I smile at the power of persuasion. Watching people change right before your eyes over time has always intrigued me.
I am going to do a series on "Being a First Follower."
On YouTube there is a clip from the 2009 Sasquatch Festival in eastern Washington state that depicts being a leader/follower. It is of a shirtless guy dancing. The video begins with one guy "Collin of Canada" dancing inprovisionally to the song by Natalie Portman "Me and You Daughter." His form is jerky and uninhibited. After a period of dancing alone, others join him and sync with him in dancing. In just three minutes a movement is born.
In the first century in the fields of Galilee Jesus began a movement. He was joined first by Simon Peter and Andrew, next Philip and Nathaniel. Then one by one, more and more followers began to join the Lord of the Dance.
"Come and See!" is the invitation. Jesus' disciples came, saw, and followed the life-giving dance of the Blessed Trinity until the dancers and the dance became one.
Dance, then, wherever you may be,
I am the Lord of the Dance, said he,
And I'll lead you all, wherever you may be,
And I'll lead you all in the Dance, said he.
Charles Wesley wrote a similar poem:
Our concert of praise to Jesus we raise,
And all the night long continue the new evangelical song:
We dance to the fame of Jesus' name,
the joy it imparts is heaven begun in our musical hearts.
The Greek noun perichoresis was the early church's favorite word to describe the interrelationship of the Holy Trinity. When the prefix peri (round) us linked with the root of the verb choreuein (to dance), a compelling metaphor is formed or "choreographed" to describe the "one nature in three persons" of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Literally they "dance around." The choreia or dance of God is the choreography of cosmos, creation, the interrelationahip of Creator, creation, and life itself, the holy creativity of the All in All.
The dancing metaphor of the holy Trinity is envisioned and embodied as a circle dance. The perichoresis, though a noun in term, is built upon a verb. the dance of the triune divine is moving, active, eternally both transcendent and immanent, and flowing together in a joyful and harmonious, rhythmic and resonant celebration of life. The great Artist of eternal life dances with the incarnate Christ and the Holy Spirit. Each dwell in the other, outside of and within the created world.
Jesus, the Lord of the Dance, is the physical embodiment of the sacred dance of life, the incarnated vision and rhythm of the artistry of God. Whereas the Trinity if the music and the composer, Jesus is the One who calls us to "come and dance" and promises that we need never lose the rhythm of the dance.
It is God's dance, and Jesus is the Dancer who summons us to join in the music of the spheres. We don't take Jesus into the world. We discern where he's dancing and join in the dance. God takes the initiative. Heaven is entering into the triune life of God, the circle dance of creation.
The Lord of the Dance takes the initiative, the lead. But the most important human role is that of the "first follower," the dancing partner who has the courage to get up from the safety of sitting and violate the unwritten eleventh commandment: "Never be the first to do anything." The longest distance in the universe is the distance from zero to one. In joining the dance, the first follower breaks some kind of social membrane and gives the others the courage to follow their hearts.
We join the Lord of the Dance in the art of pilgrimage (being on the way), we form a community of followers, each relationally on the move and invested in each other's life. The body of Jesus become a whirling life force, wherein each member of the growing body becomes aligned with Christ and at one with God. The implication of the dance of the Trinity is that all persons dance a dance of mutual love, breathe together the breath of life, and pour out to one another in mutual giving.
John of Damascus saw this giving as a "cleaving together," a fellowship of oneness and intimacy so close that only one nature is evident. In a followership community, all are "cleaved together" in relationship with Christ and with each other, a living temple of the body of Jesus. Followers have their own unique identities but also embrace and pour themselves into the identity of Christ.
Creative dance requires both discipline and grace. When we dance along with Jesus, we become disciples within his incarnated body and baptized in the Spirit with the grace of his resurrected life.
The choreographr of the dance creates for us a liturgy of life, a history within the context of the embodied Christ. When we join in Jesus dance, we join in his story, and his story becomes our story as we move in eternal pilgrimage with him.
"O Lord...you change my mourning into dancing...forever will I give you thanks." (Ps. 30:11-13)
The Bible is filled with stories of dancing: Psalm 30:11, Lamentations 5:15; Ecclesiastes 3:4, Jeremiah 31:13, Exodus 15:20; Judges 11:34; 1 Samuel 18:6-7. These dances are not planned, scripted ballets by improvised songs of freedom and hope. they aren't performed by trained and seasoned professionals but are inititated int the joyful celebration of the common people of God.
The dances of God are edgy and innovative. They are the dances of the margins, the seeds of raw potential, born not out of the exactness of ritual, but in the spontaneity of the Spirit. The only GUIdance is the perichoresis of God that allows us to sing with complete abandon: God, U, and I dance.
As long as you have to count the steps, you are not yet dancing, just learning about the dance. To truly dance in perichoresis is unthinkable. You cease to think when your body begins to dance to the rhythms of the Spirit, and the onlky choreography is that of the Creator. Before you know it, the dance has taken over. There is no greater feeling in life than the moment when the dance you are dancing takes over, when the dance and the dancer beome one.
"Praise God in your body." (I Corinthians 6:20)
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