Dancing with Guidance

Here is my message from Sunday. The text was Acts 8:26-40:

Just by a show of hands, who has ever taken dance lessons, and not or like ballet, but like dancing with a partner? And did anyone try to take lessons by themselves, that is not with an instructor there with you, but maybe with like the footprints you put on the floor to try and do it yourself? I’m guessing that the second way probably wasn’t very effective. Linda and I took dance lessons in preparation for our wedding and our wedding dance, which was to Frank Sinatra’s It Had to Be you, and included a dip at the end. And we did it at an Arthur Miller Dance Studio, which has you in private lessons and then in group lessons because it’s one thing to dance by yourself, but it’s entirely different to do it with lots of other people dancing too, that’s a whole other level of dancing of trying to pay attention and watch others and move as needed in order to keep going. And I can tell you that that requires instruction, as well as a partner to help you to learn how to do it, and to do it well. And what it also takes is learning how to let go to be in sync and make changes as they come, and that’s for everyone. And so, when you are dancing, it is not about submission, for either party, the one leading or the one following, but about learning to partner together in the movements, to be in tune with each other, to know what the other is doing, and as you get better, to begin to anticipate what might happen to be ready for it, to be prepared for it in order to respond properly. 

I began this series on dancing with God by telling a story about a colleague who was learning to dance being called out by her instructor for not being able to follow guidance, and wanting to be in control, and being told he thought she wouldn’t have any problems with this since she was clergy and was used to following God’s lead. And that’s why I think this metaphor of dancing with God is a good one because it’s not just about God saying do this, and us doing it, but about working together, moving together with God, in order to do the work, to do the dance that we are called to do. And so that leads us to today’s dance, which is dancing with guidance, although I might have also called it dancing with the Spirit, which certainly sounds better, but might not be direct enough. I got that idea of guidance from that passage that we just heard from Acts involving Philip, an Ethiopian eunuch and the Spirit.

Dancing with Joy

Here is my message from Sunday. The text was Luke 24:36b-48:

When my 9-year-old nephew died ten years ago from a blood clotting disorder, his parents made the decision to donate his organs, which also included taking skin grafts to be used for burn victims. As it turned out, another member of our church had a close family friend living on the Navajo Nation whose grandson received critical burns on the same weekend and who was flown to UNM hospital where he ended up receiving skin grafts in treatment. Now we don’t think that he received any grafts from Wyatt, but for her it brought some potential joy, and I don’t use that word advisedly, out of a terrible situation for both families. That in the midst of tragedy and trauma, perhaps a little good could come out of. That there could be a little glimmer of light, hope and yes, even joy, in the midst of darkness. And that’s the thing about joy, that perhaps it might not be what we tend to think of it at all, and that is what we deal with today as we think about learning to dance with God in joy.

Now last week, after we talked about dancing in peace, and I said that we were doing joy today, someone asked if we were going to do all of the themes for Advent, which are hope, peace, joy and love. I responded that we weren’t because we weren’t going to do hope, although we might have been able to do so, but that it didn’t really come up in the lectionary readings for the Sunday’s after Easter, which is what I was using to find the themes. And I hadn’t really even thought about them being related to the themes of Advent, but there are, but I hadn’t really thought about them also being fruit of the Spirit, which they also are. So, I can’t say if it’s just coincidence, or the movement of the Spirit, or simply the thoughts swirling in my head, that led me to them. But they are connected, and they also connect with hope, joy especially, but joy itself stands out from those advent themes in particular. If you remember the candles that we light at Advent, there are four of them. Three are purple and one is pink. It is the pink candle that represents joy. And that stands out against the purple candles, a color which represents royalty, and also repentance. It gets those traditions from the much older traditions of the season of Lent, which ends with the celebration of Easter. Lent too is a time of preparation and repentance, although Advent has lost many of those characteristics, but the fourth Sunday in Lent is known as Laetare Sunday, which comes from the traditional Latin introduction to the mass from Isaiah which says Rejoice, O Jerusalem! The word rejoice is an imperative, a command, so comes with an exclamation point. And so, the temperament of Lent, changes in that service, and the color changes from purple to pink, or more technically, rose, which is why it is also sometimes called rose Sunday.

Dancing with Peace

 Here is my message from Sunday. The text was John 20:19-31. 

Some of you I think have heard this story before, but my best friend from seminary, in her first appointment she was contacted to ask if she would like to participate in a sort of dancing with the stars as a fundraiser for several non-profits in the town. They were asking community leaders to participate who would be partners to professional dancers. She said yes, thinking she’d just show up do her thing to be supportive and be known in town, and then move on. So, she was a little surprised a few weeks later when she was contacted by a dance studio asking when she wanted to start her lessons in preparation. Obviously, this was going to be more serious than she thought, and so she made her appointment and went for her first dance lesson. Now what you have to know about Katherine was that before the ministry she was a counselor working with people who were having mental health crisis, and so she was used to be in charge, or taking charge of situations, because her life literally depended upon it at times. And so, she started up and let’s just say that the lesson wasn’t going great, and so they stopped and her instructed said, “You have to let go and let me lead if this is going to be effective and helpful,” and so Katherine responded that he obviously didn’t know who she was, that she is used to being in charge.” To which he responded, “You’re a minister. I thought this would be easy for you because I thought you would be used to turning your life and direction over to someone else to guide.” As you might guess, that left her a little aback, and changed not just her approach to dancing, but also as a refocusing of ministry.

And so that story is sort of around which this series, Dancing with God, will be based, although also taken from an idea by Marcia McFee of dancing after darkness, because while we often talk about having to follow God, or to put it in scriptural terms, to be a servant or slave to God, in fact a better way of understanding our journey with God is as a dance. Of turning our lives over to God as the lead, which requires us to follow that, to learn new things, occasionally to improvise in our steps, and when we get lost or confused to remember that sometimes we have to stop to return to the old familiar steps. And the dance we look at today is the dance of peace.

Easter: Life and Death; Death and Life

This was my Easter message. The text was Mark 16:1-8:

It was five years ago now that Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris caught fire and nearly burned to the ground on the Monday of Holy Week. You may have seen in the news recently that they have just reinstalled the spiral that collapsed and also finished framing out the roof, using 800-year-old construction techniques, with the plan of reopening the cathedral later this year. But, after it burned there were many commentators who said that there couldn’t have been a worse time for the cathedral to burn since they had just celebrated Palm Sunday the day before and had been planning to celebrate Easter the following week, but now wouldn’t be able to. But, I thought that while there is never a good time for one of the architectural wonders, and one of the most famous buildings in the world, to catch on fire and nearly be entirely destroyed. But, if it is going to happen, Holy Week might actually be the best time for it to happen, because it’s sort of a reminder, a symbol, of this time. It’s after the celebration of Palm Sunday which then leads into the darkness of the week, of betrayal and denial and abandonment, and then the cross and the tomb; the reality of death and suffering and pain and grief and all the other things that get brought up this week, which then leads to the story of the resurrection.

But you can’t get to that part, you can’t get to the Easter story without the dark parts. We don’t have Easter because everything is hunky dory, we have Easter, we need Easter, because of the reality of death and pain and suffering and sorrow, we need Easter because of the tomb. You can’t just skip from Palm Sunday to Easter, from celebration to celebration, and have that make any sense. You have to have the other parts in between because you can’t have resurrection unless there I something to be resurrected, something that had withered, or something that has died, to be resurrected. And so, when the parishioners gathered outside Notre Dame, with the ashes still smoldering and the smell of burned wood still in the air, that call to resurrection and desire and hope for resurrection it was the perfect time to celebrate Easter, and I’m guessing that message, that reality, rang even more true, more meaningfully in that moment then maybe it ever had before. The same as this congregation hosting the memorial service yesterday for a longtime member of this congregation, also had a meaning and significance that was more alive because of today.