the earth and trees and animals

of all descriptions are creatures not deities; last of all we

humans, we are creatures, not deities.

 

Even whilst sharing the image and likeness of the Creator, we

are creatures too who reflect the Creator's glory: in that way we

are like the moon which has no light of its own, but reflects the

light of the sun.

 

So, for Smart, for all his alleged madness, is touching deep and

important things.

 

In 'Rejoice int he Lamb' Smart names many weird and wonderful

creatures that praise their Creator, and is most evident in

Jeoffry, his cat. What Smart sees in Jeoffry is wonderful and to be celebrated: a

cat who 'at first glance of the glory of God in the East he

worships in his way'.

 

'Worships in his way' is not a statement of personal taste - in the

sort of way that people shop around for styles of worship, in a

consumerist, preference-based way - this is deeper: 'worships in

his way' means that Jeoffry is a cat who glorifies God in all that

it is to be a cat; to be feline.

 

It's what the second century African theologian Tertullian

recognised when he wrote that, 'birds, when they awake, rise

toward heaven and in place of hands lift their wings which they

open in the shape of the cross, chirping something that might

seem to be a prayer'.

 

In Smart's assertion of the feline nature of the cat and

Tertullian's of the avian nature of the birds is the question the

Scriptures insistently ask us: what is the worship and honour

due to God in the human nature of men and women?

 

In his 'elegant quickness' Jeoffry is inhabiting his creatureliness

in all its feline elegance. What Smart observes is a cat being

truly a cat.

 

Tertullian, even with his somewhat florid interpretation is

observing birds being birds, flying and chirping.

 

Our fellow creatures in God's creation inhabit their

creatureliness and who they are all made and called by God to

be.

 

Their 'nephesh' issues in 'hallel'; their 'breath of life' issues in

praise.

 

The one creature that can't achieve - this is the one that sits in

an exalted place in the creation, declared to be made in the

image and likeness of God - and that's us.

 

So Smart sees in Jeffrey a cat that is truly a cat, just as a tree is

truly a tree, and is moved to contemplate his own nature.

Psalm 8 asks the question: 'What is man that thou art mindful of

him? And the son of man, that thou visitest him? (Psalm 8.4)

 

This is where we can state that Jesus Christ is the true human,

hence why St Paul calls him the New Adam, the new humanity.

 

Christ Incarnate, shows how the human person should live to

glorify God and reflect his image and likeness. Christ

demonstrates humanity in all its human-ness as sons and

daughters of the Most High, rather than the distorted, violent,

envious, competitive, brittle way we live our lives: we spend too

much of our lives living lives that are not fully human, we are

diminished.

 

The fullness of humanity is when we bless, worship and magnify

our Creator in worship that sets our sights on the true 'hallel',

the praise that channels our nephesh, our 'breath of Life' to God.

 

Smart's cat, Jeoffry, points us to authentic praise, as do those

gathered in Bethlehem at the birth of Christ. Christ is

surrounded by representatives of the Creation: a star - creature

not deity; ox and ass - creatures not deities; and then the

devotion of people who become more themselves in worship

and adoration of Christ, and are in no way diminished.

 

'Rejoice in God, O ye Tongues; give the glory to the Lord, and the

Lamb. Nations, and languages, and every creature in which is

the breath of Life. Let man and beast appear before him, and

magnify his name together'.

Apostolic Faith of Baptism - Peter, Paul & Nyrah-Shea

Acts 12.1-11 ‘Now I know the Lord really did save me from Herod

2 Timothy 4.6-8; 17-18 All there is to come now is the crown of righteousness reserved for me

Matthew 16.13-19 You are Peter and on this rock I will build my Church

 

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Today we celebrate the Holy Apostles, Peter and Paul.

 

Peter: companion of the Lord, one of The Twelve, chosen by Christ to be the rock on which his Church is to be built.

 

Paul: persecutor of the Church who met the risen and ascended Lord on the road to Damascus and was commissioned to be an apostle to the Gentiles.

 

Together they were the ultimate witnesses as martyrs for the faith in the city of Rome.

 

And also, today, we baptise Nyrah-Shea: known, named and loved by the Lord and today to become part of the Church, to be adopted as a Child of God.

 

What is this Church into which she is to be baptised?

 

The Church is the body of believers who call upon God as Father by living out the life of Jesus Christ, receiving him in the sacraments and scriptures, all empowered by the Holy Spirit.

 

The Church is the body of witness to the resurrection of Christ.

 

The Church is the divine body of Christ into which we are grafted, receiving the lifeblood of Christ through his beating, Sacred Heart of Love.

 

This Church is called into existence by Christ and he chose Peter, dear Peter, who shows the human flaws we all have: he wavers; flip-flops; misunderstands; is crass; disappoints; denies.

 

And yet Peter is desperate to be the person Christ saw in him, the true Peter, the essential Peter.

 

Our life in the Church should be that journey of discovery, with our companions in faith, of who we really are called to be:

 

living lives directed to God’s glory not our own glorification and gratification;

 

cherishing God’s love for us, not assuming we’re rivals with others in the Lord’s affections, but one in him;

 

presenting our bodies, ‘as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is [our] spiritual worship’…not confirmed to this world, but transformed by the renewal of our minds to discern the will of God (Romans 12.1,2)

 

What an invitation: an enduring invitation!

 

I hope those of us who are long in the faith, who may be jaded, tired or switching off may be re-kindled in the vision set before us.

 

We owe it to ourselves, one another – to Jesus Christ! – to be renewed, day by day by day, in response to that invitation.

 

Nyrah-Shea joins us as fellow pilgrims in the way, the truth and the life of Christ; a path first walked by the apostles, trodden by saints throughout ages and the path we, in our day, navigate and explore.

 

It is an invitation to each and every person to consider the question that lies at the heart of being a Christian, when Christ asks you, ‘who do you say that I am?’

 

We know Peter’s answer, ‘you are the Messiah, the Christ, the Son of the Living God’.

 

Like Peter, we are blessed when that is our response: that confession of faith which forms the foundational rock of the Church, embodied in Peter.

 

The questions put to those being baptised – infants through their godparents, and adults for themselves – ask the same thing: ‘who do you say that I am?’

 

A baptism is a chance for each one of us to be renewed, refreshed in our response to Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God.

 

As we answer, we might also consider Jesus’ question the other way round: who does Jesus Christ say that you are?

 

He could have looked at Peter and said, ‘he’s not up to it. Peter’s no rock, he’s too flaky. I can’t build my Church on someone like that.’

 

He could have looked at Paul and said, ‘this man is murdering my followers, injuring my body. He wants to destroy what I died for’.

 

But no. Christ saw in them the potential and possibility of being witnesses to the ends of the earth, through the generations, to establish, build and feed the Church in Christ’s name.

 

Who does Jesus Christ say Nyrah-Shea is? Who does he say you are?

 

He says, in the prophet Isaiah’s words, ‘you are precious in my eyes, and honoured, and I love you’ (Isaiah 43.4)

 

You may hear it said, ‘no one is indispensable’, in other words no one is really needed, known, loved, no one really has a place: they can be disposed of, discarded.

 

Those are the values of the world.

 

What the feast of Peter and Paul, what the baptism of a new Christian, what every moment of receiving Holy Communion tells us is that, in Christ, no one is dispensable, disposable: Christ does not chuck you away, even if you can’t (yet) discern where you fit in.

 

Flaky Peter, driven Paul, little Nyrah-Shea, you and me, we all have a place in the life of the Church.

 

Even if we’re not called to be the rock like Peter, the missionary and sower of churches like Paul, we are called to grow in the image and likeness of Christ, to know ourselves to be ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven and proclaim the source of that life by our testimony and witness in all we think and speak and do.

 

What we see in the scriptures and history of the Church is that for God no one is dispensable: each person is cherished and valued because God made us, knows us by name and sent his Son to die for our sins to save our souls.

 

Today Nyrah-Shea finds that her place is in the life of Christ, in his Church.

 

Today we all are renewed in our hope in the faith once proclaimed by the Apostles and received through the ages.

 

Today let us savour the beauty of Christ’s Church, rejoice in the truth of our profession of faith and show the goodness of God, patiently, day by day by day.

 

And may the Holy Apostles pray for us to the Lord in all our endeavours.

Always to Jesus - The Birth of St John the Baptist

Isaiah 40.1-11 As voice cries out prepare the way of the Lord

Galatians 3.23-29 All are one in Christ Jesus

Luke 1.57-66, 80 What then will this child become?

 

 

‘And you will have joy and great gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth because he will be great before the Lord’. (Luke 1.15)

 

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Today we celebrate the festival of our patron saint, John the Baptist.

 

John’s principal feast is today – the day of his birth - and his lesser, but still significant, feast is the day of his death, his beheading at the hands of the tyrant Herod.

 

The span of John’s remarkable life and character is attested to in the Gospels.

 

The first we hear of John is before his conception, when an archangel - the same archangel as came to the Blessed Virgin Mary - comes to Zechariah, a priest ministering in the Temple. (cf Luke 1.5-25)

 

Zechariah poo-poos the angel’s message that his wife Elizabeth will be mother to a son.

 

She’s past it, was Zechariah’s reaction. (Luke 1.18)

 

The name of this child to be conceived was John, a name that means ‘God is gracious’.

 

God is indeed gracious.

 

But there is a disruption here because he is not to be given his paternal name Zechariah, as would be customary, and this literally leaves Zechariah speechless. (Luke 1.22)

 

Something new, something creative, is going on here, but Zechariah hadn’t clocked it, despite knowing, surely, of other great Biblical women who were said to be too old or unable to have children, yet who did so by God’s grace: Sarah was beyond child bearing age when she conceived Isaac; Rebecca, who was childless, was blessed with Jacob and Esau; Rachel with Joseph and Benjamin; the unnamed wife of Manoah with Samson; Hannah with Samuel.

 

God’s creative potential is not limited by human physiology!

 

So, Elizabeth, the mother of John stands in a great tradition of women, named and unnamed, who are empowered by God to be bearers of a child, a child who will, in turn, be a bearer of the promise of God.

 

So we know of John before his conception, and then as a baby in his mother’s womb it is the unborn John who leaps within her at the presence of Mary and her unborn child.

 

It won’t be their last encounter! John’s life is woven into the life of his cousin, Jesus.

 

A birth is a hinge moment: we are the same person in the womb and out of it, yet what life brings when we’re born is quite different.

 

John’s birth speaks of a hinge moment for God’s chosen people, for the adult John steps out into the wilderness to proclaim that a new birth is possible through the washing away of sin and the restitution of justice and liberation of captives.

 

John comes after the example of the prophets, as the psalm says, ‘That the generations to come might know, and the children yet unborn, that they in turn might tell it to their children (Psalm 78.6)

 

That message is entrusted to us too.

 

Earlier in that psalm it says,

 

We will not hide from our children, but tell to the coming generation the glorious deeds of the Lord and his might, and the wonders he has done (Psalm 78.4)

 

That is what John is all about, and it is a message of renewal and hope.

 

How we need to hear that in the world, and our country, as it is today.

 

John is a bearer of renewal and hope because of who he proclaims.

 

To adopt something of the spirit of our patron saint we must frame our patronal festival as not about John, but about the Lord he came to proclaim: ‘Christ must increase’, said John, ‘but I must decrease’ (John 3.30).

 

At a public interrogation about who he is, John responds, ‘I am not the Christ’, I am simply the ‘one crying in the wilderness, “make straight the way of the Lord”’ (John 1.20,23).

 

What humility; a man graced by God.

 

It’s little wonder then that Jesus says of John ‘among those born of women’ – that’s all of us, by the way – ‘no one has arisen greater than John the Baptist’ but adds, mysteriously, ‘Yet the one who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he’ (Matthew 11.11).

 

This must encourage us today.

 

You and I have the capacity to be greater even than John!

 

We can be greater than John by walking in the straight path into the kingdom of the one John came to proclaim: Jesus Christ, Son of God, our Saviour.

 

In other words, John the Baptist is the most remarkable of men, a great person to emulate in his proclamation of the coming messiah and his radical dependence on God – something even the tyrant Herod recognised.

 

And yet, our entry into the kingdom of heaven, our living the seven-day-a-week life of being a Christian, exalts you, me and the saints throughout the ages to be even more exalted than John, and, you know, that’s just how he’d want it.

 

So today, as the archangel said, ‘you will have joy and great gladness, and many will rejoice at John’s birth because he will be great before the Lord’. (Luke 1.15)

 

So let us have joy and gladness today, and with him be great before the Lord.