Rev. Tom Lenhart
Sermon August 27, 2006

“Dance As If No One Is Watching” 

John 15:1-11

Let us pray.

  O God you are behind us and before us. Lay your hands upon me as I utter these words. And may we all feel your presence in our souls. Amen

“Dance as if no one is watching!” You are right that expression is found no where in the old or new testaments.  While I was eating at a small café in Boothbay, Maine two weeks ago, I looked up -- I must confess from a lobster roll-- and this statement was painted on a sign hanging on the wall. It has stayed with me since then. On one level it captures something I suspect you too have seen at dances. There on the dance floor will be a couple who seem to flow with the music – they and the music are one. And then there will be those dancers (disproportionably men I might add), who appear to be made out of wood. They seem to be indifferent to or unaware of the music and its rhythms. They often look as if they have been dragged onto the floor against their will and would like to be any where else, including the dentist office, then on the dance floor -- making a fool of themselves at least in their own minds. In my experience these folks are not necessarily without musical appreciation or lacking in coordination and grace but simply can not let themselves go in front of others.  They don’t want to look foolish -- in the eyes of those they believe are watching. So this wall sign serves as a perceptive clue about how to enjoy dancing more. So next time those of you who don’t like to dance --and you know who you are -- are asked to or forced to dance think of this expression, imagine you are alone and enjoy the music -- let it rip. But this expression has stayed with me for a more serious and important reason. It reflects, I believe, a profound insight into how we should live our lives in faith

It is not simply on the musical dance floor but on the dance floor of life that our actions are shaped by others. This age -- as much as any -- is characterized by the reality  that many of us are looking over our shoulder at others to figure out what our next move should be, what we should like or desire and what position on an issue we should support. We make our decisions and behave in particular ways because of those who we think are watching. There is lurking in the background of life a fear at times of getting too far out front -- of looking foolish. Peer pressure is not simply a problem for our young people who often emulate each other in style, fashion and taste; it is a challenge for all of us. We are inhibited in what we do and bow at times to social pressure even when it runs counter to our better judgment or nature.

The current movie, The Devil Wears Prada, is a fictional expose of the world of high fashion. I suspect it is over written but that there is more than a kernel of truth in its depiction of the power of a few to determine the fashions worn by the many. For many the clothes they wear are the product of figuratively, if not literally, looking over their shoulder at the arbiters of fashion when they shop. Even those of us who eschew high fashion should not be too smug in our sense that we really are our own persons in terms of fashion. There is a powerful scene in this movie in which the gifted actress, Meryl Streep, the editor of a leading fashion magazine and the autocratic arbitrator of high fashion, quietly eviscerates the young idealistic journalist who becomes Streep’s   assistant while waiting for her journalist break. This young woman is disdainful of the high fashion world and dresses in the beginning in what might be called early LL Bean causal. Streep proceeds to demonstrate to this young woman that even her frumpy pullover sweater is a particular shade of blue because two years earlier Streep, the czar of fashion, anointed this color as the blue of the moment. 

The effect of such peer and other outside pressures on us – of those we think are watching when we dance -- is not confined to fashion. It is prevalent in even more important areas of our life.   I recently had a discussion with a young man working in New York. This young man is what the business world loves. He is bright with sound judgment, of high integrity and works like a dog. He was lamenting that for family reasons he was going to have to take his vacation in the fall rather than in the summer. I asked him why that was a problem. He said it would be better strategy to take his vacation when his superiors where away in the summer. To take it in the fall when all of them were back and business was busy   would highlight his absence (even though approved) and was not the best way to maximize his year-end bonus and future promotion. Whether or not I agreed with his assessment of his situation and his logic, I certainly hoped it was not true.

But what bothered me more was the fact that I strongly suspected then when this fellow took his fall vacation in the back of his mind he was going to worry about the impact of his vacation on his career. The very point of the vacation -- getting away –recharging his batteries from the long hours he was working -- was going to be undercut by this concern for those looking on. He would be better served if he could put this out of his mind and come back from vacation refreshed -- believing in his worth and that it will be appropriately and fairly recognized. I wish he could dance as if no one was watching. But I believe that behavior is not so unusual in much of modern America, especially in our high pressured corporate and professional arenas. That is not to say that outside views can or should be ignored – no, not at all. But rather that they should not trump who and what we really are.

Parker Palmer, a writer and educator, has written a wonderful little book called Let Your Life Speak[1] -- subtitled Listening for the Voice of Vocation. In it he chronicles his struggle to discover what his calling in life truly was. Though seemingly successful he battled for years profound dissatisfaction and depression – finally realizing in his late 30’s a that he was living a life of “oughts” –  seeking to satisfy the expectations placed upon by others and by society -- not following and pursuing those principles and desires that were authenticate to him. He was dancing through life, attempting to look over both shoulders to do what was expected or accepted rather that dancing as if no one was looking. Indeed, as Parker noted he learned that “’faking it’ in the service of high values was no virtue,” if what you were doing was at variance with one’s true nature.[2]  How many of our young people have been channeled over the years to college and the professions when a master carpenter, gifted poet or skilled auto mechanic truly lurked inside?

This all sounds like a lecture on self help -- about being true to one’s self and not knuckling to peer pressure -- useful perhaps but of little connection to faith. But I think there is one. If we should dance as if no one is watching – what guides us as we dance? What does it mean to be true to oneself from a faith perspective?  If we are true to ourselves dancing as if no one is watching, why isn’t that simply to use the cliché of the day “being on a personal ego trip?” Our gospel passage provides this response:

“Abide in me and as I abide in you. Just as the branch

cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine,

neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine,

you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in

them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can

do nothing.” John 15: 4-5

What the gospel of John is telling us, I believe, is -- while it is important to dance as if no one is watching, it is not enough.  It’s not an ego trip to be true to oneself if God abides within us. How does that happen – it happens as the natural concomitant of faith in God through Jesus. Faith transforms us fundamentally and pervasively.  Faith liberates us to be and to act as children of God -- as created in God’s image. God abides in us always but it takes faith to know that and to allow that divine spark to work.

But there is an issue here, which one of you posed to me when I asked for questions you would like to hear preached on. That question --“how can we tell we are doing God’s will?” -- is a wonderful question and lurks in the background of our passage from John.  To state it slightly differently, how do I know that I am not simply succumbing to my own ego instead of being true to God’s will when I dance through life even as if no one is watching? 

There is no way to “know” if by knowing we mean having a scientific-like certainty that is derived from some kind of proof. This is simply not an arena in which we can have that type of certainty for this is a matter of faith not proof. But I submit we have if not certainty then a strong sense and signs that help us to know in our hearts when we are or are not “doing God’s will.” I have in my life done things which I strongly suspected –indeed, knew -- were contrary to God’s will. How did I know? First, in some cases I instantly felt what I had done was wrong. No sooner had I done it then I regretted it. Often I had a physical reaction – a stomach doing loops or instant tension in my shoulders that signaled that I was not doing that which I knew to be right or appropriate. And on other occasions I found myself in an endless internal debated in which I sought to rationalize what I had done or was about to do. The very extended nature of such internal debates being a dead giveaway that I was not being true to what I knew to be God’s will for me and others.

As I have mentioned in the past I spent more than a decade doing investigations into allegations of corporate wrong doing. On occasion I have meet and interviewed people who had in fact committed misdeeds, if not crimes. Almost without exception it was evident that from the very beginning they knew what they were doing was not right or appropriate. Sometimes they fell pry to personal greed and ego but frankly more often they bent to external pressures to keep a job or to be promoted. The signs were there and they had seen them. I sometimes think the challenge was for them and is for us less to know what is right (God’s will for us) and more the challenge to act on it. If you have ever read the stories of the Watergate conspirators or heard them talk you may find as I have that many of them quite clearly in some part of their hearts and souls knew what they were doing was wrong.

On the other hand when we are living God’s will – when we are in right relationship with God -- there is a certain joy and serenity present. As Jesus says in our passage from John, “I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.” (John 15: 11). When God and self converge there are moments of joy and serenity.  Such moments too are signs that we are doing God’s will -- not simply engaged in an ego driven frolic and detour. But we should be clear, joy is not happiness or satisfaction. Frederick Buechner has observed “happiness turns up more or less where you’d expect it to – a good marriage, a rewarding job, a pleasant vacation. Joy on the other hand is notoriously unpredictable as the one who bequeaths it.”[3] But I believe we recognize it when it occurs. Joy and serenity are   telltale signs when we are doing God’s will. Rosa Parks, who so profoundly changed America with a small act of courage, was asked why she had sat down at the front of that bus in Birmingham and famously replied because she was tired. No doubt tired from work but tired also of having bent to the pressure of a racist society. She is quoted subsequently explaining that at that time she had decided “I will no longer act on the outside in a way that contradicts the truth that I hold deeply in the inside.” [4] If you have ever seen pictures of her on the bus you know that this was a moment of serenity albeit amidst a sea of chaos and turmoil.

But we are not left simply to visceral signs to tell us when we are on the right or wrong path – though, I believe, such things can be and are powerful indicators. No, we have been give guidance as to what is God’s will. “If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love.”(John 15: 10)  We have not only the great commandments about loving God and our neighbors and even our enemies but we have Jesus’ sermons on the mount and the plain and his parables that tell us  who in God’s eyes and heart are   blessed and what God’s will is. But perhaps most importantly, we have Jesus’ life and love of us as the ultimate template for living and discerning God’s will. I certainly can think of no one more than Jesus who danced through life less concerned about those who were watching. If we have faith then God will abide in us and we will dance as if no one is watching but we will also never dance alone.

Let me leave you with a prayer from Thomas Merton

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going.

I do not see the road ahead of me.

I cannot know for certain where it will end.

Nor do I really know myself,

And the fact that I think I am following your way

Does not mean I am actually doing so.

But I believe that the desire to please you does indeed please you.

And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.

I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.

And I know that if I do this, you will lead me by the right road

Though I may know nothing about it.

Therefore I will trust you always

Though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death,

I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and will not leave me to face my perils alone. Amen