Epiphany 6B
February 12, 2006

Our offertory hymn today, “Lord of the Dance”, is well-liked by most of our congregation, though some think it is a little ‘60’s.’ The tune is thoroughly American, being a hymn used by a strange American religious sect called the Shakers who sang the words, ‘tis a gift to be simple.’ It was meant as a dance tune, I think, for the Shakers used dance in worship. This is at least a happy coincidence and maybe was done on purpose when one Sydney Carter wrote the words, “Lord of the Dance.”

So what is this dance business anyway? It sounds kind of hippy 1960’s which is what you’d expect from folk religious music from the flower child era. But if that’s what we might expect, we’d be wrong. What we have in these words is not modern at all, but very ancient and very Catholic. The Great Dance was first commented on by Saint Gregory of Nazianzus, 4th century patriarch of Constantinople. But the person who built most on Gregory’s idea of the Great Dance was none other than our own C.S. Lewis. Saint Gregory and Saint C.S. Lewis both see that God is not a static thing, buy a dynamic, pulsating activity -- a life of a kind of drama, or a “dance.”

“The whole dance, or pattern of God’s three-personed life, is to be played out in each one of us. Or, to put it the other way around, each one of us has got to enter that pattern. We must take our place in the dance.” (Vaus) I must give credit to Will Vaus in his book about Lewis’ teaching called, “Mere Theology.” Vaus wrote, “Lewis’ illustration of the relations of the Trinity being like a dance is a masterstroke. With this image we capture the joy of the relationships in the Trinity, a joy into which we are invited to enter.” Lewis uses this image of the Great Dance in a lot of his fiction. It is very mystical, but really kind of exciting. Lewis writes of the Great Dance with regard to the giving away of selfhood. To cling to yourself is death. Self-ish-ness finally is the root of all sin, which is why that little story about a certain tree in the Garden of Eden is a really great, true story. Try to do it your own way and ignore God and the rest of the cosmos and you truly screw yourself. Or, as the devil in the story put it, “eat of the tree and be like God.” To enter the dance is to undo that Tree of Knowledge screw-up. To give away self is life. It’s this giving away of self that makes up the dance. For when self flies to and fro among human beings even the great Master himself leads the party, giving himself eternally to his creatures and back to himself in the sacrifice of the Word. The eternal dance makes heaven drowsy with the harmony! All pains and pleasures we have known on Earth are but early hints of the movements of that dance. The dance becomes love Himself, even greater than any pains or pleasures we have ever known. The Great Dance does not exist for us, but we for it.” (Vaus) We are talking about heaven here; God’s evolution finished and gift wrapped and tied up with a nice, big ribbon. Beyond pleasure, lost in the music of the hymn of the universe, caught up in the music of the spheres, slipping through all the dimensions of the cosmos, wrinkling time and warping space. The Dance is union with God.

The artist of our new, stained glass window, perhaps without meaning to, has included wavy lines of movement showing the dynamism of God the Holy Trinity. These waves of movement are “dance lines” and Jesus, the principal figure in the window, is “Lord of the Dance.”

Oh wow. That’s awfully theological and mystical. What it means is that Jesus as a human being learned to dance with God. And that perfect love from the beginning of time was so strong that the bond itself became a person (personal) and the dance was beyond time and space in three-person time, commonly known as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, but equally understandable as the Presence, the Name and the Power or Creator, Redeemer, Sanctifier. The idea of the Great Dance is best not “thought about”, but “imaged.” If we ever get a clear night in L.A., go lie down and look up at the sky. Realize that what may look like stars are sometimes whole galaxies. That great big immenseness is just God’s spin-off from the Dance. Look at that immenseness and think of a God beyond all that; who still invites you to come dance with him. To sing, to dance, to frolic, to enjoy, to go beyond, out of, yourself… this, incidentally, is what the word “ecstasy” means.

So, C.S. Lewis used the image of dance to represent the Trinity and the life of Heaven. He did so as he explained in his book, “Letters to Malcomb”, because life is hard, it is a valley of tears a lot of the time and certain qualities of heaven have no chance to get through except in activities that are thought of as purely “recreational” moments of festivity and joy. It is no accident that even in our society we still think of a night off from reality and the difficulties of life is when “we go dancing.” Lewis’ point in all this is that “joy is the serious business of heaven.”

As I thought of worship and Christian life as a dance I could not help but imagine how the different Christian groups might dance. It was a silly fantasy, but it did occur to me that the Pentecostals have a kind of “jitterbug” dance, swing style, jumping and energetic. The Presbyterians and general American liberal Protestants have kind of a subdued waltz, dignified, but with well-known steps and patterns. And Catholic Anglicans, well Anglo-Catholics, have a deeply passionate dance, with heat and mystery burning just beneath the movement, but with the steps and movements carefully planned and executed. Anglo-Catholics dance the Tango.

Okay. Summation: Dances have steps and design; so does God’s creation. There’s a lot of freedom to sing your own song and make up your own steps as long as we realize that God leads. God’s own three-persona life is like a dance and, thus, union with the Trinity is our Christian dance. It’s joy, its fun, its happiness. It’s what makes life abundant. It’s getting out of death and into life… forever. Jesus is the Lord of that dance. Humans like us, divine like God… he danced the dance of the Universe and he invites us to join him on the dance floor.