Dancing Fools

Let's Dance....Shall We Dance?....Do You Wanna Dance? And David danced before the Lord with abandon....Undignified...YES, I want to dance!

David recovered the ark from the Philistines and brought it to Jerusalem, and his joy and delight overtook him and he danced (naked according to some translations!) with abandon and merriment. And so we danced in church on Sunday, and I mean we really danced! I was so excited that the lectionary OT reading was the tale of David bringing the ark to the political capital of Jerusalem. This has long been one of my favorite texts, but even more so once I was exposed to the David Crowder Band. Crowder and his band made a huge hit out of Matt Redman's Undignified, a praise song that captures King David's frolicking emotions. According to Redman, the king danced and sang from the passion of his soul, and no matter what others thought of him, dignity was not a concern!

So I got my good friend, the youth director who first exposed me to Crowder, to help me make a video to play in worship on Sunday. And then I got my young friend from the new congregation to make 'waving wands'.....thin dowels with several strands of brightly colored ribbons tied at the end for shaking and waving. And then I got my son to get me a projector from his work place. And then I told the pastor, "well, it will either be a train wreck or a ball." And then I worried a bit. . . well maybe more than a bit. How would this all 'play' in a congregation that has never heard or sung a praise piece? A little congregation where the average age may be 65. Will anybody but ME think this is a great, toe tapping, bounce your head, jump up and down tune? Will I be the only one excited that a great David Crowder Band piece fits so perfectly with the Revised Common Lectionary reading for the day? Will they all sit there and stare at me with 'what in the world is she doing?' faces?????? Will the laptop and the projector and the soundsystem and the cables all actually work at 10 am Sunday?

So I practiced, I wrote, I got pictures of the arc, I worked and reworked my little video until I feared my favorite Crowder song might drive me to distraction. My dear dear husband came home from work Saturday and went right down to the church with me to try out the technology. I hope you are getting the picture that this is a 1950s, traditional, mainline church. I think we are lucky to even have a sound system, but it certainly is not designed for what we were asking it to do on Sunday morning.

And then it was Sunday morning. Off we go....into the first reading, 2 Samuel 6...and then into the children's sermon. The Spirit had cleverly led me to bury all this new stuff in the children's sermon. I failed to see the beauty of that plan until Sunday afternoon. I can be so dense. So the kids and I talked about arks (yes, they first pointed out Noah's ark...good lead in if we think of an ark as something that holds precious things). I had pictures of the ark and of men moving the ark. And then we talked about King David. How the ark had been taken by the Philistines. How David was bringing it 'home' and what that meant to him. And then we talked about dancing in the streets. Why don't people dance in the streets any more? We could remember people dancing last November when President Obama was elected; but that was about it. What would WE dance in the streets about?

And then I shared MY passion for David Crowder....and we handed out the waving wands, and we played the video, and we danced. And I left my pride by my side....and I didn't care!

And then I looked away from the kids and out to the congregation, and I couldn't believe what I was seeing and hearing. The clapping registered first in my brain. And then the adults jumping up in their pews, swaying and moving to the beat. And then an 88 year old widower came dancing out into the aisle and up towards the chancel. As soon as she saw him, a middle aged widow came out from the other pew and joined him, dancing as they went towards the kids. And someone started handing out extra waving wands to adults in the pews. And a couple of the teens started skipping and dancing all through the congregation. And my feet were dancing, my head was spinning, my heart was racing, and the Spirit was MOVING!

It was overwhelming, and spiritual, and dare I say, almost Pentecostal??? Us tied up, buttoned downed Presbyterians were behaving like a bunch of charismatics and having a ball. And dignity??? Well I think we were quite dignified in our undignified state. There was little decency and order...but lots of Spirit.

And it was indeed one of those worship experiences where the Spirit takes some pretty good stuff, but whips it up into so much more; more than we could ever do on our own, more than we could ever even imagine. It was contagious. It was fun. It was awesome. It was undignified!