Invitation to the Dance
Introduction
I once saw two dancers at
a Jewish community center that took my breath away. The man and the woman swayed in tandem, leapt
like gazelles, intertwining with each other with the grace of dancers who knew
each others rhythm. I was awed by the
beauty of it. The joy of it coursed
through me carried me beyond myself.
When we are in the presence of that which is truly beautiful, something
of the eternal pierces our soul. We
catch a brief glimpse of something deeply real and it stirs a yearning within
us for what is beyond it. We are
glimpsing the Eternal.
The Great Dance
The freedom and grace of
that dance, was, I believe, a hint of what the old Christian writers called The Great Dance, the eternal dance of
love and perfect communion between the Father, the Son and the Holy
Spirit. That dynamic flow of love and
perfect intimacy is the heart of all reality.
Every good friendship we have known is a pale reflection of this
dance. It’s a compelling metaphor. Out of the overflow of their self giving
love, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit created the world.
The creation account is
lyrical. There’s a sense of rhythm as
God speaks the world into being. Let there be, followed by his joyful
response, It is good. When the world was complete and ready for
the man and the woman, he became intimately engaged. He took the dust of the earth, and with his
own hands, he formed man in his image and breathed into him his own breath of
life. Adam received life from him.
Now the Creator extended
the dance to his created. Each afternoon
he came in the cool of the day to walk and talk with Adam and Eve. There was complete intimacy between them (they
were naked and not ashamed), and as they talked, the Creator named them calling
them into being. He caught them up into
the dance of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
How long did this go
on? For months? Hundreds of years? Then came the fall, a rending,a break in
relationship. A great jarring
reverberation went through the cosmos. The
dance was over. Adam and Eve
knew for the first time that they were naked and they were ashamed. For the first time they became conscious of
themselves. For the first time, they
knew fear and they hid. Intimacy was
gone. Separation from God had begun.
God came that afternoon
and began a pattern that would continue through the rest of time. He came looking for them and called them out
of their hiding. He provided a covering
for them and promised that he would one day redeem and recreate them.
The rest of history has
been a story of God’s passionate pursuit of his people, calling them back into
the intimacy for which he had created them.
It’s hard to find a more passionate love story than is in the Scripture.
Attempts to reengage them
in the dance….
- Covenants to bind
himself to us. Noah, Moses, David.
- Prophets reveal the
tender heart of God his anguish over the hard heart of his people.
- Hosea 11:3 It
was I who taught Ephraim to walk, taking them by the arms, but they did
not realize it was I who healed them.
I led them with cords of human kindness, with ties of love. I lifted the yoke from their neck and
bent down to feed them. But my
people are determined to turn from me.
How can I give you up? How
can I hand you over?
- Song of Solomon
–words of a lover.
2:8 Listen!
My lover! Look! Here he comes, leaping across the mountains,
bounding over the hills…
2:10 My
lover spoke and said to me, “Arise my beautiful one, and come with me.”
- Jeremiah: What
more can I do for the sins of my people?
- Ultimate gift of his
son. He came into the world that he had made, but the world did not
recognize him.
Poignant words
--He came unto his own, but his
own received him not. There
were some whose hearts were longing for the coming of the Messiah and who had
the eyes to see and receive him. One of
these was Mary, mother of Jesus.
As Protestants, in reaction to our split away from
Catholicism, we’ve shied away from thinking too much about Mary, except at
Christmas. It’s a great loss, for she is
a profound example and metaphor of receiving.
She carried the life of Jesus within her, and the early church called
her “theotokos, God-bearer.” We need to
come back again and again and consider her deep and open heart to the presence
of Christ, and the implications for us, as we too are God-bearers in this
world.
Mary’s Story
Mary’s story is one in the long line of love stories
that describe God’s pursuit of his people.
She was the one he wanted to carry the life of his son.
He had an inexpressibly valuable gift to give to
Mary –it was a good beyond her understanding –the gift of himself. Would she have the courage to receive
it? She would have the choice. God always asks to enter –he never forces his
way in.
God was the suitor.
He sent the angel Gabriel to propose to Mary and he began with these
words, Greetings, you who are highly
favored, the Lord is with you.
Mary was terrified.
Seeing her fear, the angel reassured her, Do not be afraid, Mary, you have found favor with God.
That’s what we all long to hear from God, isn’t
it? He spoke her name –this was a very
personal encounter. Not with her
parents, not with her husband-to-be, but with Mary alone. He laid out his proposal. You
will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name
Jesus. He will be great and will be
called the Son of the Most High. The
Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over
the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will never end.
At this point Mary asked an obvious and most logical
question. How can this be as I am a virgin?
The angel explained, The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will
overshadow you. So the holy one to be
born will be called the Son of God.
Nothing is impossible with God.
These were strong words. I will
come upon you. I, who called all of
creation into being, will overshadow you, and call this child into being.
Women, put yourselves in her place. It was staggering proposition. There are a number of ways that Mary could
have responded. She might simply have
run away. How do you take in that kind
of information? Besides the overwhelming
“otherness” of it, what about Mary’s dreams for marriage? For life in the village? Like any young girl, she had hopes and
dreams. If she became pregnant before
marriage, what would come of her?
Divorce? Penalty of death for
adultery?
Astonishingly, Mary voiced none of these
thoughts. She simply made her
choice. It was a meltingly deep
surrender to God’s proposal. She could
not begin to understand what it all meant, but her response was stunningly
simple.
Here I am.
I am the Lord’s servant. May it
be to me as you have said.
She attempted no negotiations. She could have asked, What will happen if I do? Will
you protect me? Will you promise that
nothing bad will happen?
What she said was,
Here
I am. I am the Lord’s servant. May it be to me as you have said.
She could have said
no. She could have protested, Wait until I talk to my family. Arrange things.
What she said was,
Here
I am. I am the Lord’s servant. May it be to me as you have said.
And as she opened her hands and released her hopes,
her expectations for life, God in response entered her and Christ himself was
conceived in her. Mary’s surrender made
space for Christ to come in. Without her
surrender, God would not have entered.
He waited to be invited.
What was it about Mary that God would entrust his
son to her? She had a tender and vulnerable spirit to God. There were other voices to hear –surely
she could already hear the confusion in Joseph’s voice. Her spirit was wide open to the reality of
God. In his presence nothing else
mattered.
And so Mary knew the surrender and the joy of
carrying the life of Christ. It was she
that nursed, cradled him, comforted him when he was sick. Track the rest of Mary’s life and you’ll see
God calling her to that rhythm of surrender until finally it was she and John
who stood near to the cross at Christ’s death.
God’s words to her then were, Will
you release our son to me?
And still God calls us to himself. He uses language that invites us to receive
him into ourselves.
I
am the bread of life. Eat me. Take me into your being.
I am the living water. Whoever is thirsty, let them come, and
whoever wishes, let them take the free water of life. Open your soul, and drink me in. I am joy itself and I sing my song of
invitation to you. When you truly taste
me, you will desire nothing and no one else.
My Story
As a child, I knew God intimately. He was intensely real to me. Every evening before I went to sleep I looked
for his personal words to me in the Scripture and when I went to sleep I held
his hand. I wept at the communion table
for what he had done for me at the cross and I remember telling him I would go
anywhere and do anything for him, so deeply did I love him.
Then I grew up.
I still loved him but more at a distance now. He gave me so many of his good gifts –a good
and tender husband, three beautiful children, meaningful work in his
kingdom. Somehow, over the years I let
his good gifts begin to replace him. Though
I didn’t realize it, I had only one lover, and he was my husband. Every now and then, I would sense a deep
longing for something I once knew, but I was able to brush it away with the
good things I was doing for him and the good things I had been given.
And then one day, God graciously invited me back to
that place of intimacy that I once knew.
It happened this way. He began to
strip me, one by one, of the persons that filled my life. Moved back to the U.S., our daughters went
off to college, our son entered adolescence, separating himself from me, and my
intimate companion took a job that required long periods of travel. I was bereft.
I knew loneliness and it hurt. I
cried out to God to make it better. I
turned my anger on my husband. If he
really cared about how I felt, he’d look for another job.
In the midst of my hurt, one July day as I walk on a
beach, crying to God, he so kindly spoke to me.
I’m sure that he had tried many times before, but I had been nursing and
rehearsing my hurt so long I couldn’t hear him.
What he said to me was, Kendra, I
gave you this longing for companionship.
I want your loneliness to drive you back to me. I want you for my own. I want to be your lover once again.
And I wept. I
wept with a joy that God was speaking to me, wanting me. I wept for what I had
once known and wanted more than anything else.
This is what I had longed for all those months and didn’t know it. It was a surrender to joy.
The cross; great place of
receiving
In a way, Mary’s story is unique; there is only one
virgin birth. Yet her story is replayed
over and over in each of our lives as God comes present to each of us and asks
to enter, to be born in us anew. His song
ever calls us to himself and only himself.
He calls us by name. He calls us
to the cross, that great place of receiving.
It is at the cross that God’s heart is bared most
intimately to us. It is there I see afresh God’s love for me and it washes
again and again into my thirsty soul. It
is there that he asks, Will you let go of those things that are
most precious to you? In my case
it was, Will you release Meredith, your husband to me? And then, Will you let me in? As I
gaze into his eyes, I find the power to let go of those things that have shut
him out. And as I let go, I know his pleasure, his presence. He ever calls to me, Look to
me. Look only into my face and find your
rhythm with me.
God allures us with the promise of his intoxicating
presence, his love, his peace and his joy, and when we are thirsty enough we
invite him even into the dark, hidden places
of our being. We were made to be
known by God --not generically known,
but intimately known. No man can fill
the needs for intimacy in a woman’s heart
--and no friend can. The well is
too deep.
I’ll never forget Olga, a beautiful and gifted woman
who had served God faithfully for many years.
She was capable, committed, and she was burned out. When she grasped God’s longing for her to
come into vulnerable intimacy with him, a transformation took place in her
relationship with him. All this years, she said with disbelief,
I
have served him as if I were his housemaid, and what he has wanted all along is
a lover. He didn’t just want my service,
he wanted all of me, heart, soul and mind.
She leapt joyously into the dance.
The interesting thing is that her relationship with her husband changed
as well; she became more present to him.
The Lover of our soul comes and invites us to the
dance, into an intimacy that no one else can offer. He invites us to him, not to some theological
construct about him. We’re so thirsty,
but we’re afraid, too. Some of come
deeply wounded; intimacy brings only terror.
We ask…
- Is he safe?
He
is Love itself…love is patient, love is kind…it always protects, always trusts,
always perseveres. He will never force
himself upon you, but waits to be invited.
We need not fear that he will violate our person or subjugate our
personality. As we learn to listen to his voice, to
look into his eyes, we become more fully and uniquely the person he made us to
be. He gently woos us, sings us into
being.
- What if I come and he is not there? I stand at the door and knock...whoever
hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with her. (Revelation 3:20) Lord, help my
unbelief!
·
Will he accept me? I’ve got to clean up first.
You who
are thirsty, come. You who are weary,
come.
- Where will the dance take me? As the
children in the fantasy land of Narnia discovered, Aslan, the Christ
figure, is not a tame lion! We don’t know what he’s going to ask of
us, or where he will take us. The
dance may be gentle and slow. There may be times when the dance becomes
wild; he may spin us faster than we had bargained for. The point is, as our partner, he will
catch us every time. On the other
side of terror is intimacy –to be known by the one who made us for
himself.
- What will it cost me? I want all of you, the Lord of the dance says to us.
Abandon yourself to me. In return I will give you an abiding
peace, a self-giving love, an irrepressible joy, faith that sees
everything in the light of God’s goodness, and the freedom to partner with
me in the redemption of this world.
In short, I will give you myself.
I made you for the dance!
The
Spirit says, Come! Whoever is thirsty, let them come! Let them take the free gift of the water of
life! Bring on the music! Let
the dance begin!
Reflective Questions:
Reflective Questions:
Invitation to the Dance
How do you sense that God has been pursuing you? What has been your response?
What can you identify as the deep longings of your heart? How might they be God's voice calling you to himself?
How does the notion of intimacy with God make you feel? Do you reasonate with any of the questions expressed at the end of this talk? Take a few minutes and express your concerns to God.
Rhythms of the Dance
Has your relationship with Christ been more of a duty or a dance? Why?
To which step in the dance (stepping up to Christ/receiving from him or stepping out in obedience) do you feel Jesus is calling you to attend?
What do you sense might be hindering you from receiving from God? Can you identify barriers?
What step of obedience is Christ calling you to take?
