CELEBRATING:
SERMONS
"Song and Dance -
the Response of Faith" Sept 15th, 2002
Let us pray:
God be in our hearts and heads; our hands and feet and
voices — then you will be known and loved. AMEN
Song and dance — funny how in English that has
taken on a negative meaning. "He gave me a song
and dance about how busy he was." In other words,
a story probably less than true, designed more to convince
me, than tell the truth.
That's not the page we are on today!
Song and dance today represent response from whole people.
This banner of "Miriam Dancing" by Karen Madsen
Pascal symbolizes faith-filled bodily response to God's
saving action in life.
If Protestant worship has been marked
by too many words spoken, too many thoughts processed,
too much reasoning and too little passion, then
this banner and the text behind it tell us our whole
being - body, soul and spirit — needs to be involved
in responding to God.
Song and dance is the fundamental
response of faith.
As a Calvinist with two left feet, I regret how hard
it is for me to dance. But as one who loves to sing,
I know that my faith has often been sustained in empty
periods or trying times by the songs of faith —
connecting me to the faith response of previous generations.
There is little I love better than to listen to a recording
of a mass choir singing the stirring music of faith
accompanied by organ, brass, piano and more. Live would
be even better!
One measure of a congregation's
faithfulness is the vitality and energy of its singing
— not just the choir's singing or soloists performing,
but all of us together singing, expressing with heart
and soul and body the songs of faith.
I think we do pretty well as a congregation.
But I also know that when I sit in the pews, getting
a sense of really singing together is often elusive.
The two choirs in the chancel today are gifted pace
setters for us, but in worship the real race is to be
run by all of us together,
we all need to be part of the joyful chorus in worship.
Why is that?, we might ask. Why
can't we just delegate our response to the experts?
The response of faith is essentially
personal response.
As individuals in community, we respond to God's gifts
and God's action.
Miriam, Moses' sister, and the people of Israel are
singing and dancing their joy because together they
experienced being delivered from the bondage and captivity
of Egypt.
This motley crew of slaves set out from Egypt and when
they arrived at the shores of a lake where today we
find the Suez Canal, they were boxed in.
And Pharaoh and his army thought they could hold a turkey
shoot to show these upstart slaves who was boss.
Pharaoh failed.
Was it the east wind that drove the water back at the
eastern shore of the Reed Sea? Who knows! It happened
there before.
But at that particular place and time, the door was
opened for the slaves to escape. And when the wind died
down, Pharaoh's army sank into the mud and rising water.
To Miriam and the crowd around this was no freak of
nature.
It was evidence of the active and present God in their
midst.
Through this signal event, this motley crew becomes
a people of God — a community of faith created
by God's saving act.
Together they enjoy their newfound freedom as a gift
of God.
And so this rag tag band — these refugees and pilgrims
— as they sing and dance they become a community
of worship.
With heart and soul, they respond to God's goodness
— song and dance!
We know about this!
- We witness an awesome night sky
and we are moved and it makes us want to sing.
- We are saved from an awful accident
and we spontaneously exclaim "Thank God"
and would sing it if we had a tune.
- We sense our lives brought into
relationship with people we love, and we want to sing
a happy song, dance a jig, or shout "Hallelujah."
- A family goes through difficult
time, but comes through and they rejoice together.
- As a congregation last year,
we felt God's leading over 75 years and delighted
in giving God thanks for all the blessing along the
way.
- People of faith experience Christ
risen from the dead, and our instinct is to dance
and sing together as we did here on Easter morning
— Alleluia, Christ is Risen
It is also typical, that what begins
as a rudimentary exclamation is then fleshed out.
If you look in the Bible Miriam's original song was
just two short lines (Ex. 15:21)
Sing to the Lord, for God has
triumped gloriously;
The horse and ride God has thrown into the sea.
Then poets, story tellers, composers
and musicians elaborate that original exclamation and
expression of relief and thanks to God, into a 17 verse
hymn of praise to God. The meaning of the event is fleshed
out — it takes on larger proportions — in
poetry and melody, to move the people to deeper gratitude
and more profound faith. The story shapes the community.
Israel becomes an exodus people.
So music in worship is response
— response to God's gifts.
But also recital.
People of faith keep telling the story over and over
again, so that they will remember that God did it and
not they themselves.
God's grace saved you, your existence as a person and
as a people is God's gift.
By reciting the story and dancing it frequently with
your body, you remember deep in your bones that your
deliverance comes not from your own efforts and worth,
but from God's goodness.
That's why in the Bible you so often find reminders
of the Exodus story — in the Psalms, in the prophetic
literature, in other books of scripture, the story of
God delivering Israel is repeated time after time.
By retelling the story, we learn that's the way God
works — God brings down the mighty and raises the
lowly; God delivers the captive; God gives openings
of freedom to the oppressed.
As we sing and dance this and other
stories of faith, we help ourselves to remember our
humble roots among the dispossessed and the powerless,
and that it was God's saving action that brought us
freedom and wholeness.
We needn't be surprised that the black people of the
southern USA treasured the stories of God working with
Israel.
Their spirituals retell with soul the stories of liberation
in grateful hope and faithful conviction that the God
who delivered the Israelites would also deliver them.
It is their musical response to God's greatness and
their retelling of the biblical stories that will conclude
this meditation.
So as you listen and hum along in
your heart, hear the response of people of faith and
listen to the story they retell.
Because in those stories sung and danced, we encounter
the creating, redeeming, and sustaining God who longs
to liberate us.
Thanks be to God. AMEN
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Shaughnessy Heights United Church
congregation is a Christian faith community — people
at various stages in the faith journey.
1550
West 33rd Avenue,
Vancouver, BC V6M 1A7
Canada SEE
MAP
Tel:
604-261-6377
Email: admin@shuc.ca
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