Diocese of Chichester

People say to me, ‘Martin, what are you doing for Christmas?’ and I say, ‘Strictly no dancing!’.

As a child I was taught to dance the waltz by kindly, aged relatives. We laughed at that piece of shamefully reformist mockery, the Hokey-cokey, and we loved doing the Conga.As a student, disco dancing was crazy, electrified by Abba and memorable lyrics that we all knew and are still going the rounds today.

That’s all in the past, mercifully.But as time has gone on, I’ve become more and more fascinated by dance as it features in the Bible.

There’s nothing ‘strict’ about it.Dance is a sign of exuberance.It’s closely associated with music and song, of course, and it links us with defining moments in human history and our relationship with God, our Creator.

When St John begins his gospel, ‘In the beginning’, he is thinking of the sheer delight and exuberance of creation as the Old Testament describes it.Out of silence comes the sound of music and celebration.Job speaks of God laying the foundations of the earth ‘to the joyful concert of the morning stars’.The Book of Proverbs takes up the same theme, describing Wisdom as the inner-working of creation, a source of delight, ‘at play’ in God’s presence, everywhere on earth, delighting to be with the human race.And the book entitled the Wisdom of Solomon goes into even greater detail, praising wisdom for being, ‘intelligent, holy, unique, manifold, subtle, mobile…a reflection of the eternal light…[who] passing into holy souls makes them God’s friends, and prophets’.

Much of this language captures the utter amazement of new life that we see in every child.A capacity for delight, for fascination with light, mobility and the twists and sounds of objects that begin to stir in us the language of words and music, while as socialisation develops, so also should the ability to play, stimulating an exercise of the imagination, which, as an expression of the wisdom of God in us, is how faith begins to contemplate heaven. Today we celebrate all this in the identification of the baby Jesus with every new-born child.

Those of you who are old enough to remember the TV series, Only Fools and Horses might also recall the Christmas edition when Del Boy picks up his new-born son, and takes him to a window overlooking Peckham, to show him the stars, to assert the fundamental importance of ‘a mummy and daddy who think you are the most important thing in the whole wide world’ and to discover the dignity of parenthood: as Del Boy puts it, ‘I was born for this moment’.

Even comedy bows to the mystery of creation, needing to reference what is real and eternal, with humour to befriend us when we find we can’t take too much of the truth in all its glorious enormity.

So here’s the first reason to dance for joy: that every tiny child is God’s unique and intentional work as is the creation of a family, the primary, sacred, social environment where we learn how to live well.

Dance has an exuberance that is like the subversive quality of wholesome and glorious laughter.After the story of the creation, the next most important story in the Old Testament is the liberation from slavery of the Hebrews, the chosen people of God. In the New Testament Letter to the Hebrews, we heard that God spoke in many and various ways by the prophets.One of those prophets was Miriam, the sister of Aaron.After God had brought the people safely through the Red Sea, Miriam took a timbrel, ‘all the women went after her with timbrels and with dances’ and Miriam led the dancing song: ‘Sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously’.This is laughter in music and action.

The theme of liberation is closely woven into the story of the birth of Jesus.Joseph is told by the angel that the child Mary is carrying is the one who is to liberate his people, and the angels who appear to shepherds say very clearly, ‘A Saviour has been born to you…and here is a sign for you: you will find a baby’.

By contrast with global economic and political power structures, the Bible points us repeatedly to the human capacity for exuberance and joy, which cannot ultimately be silenced by authoritarian brutalism.When in adult life, Jesus entered Jerusalem and was welcomed by crowds of people, he went to the temple where the authorities were indignant because the children were shouting their song, ‘Hosanna to the Son of David’ which made a claim that was true but inconvenient.

Here's the second reason to dance for joy: God liberates women and men by the power of beauty, delight and truth, each of which is a potent and subversive expression of God’s compassion.And these virtues are what make us fully human.

Finally, the Bible also tells us that from time to time our dancing is turned into mourning.The innocent children of Bethlehem will be routinely slaughtered: that mourning continues to be evident in the world today. And within the Church, we remain aware of the evil abuse of children, and the ways it has shamefully and criminally damaged lives in incalculable ways.

The delight we do still experience today in the birth of Jesus Christ is what has sustained a strong and ardent commitment to the safeguarding of children and all vulnerable people in our Church today.I want to pay tribute to the work of our Diocesan Safeguarding Team, and to hundreds of Parish Safeguarding Officers who have undertaken hours of training, in order to ensure that our sacred places are the safest places they can possibly be.If anyone is in any doubt, please may I reassure you of that commitment to safeguarding at every level in this household of faith.

We gladly and resolutely undertake this work because we believe that every child, every adult, has the right to experience, in freedom and safety, the beauty and liberating exuberance of the Christian faith.It is, indeed, a kind of dance.An adventure in astonishment and expansion, reaching deep down inside us in the exploration of how to know God loves us.

The light of Jesus Christ shines, in order to unmask and discredit the works of darkness.The environment of worship is like a gymnasium or laboratory for this work of shining safety.In sacred space we should sense that the angels do indeed hover close to us.Material space becomes pregnant with the unseen reality of a life in heaven that is not yet fully accessible to us but is evoked in image, symbol and enacted ritual – as one theologian put it, with ‘outstretched arms and pacing feet, with [a] glance and with the ear, and above all else in breathing, space is dancingly experienced’.

My prayer is that on this day, in this place, you will want to dance, not strictly, or literally, but for joy, because you know you are loved, because you know you are free, and because you know you are safe in God’s house, in God’s hands.