Dance Like Michal is Watching

7-15-18 (Proper 10/Ordinary 15 Year B, Semi-Continuous)

2 Samuel 6:1-5, 12-23; Mark 6:14-29

Dance Like Michal is Watching

In reading the passages from the lectionary this week, there are some very striking themes that run through both the Old and the New Testament readings.  Dancing plays a significant role in the events of both 2 Samuel and the gospel of Mark, but there is a deeper element of sheer boldness that shows up in the actions of both David and of John the Baptist that stands out to me and which we should take time today to focus on.

In the reading today from 2 Samuel, we see king David in a fashion which is very uncustomary and, most would argue, very unbecoming for a king.  David is in a peculiar position, not so much because he is dancing and leading the procession of the Ark of the Covenant back to his city, but because of the way in which he is attired.  The passage tells us that David was “girded with a linen ephod,” which was a necessary part of the priestly dress and a kind of undergarment upon which other ceremonial vestments were placed.  David’s wife, Michal, who was Saul’s daughter, most certainly disapproved of David’s wardrobe decisions, and as we continue through the rest of the passage, we can hear her chastise David as he enters to his home to bless his household: “How the king of Israel honored himself today, uncovering himself today before the eyes of his servants’ female servants, as one of the vulgar fellows shamelessly uncovers himself!”

Yet David’s answer is quick to put Michal in her place - “It was before the Lord, who chose me above your father and above all his house, to appoint me as prince over Israel, the people of the Lord - and I will celebrate before the Lord.  I will make myself yet more contemptible than this, and I will be abased in your eyes.  But by the female servants of whom you have spoken, by them I shall be held in honor.”  The text continues to inform readers that Michal, after her speaking to David in this way, had no children to the day of her death.

David had cause to dance, and had cause to honor God by wearing priestly linens as he danced before the Lord’s holy footstool.  The ark, after too long a time under Philistine captivity, was finally coming back to its home where it belonged.  The ark had been through quite a lot, even in its journey back to Israel - in a passage which the lectionary conspicuously skips, a man named Uzzah is actually struck dead for attempting to stabilize the ark when the oxen who are pulling the cart with the ark on it stumble.  David is afraid after this and was unwilling to bring the ark fully back to his own City, saying “How can the ark of the Lord come to me?”  But during the three months in which he stays in the house of Obed-edom the Gittite, God blessed Obed-edom and all of his household.  Once David realizes that God blesses households through the ark, his is made bold to joyfully bring the ark back to its rightful home in obedience to his Lord.

This boldness carries over into the passage we read in the gospel of Mark.  As it turns out, John the Baptist has made himself a significant enemy in Herodias - apparently, telling the big-wigs that it is unlawful for Herod to have his brother’s wife hit a nerve, since Herodias held a particularly strong grudge against him.  Unfortunately, this boldness causes dancing in a more negative sense - when Herodias’ daughter dances before Herod and he promises her anything she wants, Herodias finally has the opportunity to exact her revenge on John for calling her out so strongly and for pointing out the sin in Herod’s life.  Herod is regretfully forced to behead John the Baptist, though he feared doing it and apparently had even come to like John.

Herod’s decision to execute John and Michal’s annoyance at David were ultimately choices made in bad faith; Michal focused on the outward appearance of David wearing an ephod before his people and ended up.  Herod’s situation, though complex, still ends with him making a similar bad-faith decision; Herod chooses to uphold his promise to Herodias’ daughter, meet the demands of his household, and uphold his public image at the expense of a man whom he had ultimately come to like and who was actively ministering to him in surprising and even pleasing ways.  And because of their own responses, both Michal and Herod suffer sad consequences by not having any children or by having lost the person who was ministering so closely to them.

These two separate, yet particularly intertwined tales of dancing and its perhaps unexpected negative results made me stop and wonder - what if we were to be so bold in the living out of our own faith?  The old saying goes “dance like no one is watching,” but what if we were to dance like Michal was watching?  What if we were to dance, even knowing that it might meet with disapproval, knowing that it might cause us to become “even more undignified than this?” What would it look like if we were to dance boldly and proclaim the blessings of the Lord in our own lives?  What would it look like if we didn’t put boundaries on ourselves because we worry what others will think?  What would it look like if we were to actively, boldly, and faithfully witness to the consequences of the bad-faith decisions that are being made still today in our own midst?  Families are devastated when health care companies make insurance unaffordable; working families struggle to make ends meet when national debt erodes the value of the dollar and drives up prices.

We face bad-faith decisions in the church as much and as unfortunately as we do in the secular world - people are excluded from participating in the mission of Christ to the world because of disabilities they live with; throughout history, men and women across the country who lived out their lives boldly in the faith that they confessed encountered boundaries to the joyful living out of their faith due to the color of their skin or the fact that they were women.  The church divides itself over its inability to see beyond its own entrenched notions of what Scripture truly says and becomes completely bogged down in political argumentativeness when it should be dancing joyfully in the presence and the blessings of God in Jesus Christ our Lord.

What if we, the church, were to speak out boldly against these bad-faith decisions and challenge the church, the body of Christ, to read our own decisions in light of the decisions of Herod and Michal?  What if we were to speak out in joyful and loving obedience to the Spirit, asking ourselves whether the choices we are making are self-protective, or part of God’s transformation of the world?  What if we were to have the audacity of John the Baptist to cry out against the corruption and to expect change, even if it means that we must sacrifice ourselves in the name of Christ?

This kind of boldness is counter-cultural; it’s subversive - it’s dangerous.  But it’s a dance to which we are all invited.  Let us remember the boldness of David and of John and the blessings which God gave them, even in the danger of their boldness.  Let us move in the steps of this dance to which we are called and dance to the glory of God the Father.  Amen.