With All Your Might
Anna Carter Florence
First Baptist Church
Austin, TX
29 October 2017
2 Samuel 6
Well,
I must say, it is an absolute pleasure to preach for a worship service when art
and faith in the heart of Austin are being celebrated at First Baptist Church.
You do realize how many stereotypes you are busting, in this service? No one back home is going to believe it, and
then they’ll all wish they’d thought of it.
I’ve been imagining what it might be like, if we could do this at every
Baptist church, Presbyterian church, you-name-it-church-and-faith-community, just
once, as an experiment. It might open up
some interesting possibilities. For
example, we could probably get the sermon down to less than ten minutes, which
in some Presbyterian contexts, would be a very good thing. And since we’d have more time in the service
for other forms of biblical interpretation and exposition, how about if we
commissioned some more pieces for music and dance and theatre and visual arts
and whatever else you’ve got on hand?
And not just the usual text settings for festival worship: I’m talking
about taking some really hard biblical passages, the stories no one wants to
read, let alone preach, and letting the artists go to town with them; why not? Sometimes the best thing to do with a really
hard story, whether it’s from the bible from or your own life, is to make art
out of it. Don’t try to explain it. Just explore.
See what happens, when you open it up.
See what truth emerges, and it always does.
So
just for fun, I picked a kicker of a passage, as you may have noticed: 2 Samuel,
chapter 6. And not just the singing-and-dancing-before-the-Lord-bits:
the whole weird thing. We could spend
weeks on this text, and I sort of wish we could, since I’ve never heard any
sermons or plays or anthems that specifically deal with Uzzah and the ark of
God; if you have, I would certainly
like to hear about it. But even without
dwelling on poor Uzzah, there is so much here for an artist and a child of God;
so much here for us! Listen:
David danced before the Lord
with all his might; David was girded with a linen ephod. So
David and all the house of Israel brought up the ark of the Lord with shouting, and with the sound
of the trumpet.
Of
course, the minute someone in the bible is leaping and dancing before the Lord,
you know it has to be David; it’s always David. Walter Brueggemann says that David is so
irresistible, even God can’t resist him.
And by this point in David’s life, that really seems to be the
case. The man is at the pinnacle of his
talent and his power. He’s defeated King
Saul, defeated the Philistines, secured the kingdom and gotten the top
job. He has wives and concubines and children
and armies and subjects. He’s even
bringing the ark of God into his city, just to show how much God wants to live
with him and only him. Everything is
going David’s way—and that is a very a dangerous place to be. When you have that much power, you can use it
whenever you want—and not because it’s right;
because you can. It’s what the prophets are always warning
about; it’s what David himself will struggle to remember.
So
at the peak of his power, suddenly, David gets a glimpse of his shadow side,
the underbelly of all this power. It
gets played out right in front of him, in the person of poor Uzzah, who reaches
out just to steady the ark of God on its cart just to keep it from falling, and
gets struck down dead. There’s no reason
for it. There’s no justice in it. It just happens, because, as the text says,
God chooses to do it. And in one flash,
David gets it: no matter how much power we human beings have, we will never
even come close to the power of God, and what can happen when we are in God’s
presence. It’s like Annie Dillard said:
put on your crash helmets; this is worship, y’all. Anything
can happen! David gets it. And instead of deciding that the ark of God
is not worth the trouble and the danger, he does something amazingly wonderful:
he starts to dance before it. He dances
with all his might before the Lord, in a most un-kingly and un-dignified
way. No regal composure; no royal
wave. David gets out there and boogies, to use a very seventies term;
he shakes that thing until you can
see his underwear, as the rabbis said; because it’s almost impossible to dance
before the Lord with all your might and not
show a little leg.
Of course, this tends
to upset some people.
David danced before the Lord
with all his might; David was girded with a linen ephod. So
David and all the house of Israel brought up the ark of the Lord with shouting, and with the sound
of the trumpet. As the ark of the Lord came into the city of David, Michal,
daughter of Saul looked out of the window, and saw King David leaping and
dancing before the Lord; and she
despised him in her heart. . . . She said, “How the king of Israel honored
himself today, uncovering himself before the eyes of his servants’ maids, as
any vulgar fellow might shamelessly uncover himself!”
Acts of great truth
are like acts of great art: they expose us.
They strip us bare. They peel
away all the false layers of pride and fear, and they walk us out into the
night and hold us in a different light, and it is such a relief. To hear the truth, finally—in music, in
words, in human gestures—it is such a wondrous relief. And it takes a lot of courage to be the one
to embody that truth, which is why artists are so brave, why artists of faith are so brave. Not just because we can see your underwear,
but because we can see you’ve chosen to lay aside all your power and all your
might, just to dance with it. That is a
radical thing to do with power, these days—and it is a frightening thing, too. Not all of us like being exposed. And so for every King David there’s a Queen
Michal, worrying about what people will think.
Worrying about what people will say.
Furious that you’ve gone and stirred things up, shown us for what we
really are. How the king of Israel honored himself today, uncovering himself before
the eyes of his servants’ maids, as any vulgar fellow might shamelessly uncover
himself! It’s the uncovering that
sets her off. Acts of great truth and
acts of great art always uncover, even as they inspire. It’s why we have to practice our courage
along with our scales.
David danced before the Lord
with all his might; David was girded with a linen ephod. So
David and all the house of Israel brought up the ark of the Lord with shouting, and with the sound
of the trumpet. As the ark of the Lord came into the city of David, Michal,
daughter of Saul looked out of the window, and saw King David leaping and
dancing before the Lord; and she
despised him in her heart. . . . She said, “How the king of Israel honored
himself today, uncovering himself before the eyes of his servants’ maids, as
any vulgar fellow might shamelessly uncover himself!” David said to Michal, “It was before the Lord, who chose me in place of your
father and all his household, to appoint me as prince over Israel, the people
of the Lord, that I have danced
before the Lord. I will
make myself yet more contemptible than this, and I will be abased in my own
eyes; but by the maids of whom you have spoken, by them I shall be held in
honor.”
When
I was in high school, our drama teacher was named Mr. Phelps. He was tall and stringy and bald and bearded,
and somehow he had landed in our little New England town from Colorado, where
none of us had ever been. He wore jeans
and cowboy boots every day—we figured that must be what teachers wore, out
there in the West—and he carried a huge leather shoulder bag overflowing with
books and papers, because it turned out he was also a graduate student, at the
Yale School of Drama. He’d come flying
into the parking lot every afternoon in his beat-up car with the Colorado
plates, just in time for rehearsal, and from the moment he raced into the
auditorium until he dismissed us three hours later, that man demanded more of
us than any teacher we’d ever had. We
weren’t sure if we liked him, but we loved him, and we would have followed him
anywhere to work with him, because when Mr. Phelps was directing a musical, he
danced before the Lord with all his might.
I mean, the man was out of his seat every three seconds, dancing back
and forth and shouting and provoking and prodding us with his clipboard, and if
we didn’t play a scene or sing a song with the kind of life he wanted, he
jumped up and down until we did. It was
something none of us had experienced before, and the day of auditions, the
theatre was packed. Not just with drama queens, by the way: it was packed with jocks
and musicians and cool kids and wallflowers and techies and nerds and boys who
were heading straight from high school into auto mechanics, because this was a
rather humble little town; but when Mr. Phelps was directing the musical,
everyone wanted to be part of it. You could
set aside the layers you have to wear in high school. You could forget all the ways you were
secretly afraid, because he pointed us toward the ark, the presence of
God.
It
still astonishes me to remember how eager we were to learn every line and sing
every note of the scripts he put in front of us. I’m fairly sure that only a handful of kids
in the auditorium had been to see live professional theatre, since going to the
movies was the most excitement we had, and this was the seventies—for us, “art”
meant Rocky and Jaws and Saturday Night Fever. But when we were on that high school stage, we
understood that art was about ultimate things.
We were transported to the streets of London in “Oliver,” and the fire
escapes of New York in “West Side Story,” and the shtetls of Russia in “Fiddler
on the Roof”—places that became real and holy for us, with people we knew. Because somehow, when we entered the scripts Mr.
Phelps put before us, beloved community was real; grace was real. We were
stripped bare, just us and the great mysterious holy. But we would never have had the courage to go
there if he hadn’t danced first, if he hadn’t shown us that there are other
things you can do with power besides hurling it at someone, and if he hadn’t
been willing to be abased in his own eyes as well as ours.
David danced before the Lord
with all his might; David was girded with a linen ephod. So
David and all the house of Israel brought up the ark of the Lord with shouting, and with the sound
of the trumpet—and, I am sure, every artist in Israel.
You
know, every week in worship, we come before God just as we are. And it is the artists among us who show us that
“just as we are” means being as stripped and exposed as David was, dancing
before the Lord with all our might, instead of doing the myriad of other things
we can do with that might. They show us,
and it matters. It matters so much. To pour your life into your art and your love
for God so that even high school students, even church folk, can tell that you
aren’t afraid to be abased in your own eyes as well as theirs: that is a great act. As my younger son remarked one Sunday, as the
minister of music at our little church simultaneously conducted the bell choir
and rang five or six of the bells himself, sweat pouring down his face:
“Wow. Philip really rocks those
bells.” Or as the audience last night marveled,
after the Trinity Street Players had performed the songs that slayed them—the songs
that had broken their hearts and healed their hearts and gave them courage and
shown them hope—“Wow; this was like church!” And while we’re on the subject, could
there be in any other Baptist church
in this country, a nine-months pregnant minister who will sing songs from “Dear
Evan Hansen” and “Jesus Christ Superstar” and “La Cage aux Folles” and “Itsy
Bitsy Spider” (in spider drag), just to show us how the kingdom of God is like
musical theatre in the heart of Austin?!? Pour your life into a song, and people will
see it. And that’s what they will
respond to; that’s how music works. Pour
your life into your faith, and it is the
same thing.
So
beloved of God, be transparent! Let them
see you. Because this day isn’t about artsy Baptists,
whatever they might be; it’s about dancing before God with all your might,
until even those who love you are starting to cringe. To choose that, in a day such as this, in the
heart of Austin, is what is pleasing to God.
Amen.
2
SAMUEL 6
David
again gathered all the chosen men of Israel, thirty thousand. 2 David and all the people with him set out
and went from Baale-judah, to bring up from there the ark of God, which is
called by the name of the Lord of
hosts who is enthroned on the cherubim.
3 They carried the ark of God on a new cart, and brought it out of the
house of Abinadab, which was on the hill. Uzzah and Ahio, the sons of Abinadab,
were driving the new cart
4 with the ark of God;
and Ahio went in front of the ark. 5 David and all the house of Israel were
dancing before the Lord with all
their might, with songs and lyres and harps and tambourines and castanets and
cymbals.
6
When they came to the threshing floor of Nacon, Uzzah reached out his hand to
the ark of God and took hold of it, for the oxen shook it. 7 The anger of the Lord was kindled against Uzzah; and God
struck him there because he reached out his hand to the ark; and he died there
beside the ark of God.
8 David was angry because the Lord had burst forth with an outburst
upon Uzzah; so that place is called Perez-uzzah, to this day. 9 David was afraid of the
Lord that day; he said, “How can
the ark of the Lord come into my
care?” 10 So
David was unwilling to take the ark of the Lord
into his care in the city of David; instead David took it to the house of
Obed-edom the Gittite.
11 The ark of the Lord remained in the house of Obed-edom the Gittite three
months; and the Lord blessed
Obed-edom and all his household.
12
It was told King David, “The Lord
has blessed the household of Obed-edom and all that belongs to him, because of
the ark of God.” So David went and brought up the ark of God from the house of
Obed-edom to the city of David with rejoicing; 13 and when those who bore the ark of the Lord had gone six paces, he sacrificed
an ox and a fatling. 14 David danced before the Lord with all his might; David was
girded with a linen ephod.
15 So David and all the house of Israel
brought up the ark of the Lord
with shouting, and with the sound of the trumpet. 16 As
the ark of the Lord came into the
city of David, Michal daughter of Saul looked out of the window, and saw King
David leaping and dancing before the Lord;
and she despised him in her heart. 17 They brought in the ark of the Lord, and set it in its place, inside
the tent that David had pitched for it; and David offered burnt offerings and
offerings of well-being before the Lord. 18 When David had
finished offering the burnt offerings and the offerings of well-being, he
blessed the people in the name of the Lord
of hosts, 19 and distributed food among all the people,
the whole multitude of Israel, both men and women, to each a cake of bread, a
portion of meat, and a cake of raisins. Then all the people went back to their
homes.
20
David returned to bless his household. But Michal the daughter of Saul came out
to meet David, and said, “How the king of Israel honored himself today,
uncovering himself today before the eyes of his servants’ maids, as any vulgar
fellow might shamelessly uncover himself!” 21 David said to Michal, “It was before the Lord, who chose me in place of your
father and all his household, to appoint me as prince over Israel, the people
of the Lord, that I have danced
before the Lord. 22 I will make myself yet
more contemptible than this, and I will be abased in my own eyes; but by the
maids of whom you have spoken, by them I shall be held in honor.” 23 And Michal the
daughter of Saul had no child to the day of her death.
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