St. John Chrysostom Episcopal Church – Delafield, Wisconsin
Eighth Sunday after Pentecost – July 22, 2018
V. Rev. Steven A. Peay, Ph.D.
[texts: Eph. 1:3‑14/Mk. 6:14‑29]
She danced and her besotted stepfather offered her whatever she wanted, “even up to half of my kingdom.” What she took instead was a pesky prophet’s head. The Gospels, Mark and Matthew, tell the story of Herodias’ daughter; though they don’t tell us her name. We learn her name, Salome, from the Jewish historian Josephus in the Antiquities. It’s ironic that her name means ‘peace’ or ‘well-being’ when you think about what she does. But Salome does enter history and especially the history of art.
Images of Salome’s dance, along with John the Baptist’s head on a platter, show up not only on the walls of churches, but as a favorite subject for painters and sculptors. Regardless of the period or the style, the artist attempts to portray the allure that would beguile her stepfather into murdering God’s prophet. Salome’s dance has also served as the inspiration for music, Richard Strauss composed a controversial opera by the same name in 1905. It has also served as a point of titillation in religious films, like King of Kings. For years Salome’s dance was synonymous with decadence and moral weakness. Perhaps it was because Salome danced to her own beat, in order to get what she wanted, which was to make sure that things in her life didn’t change. She very well might have been graceful, but she was hardly grace-filled. By contrast, God’s prophet, John the Baptist, danced to God’s beat, was grace-filled, and knew that change could come as a result. Being graced means dancing to God’s new beat.
When God enters into the midst of things very little is left the same. God's creative power is constantly at work. When that power is unleashed the sick are healed and those who are crippled in attitude or action are made whole. Herod may have abandoned his dignity when Salome danced, but there was another king, David, who also let his kingly dignity go for a whole different reason – because of joy in the presence of God. The Hebrew Scripture lesson we didn’t read today is the story about David’s dancing before the Lord and I just have to mention it because there is a story I want to tell. The story is told of an elderly rabbi who was afflicted with crippling arthritis. He began to tell the story of how David danced in front of the Ark. He got so caught up in his own story, that while telling it, he suddenly was swept away and started to dance himself, despite his disabled joints.
Rarely do we allow the creative power of God to "cut loose" in our lives because then we might HAVE to change, we might HAVE to be different. The story of God's creative presence has power to make us dance to the new beat of God's love and care for God’s people. Those who get caught up in the dance can, indeed, run into difficulty.
John the Baptist, the Christ's Forerunner, danced to God's new beat. Herod, and others, didn’t like him, because he threatened them and their comfortable way of doing things. Herod used another dancer and a foolish oath as the means for silencing John the Baptist. That's why he was so spooked when news of Jesus' mighty acts circulated among his people. Could John be back from the dead? Could this great agent of change be here again?
Little did Herod know that an even greater agent of change, the Creator Incarnate, was loose in the world. At one point, shortly before Jesus would be sent to the cross, Herod asked Jesus to work a miracle for him. So many people who are holding back from relationship with God do the same thing, don't they? They wait for a miracle, for God to prove God’s self to them and don't even see the truth that God in Christ already did that on the Cross. Miracles aren't the key to understanding Jesus' person and work, they are only sign posts along the way to point to the true "mighty act," which is that of self‑giving love acted out upon the life‑giving Cross.
When Paul talks about the "glorious grace that he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved," he's talking about the redemptive act of Christ through the Cross, Resurrection, and the subsequent gift of the Holy Spirit. In this momentous act, Paul tells us, that God has "made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure that he set forth in Christ, as a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth."
What Paul preached is that as Christ acted on the Cross he changed once and for all the relationship between God and the whole human race. It is now a matter of our willingness to enter into relationship with the Lord of the Dance, to move to God’s new beat, and that demands change.
One cannot stand in the presence of what God has done in Jesus Christ and remain unchanged – and if we do, we are simply missing the point. We are called to a recreation, from the inside out, that allows us to approach ourselves, other people, the whole world from a different perspective. To be "marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit" is to be marked for change on a daily basis. Every single day of our lives we are called to rise from our beds and begin our days looking at the world in this new way, with God's eyes and not our own. How can we possibly accomplish it? We can't, but God ALREADY HAS, that’s the grace part – it’s all about God’s free gift of love offered to us. However, we have to be willing to cooperate and the cooperation is where the change comes in. Because each day we have to open ourselves more and more to God and allow less and less our own selfish nature to get in the way of God's work. The dance of God reaches out to others and opens us to relationship. The cost of change is our very selves, but the compensation is union with the living God – it is not too great a price to pay.
Paul offered himself completely to God when he cried out to the Galatians, "It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me¼" Even our Lord gave himself completely into the Father's hands, saying, "Not my will, but yours be done." Herod couldn't change, he couldn't give up his pride, couldn't admit that he had made a foolish promise that bore disastrous consequences. How often do we get like that? How often, even here at church, do we draw lines in the sand and declare, "I don't care what anyone thinks. I'm NOT going to change." How many people have become turned‑off to the message of faith, to the promise of God's love because one of God’s people has been unwilling to be graced, dance to God’s new beat of renewal and change by entering into the reality of daily conversion?
Conversion, change is not an easy topic to broach. I, for one, am not a person who likes change. In its one hundred and sixty-four year history this parish has experienced a great deal of change. Some of it wonderfully constructive, some of it jarring and damaging. It's never easy, but I want to commend you because you are trying to follow the Lord's lead, to grow into the people that we are called to be, to become the example of God's love reaching out to the people in Delafield and beyond. There’s work to do, however, it’s far from finished. As John Henry Newman wrote in The Development of Doctrine, "In a higher world it is otherwise, but here below to live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often." God calls us to perfection dear ones, we are called to dance to God’s tune of unselfish love, graced existence and to meet the cost of change and grow. As a result we will each day find ourselves more and more in the image and the likeness of God.
And, we are called to invite others to the dance, to be agents of change in the lives of others and in our world. God wants to work through us to have more and more people come to appropriate the life God offers in the new creation already accomplished through Jesus Christ. We cannot dance to the new beat, be agents of change until we have been open to change and been changed ourselves. We do that by listening with the ears of our hearts for God’s new beat. We open the Scripture, we pray and there learn God’s new tune.
Two dancers, one dancing to her own beat, the other to the beat which set creation in motion; which one do we follow? I think we all know the answer. There is a hymn, “Lord of the Dance,” and its final lines sum it all up. “. . . I am the life that’ll never, never die; I’ll live in you if you’ll live in me; I am the Lord of the Dance, said he.” Be graced. Listen for the new beat with the ears of your heart. Dance with the Lord of the Dance to the tune of new life. Be open to the wonder of what God can do through us . . . and dance!