Dare To Imagine God’s Dance Part 2

January 2nd, 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 – last week was part one.  Today’s offering is part two and next week will complete the trilogy – to make it more in line with the usual length of this missive.  Here is the second installment.

The story so far – God has decided to do something new – something God had never done before – to dance.  After some thought, God decided that to dance you had to have music so God called on the music of the spheres.  …

Now you might ask if there was nothing but God, where did the spheres come from.  Well, I don’t actually know – it’s a mystery - but the music of the spheres began and God began to dance.  God, being God, knew just what the dance should be to that music.  God danced – perhaps a bit hesitantly at first because God had never danced before -- but God soon got the hang of it and just danced away until it was time (because now there was time) to stop dancing.  Now, I can’t tell you what the dance was, but I can tell you that when God stopped, he saw something new.  God saw that the dancing had created light and not only that, the light separated and there was light and there was non-light or darkness.  And God declared that his dancing was good and that what the dancing had brought forth was good.

Well, perhaps you can guess what happened after that.  The next day – because of this creation of the light where there was no light before – as I noted, God had also created time.  The next day, God danced a new dance to the new music of the spheres and God found that the dancing had produced a dome in the midst of the water which separated the water from the water.  There was water under the dome and water above.  Again, God decided that this was a good thing and declared it to be good.  After that, each day God danced a new dance to new music and something new was created. 

On the third day, God’s dancing created vegetation.  On the fourth day, God danced and brought forth the sun and the moon.  The fifth day God danced and brought forth the living creatures in the air and in the waters and wild animals of every kind that filled the earth.  And each day, God declared that what God had done was good.  God was pleased and yet God knew, in God’s omnipotence, that something was missing. 

God realized that all these things were good but they were limited in the dance.  Each of these creations could dance in a particular way but only one way.  God decided that there needed to be something else.  God then realized that God needed a creature that could be God’s full partner in the dance.  On the sixth day God ordered the spheres to bring forth the best music ever.  God danced the dance that was perfect for the music and when God danced, what had been brought forth was someone who would be a perfect dance partner - one that was created in God’s image.  And God was pleased with God’s-self and declared that this was good – it was very good indeed.

Now after all this creating, God rested because God had worked very hard and danced so many different dances.  After this, God danced with his greatest creation for a long, long time.  God discovered that although there were many different ways of dancing with God, people needed many different rules in all those variety of ways of dancing with God.  However, God also discovered that despite all the rules that allowed people to dance more dances with God than all the rest of God’s creation, God realized that something was still missing.  Then God realized, in the way that only God does, that people could not be a full dance partner to God.  God realized that this was so because, even though they were created in God’s image the rules prevented the dance from being all that it could be.

That’s all for today.  Tune in next week for the rest of the story and don’t forget to listen to the music of the spheres and try a few dance steps to that music. 

Blessings on your journey.