Sunday, I was invited to preach at the Nairn Mennonite
Church. The theme I was asked to preach
on was the last in a sermon series they were using - Dare to Imagine. The theme I was given is Dare to Imagine God’s
Dance. The sermons in this church are in
the Protestant tradition of being twenty minutes or more in length which is significantly
more than, the usual Anglican ten minutes I am used to preaching, but I thought
it was a great opportunity to explore a theme more extensively than usual so I embraced
the opportunity. I am sharing the sermon
in three parts – this week and next two – to make it more in line with the
usual length of this missive. Here is
the first installment.
The theme of God’s Dance is a
wonderful one and I want to thank Jay for the invitation and opportunity to
share in the exploration of this theme.
As it happens, today is the ninth day of Christmas – so I think that our topic –
Dare to Imagine God’s Dance is particularly appropriate. After all you know what happens on the 9th
day of Christmas? Well, according to the
song the Twelve days of Christmas:
On
the twelfth day of Christmas, my true love sent to me - Twelve drummers
drumming, Eleven pipers piping, Ten lords a-leaping, Nine ladies dancing.
So
today we have nine ladies dancing – a coincidence, or synchronicity, or perhaps
good planning? Did you know that each of
the gifts in the twelve Days of Christmas represent something? The nine ladies dancing represent the nine
fruits of the Spirit as noted in Galatians 5:22-23, love, joy, peace, patience,
kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. That is a wonderful way to begin to consider
God’s dance.
I
want to begin by a quote from Rev.
Dr. Jacqui Lewis:
In
its truest sense, religion should reconnect human beings—bind them again—to the
creation, to one another, to the Divine, to Love. Rituals, song, prayer,
preaching, reflection, dancing, meditation—all of these religious
practices are intended to bind us together in love and restrain us from harming
one another. Religion should reconnect us to the ground of our being, to the
source of our existence. . . .
Religion should help us see how our biases
about color, gender, sexuality, and class cause deep hurt to both body and
soul. Religion should reconnect us to
the ground of our being, to the source of our existence.
Here we have someone’s vision of what religion
should and can be. Dr. Lewis mentions
many different ways which we can do this – one of the ways is to dance. I believe that they all can be summed up by
the dance – to dance together to overcome our biases and to heal the deep hurts
which those biases have caused. How are
we to learn to dance the dance that God has called us to? To find the road which God calls us to
travel, we need to go back to the beginning and see where we have been – indeed
where all of creation has been and how God’s dance came to be.
To do that, I want to tell you a
story - let us image how God’s dance came to be. Many of the best stories begin, “once upon a
time.” However, this one is different –
it begins, “once upon before time.”
That’s right it begins before there was time. Indeed, it begins before there was anything –
no earth, no sun, no stars, no planets and certainly no people. However, here was one thing – a very
important thing. There was God. God was alone – alone all by God’s self for –
well, I can’t say this was a long time because there was no time yet.
God was just God and wasn’t doing
anything except being God. Then
everything changed and God decided that things should change. God decided that rather just be, God would do
– God would act. God decided, in a flash
of brilliance worthy of God, that God would dance. Now there had never been any dancing before
so it was new to God and God had to figure out what dancing was. After some thought, God decided that to dance
you had to have music so God called on the music of the spheres…
Tune in next week for the next part of God’s dance. May you be blessed to hear the music of the spheres on your journey.
No comments:
Post a Comment