Texts:
2 Samuel 6.15; 12b-19; Ephesians 1.3-14; Mark 6.14.29
I’ll never forget the first time that I went to one of those massive
dance parties that the gay community organises here in Melbourne around
Easter. Having agreed to accompany a
friend of mine, I soon learned that there was more to dancing than just dancing,
for the whole event unfolded according to the rubrics of a long-established
ritual. As with any half-decent liturgy, the
preparations for our participation began well before the event itself. At 3 o’clock, I assisted my friend in
removing his excess body-hair and then moisturising. At five o’clock we showered, shaved,
re-moisturized, and applied the golden tanning-lotion that would make our
bodies look tastily Latin. Then we donned
our vestments—loose jeans and muscle-shirts—all the while making our way through
a sumptuous bottle of red.
Having prepared ourselves thus, we made our way to a tasty little pad in
Fitzroy for what I have come to see as the Gathering Rites and the Liturgy of
the Word. Arriving at 7.30 pm precisely,
my friend and I were greeted at the door with smiles of recognition, hugs and
kisses, and an introduction or two.
Climbing the stairs, I remember entering a room which can only be
described as . . . soothing. You know, the
lights were low, and the music was gentle. I was new at
this, but the gathering tribe greeted me kindly. Everyone was smiling. Everyone had a drink in their hands. Over the four-hour dinner that followed, I
was gently questioned about who I was and why I had come. They discovered I was a minister, so I spent
the evening listening to confessions and homilies from lapsed Catholics,
Anglicans, Presbyterians and atheists.
Very spiritual it was, very spiritual indeed. In the background, the pace and the volume of
the music seemed to rise with the spirits of the people. There was laughter, the telling of stories,
even some singing—a kind of longing or supplication for that which had not yet
arrived or come together in our lives.
At 11.30pm, the Liturgy of the Sacrament began. Handing over their offerings, each received
from the host a half-tab of ecstasy. (As
a mere catechumen, I did not feel I could accept). Asking why the ecstasy was strictly
necessary, I was told that it was all part of the experience. If one did not take the ecstasy, it was more
difficult to give oneself to the dancing, to be taken out of oneself by the
music. The ecstasy, they said, helps you
to lose yourself, so that yours fears and anxieties slide away into
irrelevance. It also gives you the
stamina to dance until dawn. “You’re not
going to make it without this stuff,” they told me. So, off we went in our taxi to the
dance.
From the moment we started across the tarmac to the warehouse, there was
a buzz in the air. People were excited,
very excited. From all around, from
every angle, bodies were pouring into this huge cathedral-like warehouse where
the heady concoction of electronic rhythms, dazzling lights, and writhing
bodies was beginning to work its magic—the magic, that is, of turning 9000
individuals into a communion of bodies which moved as one. In there, you see, it was too loud for talk
or conversation. Here the words shared
earlier in the evening had to take on other forms, mainly the form of The
Dance. In the Dance, everyone
communicated with everyone else through the presence of another, the presence
of music. Music became the great
mediator and host. Everyone moved
together, at once initiating and responding to the impulses of the bodies which
were nearest. As the night went on, I
drank deeply of that music, at times even feeling that the Music and I had
merged to become the same entity and that, in the same movement, a genuine
communion with these other human beings (usually very different to me) had
become possible as well. I was
intoxicated.
But my friends had been right. By
about 3 am I was running out of puff, so much so that I was barely able to
register the arrival in my personal space of a celebrity, a real celebrity. Magda Zubanski! (She’s very short!) By four, I was completely whacked and ready
to leave. So I said my farewells and left, while my new friends continued their ecstasy-enhanced worship. As I left the rhythms behind and set out on
the long walk back to Clifton Hill, the chill morning air brought me back to
myself. The sense of being intoxicated
subsided. And I found myself asking a
question, of myself or God, I do not know. Was this Dance I’d
encountered just an escape from the pain of life, an escape into the
drug-assisted nothingness of an egoless communal; or was it, rather, the
arrival of a more divine Self, a Self which puts to death, for a moment, the
ego’s self-obsession, so that we are enabled, if only for a moment, to catch a
glimpse of what Love might make of us?
That question returned to me again as I read this extraordinary passage
from 2nd Samuel, the story of David’s dancing before the Ark of the
Lord. For David, like so many young men
and women in our community today, had a great deal of pain in his life. Snatched from the simple and, well, un-complex,
life of a shepherd on the hillsides of Israel, David became embroiled in the
complex personal and social politics of his time. On the basis of his miraculous defeat of
Goliath, captain of the enemy Philistines, Israel’s King Saul had taken David
to himself as a mascot for the fighting men, a symbol of the presence of Yahweh
in their midst. Indeed, Saul came to
love David as his men did. Yet, as David
took to fighting in more conventional ways, and succeeded more and more as a
leader of men, Saul grew jealous and afraid.
What if David grew hungry for the throne? What then?
So Saul began to plot against David’s life, timidly at first, but more
madly and boldly as time went by.
Eventually, David had to become a fugitive from the very King he had loved
and honoured. In his distress, he found
a loyal and loving companion in Saul’s son Jonathan, who helped David to escape
Saul’s net on more than one occasion.
The love between them was sealed with a covenant, we are told; indeed
their love for each other surpassed the love between men and women. We are told that too. So when David is finally forced to a
guerrilla war against Saul, and Jonathan is killed along with his father, David
is shaken to the core. In reading this
story of David’s early life, one cannot help but think that he was caught up in
events over which he had very little control, even to the point of being forced
to do that which he dreaded most. So, as
David dances ecstatically in the midst of this wild and musical procession to
Jerusalem, it is possible that he dances as a man would if he wanted to escape
his life. Could it be that he dances in
order to forget the pain of his conflict with Saul, and the grief of his loss
of Jonathan? Could it be that he dances,
like so many of our young people today, in order to escape himself? Maybe so.
Maybe so.
Yet we are told by the authors of this passage - indeed, David says it
himself - that he dances “before the Lord,” before Yahweh the God of
Israel. The authors want us to
understand that the dance of David is a form of divine worship, a
dancing which was not unusual in Israel, particularly if one belonged to the
traditions of the prophets. Earlier in
the story of David we are told that he spent considerable time hiding out with
a particular order of prophets who lived at Ramah under the leadership of
Samuel. It was common at that time, we
are told, that the prophets would fall into ecstatic trances when the Spirit
came upon them. Their bodies would
convulse as a sign that it was God who directed their speech as well as their
bodies (1 Sam 19.18ff). The dance of
David owes something to this, I suspect.
Those who saw him would have understood that he danced as an oracle
would, that the movement of his body and the cries of his rejoicing should be
taken as a word of encouragement for the people from God. As the Ark was processed into Jerusalem, so
the Lord’s own favour would return to his embattled people, to undergird and
support his servant David in all that he did on their behalf. All the more so because this prophetic
message is presented within a priestly and liturgical framework. David danced in an ephod, we are told, which
is amongst the most sacred garments of a priest. He also offers sacrifices for sin and
well-being before the Ark, as a priest would have done. The message is clear. David’s dancing is, at one and the same time,
an act of worship and a message from God.
In the priestly persona he prays to God on behalf of the people. He cries out with their longings for peace
and prosperity. In the prophetic
persona, he becomes at the same time an oracle for God, one who addresses the
people with a word of assurance and promise.
The Dance of David, then, is an important symbol of both our Christian
gospel and our Christian experience.
Like all good symbols, it should be taken literally. That is, it should be lived in the body as
well as spoken about in conversation.
For when I go dancing with my friends, I experience something of my own
pain and longing. I long
for a world in which, for example, gay Christians are accepted not only as
priests and ministers, but more importantly as human beings, capable, and
worthy of, the giving and receiving of love.
Yet, when I go dancing with my friends, I also hear and experience
something of God’s good news. That
despite everything, Christ has died our death that we might die his. In the experience of the Dance, God invites
us to leave our selves, selves full of pain and bitterness and malice, behind: to nail that self to the cross with Christ,
that we might rise into the joy of the children of God and share in the ecstasy
of the divine dance of love, which is the true liturgy of the redeemed.
Of course, dancing is not always unambiguously good, as the gospel
reading shows. There the child Herodius
loses herself in the dance, only to be possessed by the evil intentions of her
mother toward the prophet, John the Baptist.
In a similar way many of our young people, in losing themselves to the
dance, make themselves the victims of unscrupulous people - sexual predators and drug dealers, with all their sordid
intentions. Still . . . I would witness that the Dance, if it is a
dance before God and in the power of the Spirit, really can save
us. If we can lose ourselves in the
worship of Christ, then Christ will come to fill our emptied egos with
good things, with his own self, a self which has passed through the waters of
despair, and now dances in the freedom of God.
In this new ballroom of grace and promise, we join the dance of God’s
own self—forever ceding ourselves for the other’s sake, and yet receiving
truer, kinder, more loving selves from the other in return. And so I say to you, finally, tonight. Lose yourselves in the Dance, and the Dance
will become the source of your rejoicing. Both now and in the life to come. Amen
Garry Deverell
