Footloose

2 Samuel 6:1-5, 12b-19

July 29, 2018

William G. Carter

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 . . .  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. 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. 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, 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.

Regardless of his wife’s reaction, and in spite of any other bumps in the road, this was the biggest day in King David’s life.

He has had a lot of big days before. The day that the prophet Samuel knocked on his father’s door – that was a big day. Samuel was looking for a new king. God had gotten disgusted with old King Saul, and told the prophet, “Go to Jesse’s house, because one of his sons is my next choice.” So Jesse opened the door to the strange old prophet, who went down the line and sized up each of his seven sons. Samuel said, “Are these all you have?” Jesse said, “Well, there’s one more, little David. He’s out in the field, tending the sheep.” Sure enough, God said, “He’s the one.” So Samuel made him kneel, and anointed him right there in the family living room. He wasn’t quite the king yet, but it was a big day.

His victory over Goliath – that was a big day. Little David was sent by his father to deliver his brothers’ lunch boxes on the battle field and discovered everybody in the army was moping around. Just then, that big Philistine stepped out to insult the Israelites for the 40^th day in a row. He was enormous, built like a tank and just a heavily armored, and he had to be ten feet tall. David shrugged. He went down to the river bank, picked up five smooth stones, and put one of them in sling. He ran toward the giant, whirled the contraption around his head, and planted the first stone in a bullseye. Goliath dropped to the ground. That was a big day.

David has had a lot of big days. The day crazy King Saul threw a spear at him and he ducked just in time – that got the adrenaline going. Sneaking out of his house just ahead of Saul’s assassins – that kept the adrenaline going too. Staying three steps ahead of jealous King Saul, leading his own band of marauders against the Philistines, avoiding angry King Saul’s slaughter of the Jedi Masters in the temple, outliving the heretic King Saul and his last son’s attempt on the throne – I guess you could say every day for a David was a big day.

But the story we just heard tells about his really big day, and that was the day they brought the Ark of the Covenant into the City of David. David is the king now, so he can name a city after himself; we know it as Jerusalem, but he called it the City of David. And for some reason, after neglecting it for twenty years, David brings the Ark out of storage and directs a parade to bring it into his capital city.

Now, the critics make some snarky comments about this. One of them says this was a political move. He hasn’t needed that box with the Ten Commandments inside it for the last twenty years. Why would he need it now? Given the spoils of war, the slaughter of enemies, and the taking of multiple wives and concubines, it’s not like he has kept all the Commandments. So some of the scholars, Walter Brueggemann among them, say that David is trying to prove that he’s bona fide, that he’s finally the legitimate king, that he has God with him. And we can understand the criticism. Every king wants God on his side, if only to justify the royal decisions. More to the point, every king wants God in his pocket, to justify the royal authority and buttress the royal power.

We could almost believe that’s the plot afoot … except that there’s a bump in the road. Quite literally, there’s a bump. The ox cart stumbles, the Ark of the Covenant begins to fall, and a holy lightning bolt zaps a hapless attendant named Uzzah. It’s a terrifying reminder that God is not in that box, that God has given them a chapter in the old book of Exodus about how to respect that box, and God will not be trifled with. The parade stops and stalls for three whole months. Nobody wants to touch that box. In fact, they probably had to find an old copy of Exodus to learn the proper way to handle the box that contains the Words of God.

In any case, David was very upset. The text says he was “angry with God.” Then, after a pause, the text says he was “afraid of God.” We can dare to venture he was angry that God was not the least bit interested in being manipulated for political purposes. And when anger passed, there came a proper reverence – what the Bible calls “the fear of the Lord,” not a phobia kind of fear, not a cowering kind of fear, but a joyful kind of fear – call it a great, big “WOW.” And with that, the parade starts up again.

What a remarkable, noisy procession it was! Thirty thousand people were singing and shouting the same song at the same time. And the musicians cut loose, too. If you’re going to have a celebration, you need some musicians. They did: there were trumpets, lyres, harps, tambourines, castanets, and cymbals. Any good parade is going to have a lot of cymbals.

With all this joyful noise, David started to dance. David had to dance. He bounced, he boogied, he clapped his hands, stomped his feet, and gyrated his hips. When he worked up a little perspiration, he pulled off his tunic, tossed it in the air, and kept dancing. The more he danced, the warmer he became, so he pulled something else off, and kept dancing. Pretty soon, he was dancing in the same suit he wore when he was born, and he didn’t care.

His wife cared. Maybe she didn’t care much about him, but she cared about his reputation. He was the King of Israel, and here he was, moving and grooving to the castanets, naked and dancing the Funky Chicken without hesitation or restriction. She groused about it, “That’s no way for a king to behave.” But he ignored her, because there is something more important than anything else, and that’s the experience of being totally alive.

That’s what we have here – a snapshot of a man who is thoroughly joyful and completely alive. Like I said, it was the best day of his life.

Have you ever had a day like that? A day where you totally lose yourself in something so enormous?

Summer is the season for big concerts. That’s a possible analogy, I believe. Large crowds of people gather in massive amphitheaters to listen to music that they remember from twenty or more years ago. Like my friend Jeff who was here last Wednesday night to play his trumpet. He drove home in the rain to Syracuse, and two nights later he went to hear the band Chicago. It made him smile, him and twenty thousand of his closest friends. The energy was palpable. He enjoyed it, deeply enjoyed. And then, he said, as a musician, he would rather be playing in a band than listening to one. That’s where he pours himself out. It’s where he loses himself.

I think of people who lose all track of time when they are doing something larger than their own soul. Like the lady I know who fixes meals for a group of homeless men. She slices up onions, cooks up stew, pulls homemade pies out of the oven, all for a group of folks who could never repay her. “How much time do you spend down there?” you might ask. She looks at you, the screen completely blank, and she says, “I don’t know. I forget to look at the clock because I enjoy it so much. It’s what I was meant to do.” That’s what a good day looks like to her.

Of course, there are others who just can’t dance, are unwilling to ever lose themselves in anything, much less ever get lost. And often they squelch the joy in others. Years ago, when I was single and speaking at a Bible conference in Virginia, I asked my daughters if they wanted to go out for ice cream. They squealed and ran to the minivan. When they got there, they said, “Can we ask Emily and her mom to go to?” Emily was a girl the same age as one of them, and Emily’s mom was a young widow, a very pretty young widow. Of course, they had already invited them.

So I said, “Sure, let’s go, I’m buying,” and off we went, all of us. It was completely innocent. We went for ice cream, brought the cones back to the conference center, got out of the car. Then one of my girls said, “Come on, Emily, let’s go to the playground.” They start to run off, and Emily’s mom yells, “Emily, you walk like a lady. You behave now, you hear?” It took all the air out of the little girl’s tires.

Later that evening, one of my girls said, “What’s wrong with Emily’s mom?” I said, “What do you mean?” She said, in a seven-year-old’s wisdom, “She didn’t want her kid to have any fun.”

I’ve often wondered when we stopped letting kids be kids. For that matter, when did we tell adults to stop being kids? If the Bible story today has any juice, it’s about the experience of pure joy, the availability of delight, and the possibility of ecstasy.

Do you remember the last phrase from today’s opening first hymn? “Lost in wonder, love, and praise.” The selection was intentional, because it points to a primary aim of the Christian life. To be caught up in the moments when everything clicks, to be intoxicated by the deep truth that we are alive because God is alive. It is OK to lose ourselves in wonder, OK to love so deeply that we give ourselves away, OK to be caught up in the thunderous work of praise. It’s more than OK, because the things are real, as God is real.

“Lost in wonder, love, and praise.” I happen to believe this is what heaven is like – not merely “then” but “now” - and I also happen to believe that Jesus, the Son of David, comes to bring heaven to earth – to unite them in such a way that the joy of heaven begins here and now, right here, and continues forever.

And I also happen to believe a few things about hell. Hell is a place where uptight people fight about which dinner fork to use, or bicker over the proper dress code at a banquet where the main course is a cold steak, and they argue vehemently with one another over the precise time when the meal will be served and everybody keeps watching the clock.

You know what? I’d rather be lost in wonder, love, and praise. This is why: life is full of challenges. Every day is not a good day. But when the good days come, they are always a gift, and they have the power to carry us through all the days and nights that aren’t so good.  

As the David story moves on from here, it’s going to have some bumps. He will resume fighting against the Philistines, and start fighting the Ammonites and the Arameans. One day in the palace, he will spy another man’s wife and decide to steal her, and then try to pretend that God isn’t watching. He will lose a child in birth, and later he will lose another child who rebelled and tried to kill him. His palace will be full of all kinds of bad behavior, and it will wear him out.

Yet beyond it all, is the memory of this day, a good day. Beyond it all is the hope that tomorrow could also be a good day. Beyond it is the truth that God rules over all of us, that tragedy may be real but it never has the last word on us, that pain and difficulty come to all of us but God invites us through and beyond all the pain and difficulty, that death comes to each of us but life continues, and it continues abundantly.

There’s something so much more than the brokenness that we know so well. It’s the joy, joy as if from the other side, beckoning us forward and setting us free. So dance, David, dance. Even if your wife complains and the winds blow against you. Even if the guy driving the ox cart makes a terrible mistake, keep dancing. Push the rhythm of that tambourine. Stomp your feet. Raise your hands.

Lose yourself in something so much greater than yourself. Lose yourself in joy. Lose yourself in love. Lose yourself in praise. Lose yourself in God; for then, you will not be lost but found.

(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.