Sermon for the 7th Sunday after Trinity: The Hazards of Dancing – preached at the Eucharist, Sherborne Abbey, on Sunday 14 July 2024 by Canon Charles Mitchell-Innes. (2 Samuel Ch 6: v 1 – 5, 12b – 19; Mark Ch 6: v 14 – 29)
We are focusing this morning on four powerful characters, all quite different but united by a single theme: the dangers of exotic and unrestrained dance routines. They come in two pairs. From the O.T. we have a snapshot of (King) David and his about-to-be ex-wife Michal, David’s unbridled dancing being the final straw in their distinctly rackety marriage. From the N.T. we hear of the even less savoury – indeed disgraceful – story of Herod’s treatment of John the Baptist after Herod had been beguiled by the dancing of his wife Herodias’ daughter. If you listen to Richard Strauss’s “Dance of the 7 Veils” you might understand why he was captivated: it is quite racy!
But first to the back-story of David, before he became king. He was a fierce warrior, invaluable to Saul in the battle with the Philistines, which made Saul jealous. Matters were complicated by Michal, Saul’s daughter, who fell in love with David. So Saul set a challenge for David: he could marry Michal, provided he killed 100 Philistines in battle. In fact he killed 200; so the marriage went ahead. But so taken up with jealousy at David’s popularity was Saul that he plotted to kill David – and would have done so had not Michal saved her new husband by helping him to escape.
Now you would have thought that the two of them might have lived happily ever after. But this is the O.T., where things do not go smoothly at all. David took two further wives, and Saul gave Michal another husband. This sort of thing was not uncommon in those days. But worse was to come. A little later, David demanded Michal back from her new husband, who had sorrowfully to comply. And that is where the scenario outlined in our first reading takes place. The ark of God, the sacred ark of the covenant, is being brought up to Jerusalem, with great rejoicing and wild music; and there in front is David, now king, “dancing before the Lord with all his might,” we are told, in an ecstasy of religious fervour.
But from a window above the street Michal is watching. She is not pleased with what she sees, “David leaping and dancing before the Lord; and she despised him in her heart,” the narrative says. It was the final nail in the coffin of their marriage.
Fast forward a millennium: the setting is the same – in or near Jerusalem – though the characters are a different crowd. They still feature a ruler, but not one of popular acclaim as David had been. On the contrary, Herod Antipas was, like his father, the ruthless Herod the Great, a client-king kept in power by the occupying Romans. This younger Herod had ruled in the north and east of Judaea since his mid-teens and was now about 50, the Jewish figurehead of an oppressive and abhorred administration.
The final figure is this intriguing line-up of characters is the enigmatic John the Baptist. To say he was unconventional would be a massive understatement. He had gone out into the wilderness, to preach and baptize, a hairy, rather unapproachable figure, with a stern message: “Repent and be forgiven of sins.” He sported weird clothes (camel’s hair) and had a weird diet, with a penchant for locusts and wild honey. And yet he drew the crowds: they came out to hear him and were moved by his implacable honesty and clear integrity. Here was someone who practised what he preached, however uncomfortable.
You would not have thought that he had anything in common with Herod at all. Indeed, as we hear in today’s Gospel, he spoke truth to power: he told Herod bluntly that he was wrong to have taken and married his brother’s wife, Herodias. She took exception to this, which is why John was languishing, uncharged, in prison. Yet the interaction of the two men was strangely unexpected, and Mark’s gospel gives us some clues as to why. John seems to have had considerable insight into people’s characters and motives, and Mark tells us that Herod felt unnerved or intimidated by the Baptist’s message; that he recognised John to be a righteous and holy man, and therefore, protected him. Perhaps that was Herod’s reason for keeping him in prison – so that he could talk to him; for he “heard him gladly,” even though what he said put Herold in a moral quandary. Far from being a shouty prophet, John appears as a man with deep insight into Herod’s insecurities and moral anxieties, but who could yet give him strength and confidence to see the way forward, to challenge and at the same time to build up.
Who knows what Herod might have become, with John’s guidance, had he not been beguiled by Salome into agreeing, unwillingly, to John’s execution? All we do know is that a few years after this, at the instigation of his wife Herodias, he asked the emperor Caligula for the title of king. Not a good move! He was deposed on a charge of treason.
Two sets of people whose lives were changed by dancing, in quite different ways. Michal was repelled by David’s exuberant dancing; Herod signed John the Baptist’s death warrant having been seduced by Salome’s lascivious cavorting. But whereas Herod’s passion caused John’s death – a wicked deed – it opened the way for Jesus’ full ministry and our ultimate redemption. As John himself said, “He must increase, but I must decrease.” (John Ch 3: v 30)
King David’s life was certainly not unblemished nor always admirable. Yet his devotion to God was unshakeable; it was an example and an inspiration to his people throughout his reign, and – as we read the O.T. – can be to us, two thousand years later. It commends to us also the power of forgiveness after recognition of sin. After arranging the death of Uriah the Hittite, David said to Nathan the prophet, “I have sinned against the Lord.” And Nathan said to David, “The Lord has put away your sin; you shall not die.”
David’s firm and exuberant faith in God was expressed in his Song of Deliverance, which still resonates with us in our worship: “The Lord is my rock and my fortress, and my deliverer, my God, my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold and my refuge, my saviour.” (2 Samuel Ch 21: v 2 – 3 = Psalm 18: v 1 – 2)