The Seventh Sunday after Pentecost – July 12, 2015

The Seventh Sunday after Pentecost – July 12, 2015 July 4, 2015

The Seventh Sunday after Pentecost – July 12, 2015

2 Samuel 6:1-5, 12b-19
Psalm 24
Ephesians 1;3-14
Mark 6:14-29

Do you dance with God? Does worship inspire passion and ecstasy? What happens when you dance to a different drum than God’s? Do our lives become destructive rather than creative?

The reading from Samuel describes David and his companions dancing with all his might in God’s presence. While we might not localize God to a particular religious object, we can affirm the importance of delight and passion in worship. David praises God in song and movement, his whole being is caught up in ecstasy. He recognizes that God is ultimate and that all good gifts emerge from God’s tender mercies. Worship is never meant to be boring but full of delight, wonder, and liveliness. God is more than we can imagine and God’s loving wisdom is manifest in all things.

Praise leads to generosity. Everyone is fed from God’s abundance. There is no hoarding, but mutual celebration in response to God’s faithful and creative actions in our lives.

Psalm 24 proclaims that earth belongs to God. The Psalm also affirms that some places are particularly holy. These sacred spots, icons and “thin places,” in their unique revealing of God become the lenses through which discover God in all things and all things in God. Holy spots are everywhere, but the pure in heart alone will experience divinity. Others, the Psalmist believes, will walk on holy ground without regard to mystery and wonder. Revelation requires preparation. Grace may come to us unannounced, but even then God’s prior grace, unmerited and abundance, requires a response and turning to fully transform our lives.

The reading from Ephesians proclaims that we have every spiritual blessing. God has given us personally and as communities everything we need to flourish and be faithful. Out of blessing comes praise. We recognize that God is lavish and God’s grace is glorious. God’s vision for the church and the world is to bring all things to unity in Christ. God’s very nature as creative wisdom and moral goodness inspires praise and delight and transforms individuals and communities. Be ecstatic and dance with joy. Don’t let your hallelujahs be half-hearted. Live for the praise of God’s glory.

Often progressive churches downplay the importance of praise. It seems too hierarchical and is often identified with servile relationships to the sovereign male godhead. But, praise is much more than that. It is manifest in delight, gratitude, wonder, and awe. It is revealed loving shouts to God and a sense of connection with God that joins us with all creation. God is God, and cosmic, and God in God’s cosmic wonder is nevertheless revealed in simple daily blessings and the inspiration to acts of kindness. Praise relativizes all our idols and challenges our greed, possessiveness, and manipulation of the planet for our own purposes.

Herod’s murder of John the Baptist reveals another kind of delight that leads to homicide. Herod is interested in John’s message, but only at a surface level. His interest does not lead to transformation of heart. Like so many other leaders of business and government, he lacks a moral compass and is swept away by temptation. Disoriented by another kind of dancing, he succumbs to his wife’s machinations and has the prophet killed. His passion destroys rather than creates.

Today’s readings invite us to a life-changing dancing praise. They ecstatically take us out of our self-interest to place our lives before God and embrace God’s interests. Self-absorbed delight leads to destructive consumption, greed, and murder. Delight in God’s world and God’s majestic and loving creativity places our passions in congruence with God’s aims at beauty, love, and justice. Praise can orient and guide our pathway, and lead us to proclaim that all things flow from God and deserve our reverence, care, and protection.
(For more on Mark’s Gospel, Bruce Epperly, Healing Marks: Spirituality and Healing in Mark’s Gospel and Mark’s Holy Adventure: Preaching Mark’s Gospel for Year B)


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