Dare To Imagine God’s Dance Part 3

 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 two.  Today’s offering is third and final installment of the trilogy – to make it more in line with the usual length of this missive. 

In the story so far, God has danced the world and all that is including God’s greatest creation, into being.  God discovered that although there were many different ways of dancing with God, people needed many different rules in all those varieties 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.

God sat down and pondered – something that God was getting very good at doing.  God pondered what would enable these human being – these sons and daughters created in God’s image - to be able to dance the way God had intended them to do – to dance fully in all the ways that God intended. 

What could God do to enable them to dance to all the vast variations of the music of the spheres that was available to them?

God pondered deeply, more deeply than ever before, and suddenly it came to God.  God would become one of them – one of us.  As proclaimed in the Gospel of John, the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.   We would have God as our dance partner who would show us how to dance to all the music of the spheres – to dance as God intends us to dance. 

Now, people have known this before today.  Indeed, there are many people who have known how to dance with God as God intends the whole world and all people to dance with God as our partner.  Actually, people have written songs exactly about this.  We actually sang one a few minutes ago – The Lord of the Dance:

I danced in the morning
When the world was begun,
And I danced in the moon
And the stars and the sun,
And I came down from heaven
And I danced on the earth,
At Bethlehem
I had my birth.

Dance, then, wherever you may be,
I am the Lord of the Dance, said he,
And I'll lead you all, wherever you may be,
And I'll lead you all in the Dance, said he

Now it may be hard to believe, but despite all that God has done to invite us to the dance of the spheres, there are still many people who don’t want to join the dance with Jesus as God intends us to dance. 

Sometimes we seem to believe that it is not right or proper that we should dance in all the many ways that God intends us to dance – to dance to all the many different types of dances which will show that we love each other the way Jesus loves us.  We are wonderful at coming up for reasons and excuses why we can’t dance those ways.  This also was expressed in a song. 

With apologies to the Medical Mission Sisters:

I cannot dance, I cannot dance at the banquet,
don't trouble me now.
I have married a wife; I have bought me a cow.
I have fields and commitments that cost a pretty sum.
Pray, hold me excused, I cannot dance.

So, I invite you to try a new dance – to listen for the music of the spheres that you haven’t heard before and to join in the dance with our perfect partner- Jesus Christ, and show the love of Jesus to the world.  I invite you to dance as if no one is watching.  You don’t have to know the steps or be afraid that you might get them wrong.  Jesus does not expect you to know the steps – and doesn’t expect you to be perfect.  What he does expect is for you to accept his invitation to dance at the banquet we all have been invited to.

So, to riff of another old Christmas hymn, rather than tomorrow being my dancing day, we are called to God’s dance today:

Today shall be my dancing day;
I would my true love did so chance
To see the legend of my play,
To call my true love to my dance;

chorus
Sing, oh! my love, oh! my love, my love, my love,
This have I done for my true love.

Jesus is our true love inviting us to the dance – so let us all dance the dance of love in all its variety. Amen