Dancing in Christ

Dancing, I suggest to you tonight, is therefore a potent symbol of the gospel covenant as we experience it in our worship. It can become, for us, the double-performance of both human prayer and divine address. On the one hand, the Dance can expresses our deep desire and longing to be free of conflict and grief and sorrow and oppression. ... One can also see something of that spirit in the dance scene from The Matrix Reloaded, when the whole of the people of the city of Zion dance out their longing for salvation from the machines that are coming to destroy them. On the other hand, the Dance can become an icon or oracle of God for us, a material and fleshly way by which God calls us to turn, in repentance, to accept with empty hands God’s gracious offer of mercy, forgiveness, and healing. In the image and experience of the dance, then, God shows us a profound mystery. The mystery that theologians call Christ, or the Paschal Mystery. In Christ the man, you see, all the pains and griefs and longing of human beings are lived out in a life of total prayer, a prayer offered to God as one who hears, and loves, and saves. Yet, in Christ, we also learn also that the griefs and longings of human beings belong to God first of all. For Christ is God amongst us, living our griefs and dying our deaths, that we might also die to our fears and our sins, and be reborn to a new kind of live altogether. Christ, in his Spirit, continues to live amongst us in the church, living our prayer and praying our life until earth and heaven are reconciled, and all are finally free as Christ is free.
http://www.laughingbird.net/SermonTexts/GD025.html