shall we dance?
Eighteenth Sunday After Pentecost ● September 22, 2024
Rev. Jeff Wells © 2024
You can view the full worship video recording at:
Scripture Readings:
Ephesians 4:1-6 and quotes from various figures and traditions
The texts of the readings are in the worship bulletin linked here.
From the communion table to the vision of a great heavenly banquet, Christian rituals and stories call us to dance together in a circular cosmic community with all other humans, with all creatures, and with God who is embodied in each one. Today, I want to reflect with you on how we might experience, in our hearts and spirit, the reality of our deep interconnection.
We removed the pews from the sanctuary in 2018. We experimented for a while with various configurations for the chair. After the pandemic, for a long time, we settled on sitting around small tables with three chairs each. When we ran out of tables and space to put them, we shifted to our current mixed configuration which includes some tables, and also a lot of chairs behind them, with everyone facing toward the center of a big circle. So, for worship on Sundays, we enter the sanctuary and join the circle. In the circle, we look at each other, pray toward each other, and sing to each other. At the end of worship, we stand in an even larger circle and always remember to include our members on Zoom in the virtual circle that extends beyond our building, beyond New York City, to West Virginia, Wisconsin, California, Argentina, and other places. These changes and experiments are very important in the evolution of our congregation, but I would argue they are only the outward and visible signs of a deep inward, spiritual change.
Ours is not a closed or exclusive circle. Just as we keep adding more chairs or more concentric rows of chair to the circle of worship as our attendance grows, we can expand the circle of welcome, the circle of inclusion, the circle of friendship, the circle of our chosen family to include all who desire to be part of our community – of our deep connection. That includes those who come because they have had positive experiences in other church communities as well as those who have felt harmed or alienated by previous church experiences – especially those that our society so often marginalizes.
So, the circle is both real and metaphorical, material and spiritual. We sit in a circle. We stand and sing and dance in a circle. We are a “church in the round,” to use a phrase made famous by feminist and liberationist theologian, Letty Russell. Whenever we engage in the sacrament of Communion (most Sundays), we say we are gathering around the table of grace. We do not physically get up and gather at this table yet, in spirit, we are gathered around this circular table, sensing our connection both to God and to one another.
Not only is our life together in this community often experienced in a circle, we do a circle dance together, too. Inspired by our sacred dance team, I often feel moved to stand up and dance or at least to swing and sway in the middle of worship. We are often called to dance by our music – like the closing song last Sunday: “Dance together, the journey is long, dance together, the journey is long.” And I can’t help but move my body when we sing, “Lei lo, lei lo, li lo – Lei lo, lei lo, li lo – Lei lo, lei lo, li lo, lo lei lo lei lo li!”
And it is not only us dancing. God is in the midst of our dance, too. We know God is spirit and has no physical body, but who says the Spirit of God can’t dance? The divine circle dance is a metaphor often used to describe what many Christians call the Holy Trinity – Holy Parent, Child, and Spirit in a never-ending dance of love, goodness, and beauty. When I think of the Trinity, I don’t think of the Child as Jesus alone. It’s not just Jesus dancing with the Holy Parent God and the Holy Spirit, it is all of us. Because God is embodied in all of us and we are in God. It is God “in whom we live and move and have our being.” And if we can grasp that mind-blowing proposition, if we begin to sense the interconnectedness of the whole of the creative, evolving universe, then we realize we are dancing not only with God and other human beings. We are dancing, also, with deer and antelopes, with birds and bees, with elephants and trees! I know dancing with elephants sounds pretty risky. Fortunately, it’s a spiritual dance, not a physical one.
All of this points to a deep interconnectedness that we have to work really hard to experience in our bodies and spirits. This connection is expressed beautifully in the philosophy of Ubuntu, prevalent in southern Africa, that in one translation says, “I am because we are.” As the quotes from multiple wise persons and traditions emphasize repeatedly, our feeling of separateness is an illusion. Or, as Albert Einstein put it, “an optical delusion of [our] consciousness.”
We humans seem to be almost endlessly capable of coming up with ways to create enemies because of competition, envy, greed, and so on. We often lean toward emphasizing our differences rather than accentuating what we have in common. Jesus taught us a different way of being. He said you are responsible for one another’s well-being. Love your neighbor. Love the stranger. Care for broken bodies, broken spirits, broken hearts, and broken relationships. Love your enemies and work to tear down walls that separate you. Work to build friendships instead.
In various ways, we can all engage in practicing love and support for one another, of influencing and affecting one another’s lives, of recognizing the divine spirit within each other. It is like the Indian word and concept of “Namaste.” It is a way of saying hello and goodbye, but it has such a deep meaning. It can be translated, “I see the divine in you.” That sentiment is echoed in the song we often sing: “When the spirit in me sees the spirit in you, it’s so easy to love.”
The circle dance of love and grace we try to practice together in the Church of the Village can be an example to others beyond our small community. Experiencing the interconnectedness among us can help us to see and live into our connectedness with circles of connectedness in which we exist in the wider world.
Today, I want to dispense with the conversation in small groups after the message. So, ignore those questions printed in the bulletin. Instead, I want to lead us in a time of meditation that I hope will help us all feel and experience in our bodies, minds, and spirits how much we are all part of each other. So, first I am going to invite you to inhale a very deep breath and hold it for 2 seconds. Then, I will ask you to exhale and let as much air as possible go out from your lungs. As you do that, imagine letting go of your tightly held illusion of separateness. We won’t get there all at once, but just try to let go for the next few minutes. Let’s try. Breathe in deeply and hold for 1, 2. Now release, letting go of separateness and imagining your connectedness to everyone in this room and on Zoom. Now look at someone across the room and silently chant to yourself, “I am in you and you are in me and we are in God.” Look at one or two other people and do the same.
Now, turn to the persons next to you and say aloud, “I am because we are.”
Now, I invite you to look around the room and think about and feel in your spirit the ways you feel connected with many people in worship today. Then, focus on one person who has helped you in some special way or shown love and care for you at a difficult time or someone who has befriended you, or whose example has shaped you. Hold that connection in your heart and spirit for a moment and, if you feel able, walk over and tell that person about how you feel that connection and what they mean to you.
We could continue in this vein and meditate on how we are connected not only one to another individually, but also as a whole community, as crucial parts of one body together in God. But I know you have gotten the point. I hope you have seen the connection not only at an intellectual level. I hope you have felt it and I hope you can hold on to that to some extent. I encourage you to continue, after worship, and throughout your week, in practicing and feeling this deep interconnection. After worship, try connecting with someone you do not know well and see where that leads. Beloved, let’s keep dancing in the circle dance of love, grace, and community. I am in you and you are in me and we are in God.