The Dance of Life: a Maskil of David

By Guest Lance Lewis

Good morning. Today's scripture verse is from Psalm 52. It is a Maskil of David when Doeg the Edomite came to Saul and said to him that David had come to the house of Ahimelech.

Why do you boast, O mighty one, of mischief done against the godly? All day long you are plotting destruction. Your tongue is like a sharp razor. You worker of treachery.

You love evil more than good, and lying more than speaking the truth. Selah. You love all the words that devour, O deceitful tongue.

But God will break you down forever. He will snatch you and tear you from your tent. He will uproot you from the land of the living.

Selah. The righteous will see and fear and laugh at the evildoer saying, see the one who would not take refuge in God, but trusted in abundant riches and sought refuge in wealth. But I am like a green olive tree in the house of God.

I trust in the steadfast love of God forever and ever. I will thank you forever because of what you have done in the presence of the faithful. I will proclaim your name for it is good.

When I first read that, I was like, “Oh, this is going to be an easy homily to write.” And then I wrote my first homily. And then I reread it. And I was like, “Ooh, that's a bit political. I got to pull that back.” And then I rewrote it. And I said, “Ooh, that's missing the meat and the potatoes.” So I said, “I got to add some stuff to it.” And then I was like, “Ooh, that's a little too emotional. It's a little too diluted.” Every time I rewrote this homily, it was a little too much, a little too less, just a little too something.

So my prayer for this is that the words I've written are engaging for everyone's mind, heart, and soul. And I also pray for me to be concise and not to nerd out because this is a very fun homily for me to write. And for the message of my homily to be a homily and not a sermon.

So the historical context of this psalm is found in 1 Samuel chapters 21 and 22. And that was referenced earlier with Doeg the Edomite—he was Saul's chief herdsman. He went and informed Saul that David was looking for shelter and safety. And then the priest Ahimelech had given it. Well, Saul had came back and said, “Well, that's not kosher. That's not cool. I don't like that.” So, Saul gave the order for Ahimelech and all of the priests to be killed and for their city to be destroyed.

Psalm 52 is when David heard about that. That is his reaction. It's called a maskil. And a maskil is a deep contemplation.

As I was reading through Psalm 52, I realized that it is a very rich passage. And I mean very rich. When I said I love this passage and the homily wrote itself, that is true. It is a very rich passage. What I like about this is that it's got very classic tones of the righteous and the wicked, the good and the evil. You know, that's a classic theme in literature and in life and in history. It's just a classic theme of what's going on.

At the beginning of the psalm, David asks the question of why. “Why boast? You know, you fall prey to sin. Why are you plotting destruction? You're loving evil. You're loving lying. Why are you using a silver tongue? You're practicing deceit. You're being a sharp razor. You're cutting.” And in the middle of it, he was talking about when we are out of step with God, when we have, committed great offenses to God and to other people, that we are broken down, whether it be ourself, our body, whether it be our mind or emotions, that we are snatched out of the shelter, that we're snatched out of the safety of our life.

Then at the end of it, David comes back with a praise. He comes back with emphasizing God's justice and mercy and its importance, it is what we need to be trusting in, God's grace, God's love. And, as I was going through this, I first noticed the classic literatures of the righteous and the wicked. You know, that's the boastful man. That's the Edomite. He was separated from God. He was following his selfish desires. He prioritized his personal wealth. He had many transgressions against God's law. He was violating morals. He was violating ethics.

And then on the other hand, we have the righteous, the green olive tree. Those are the times when we are united with God. That is when we receive God's grace and when we find security in God's love.

That is the dance of life for all of us. There will be times where we are Doeg the Edomite. There will be times that we are the righteous. We will fall out of step with God in our dance. We will stumble and then we'll get back up and we'll get back in step and we'll go boogie-woogie again.

And, when we're coming down to this, the meat and the potatoes, there is a contrast of the good and the evil. And I was thinking, “Well, that sounds really familiar for today's time.” It was familiar and known then. It's familiar and known now.

When we turn on the news, whether it be domestic, whether it be news from abroad, we see love. We see community. We see support. We also see wars and discrimination and disregard for laws and we see propaganda.

When we turn on social media, we see love. We see community. We see support. We also see extremity on all sides. We see inflammatory statements. We see manipulation. We see propaganda.

And when we are listening to the news, when we are out on the social media, we need to be discerning. We need to be practicing that contemplation. We need to be practicing and seeing our maskil. We need to find the truth and focus on that. When we're putting garbage in, when we're receiving the garbage from the news, from the social medias, and we hold on to that, that poisons us. And then we have garbage coming out.

When we focus on the positive, focus on the righteous, focus on the truth, that stays in our heart and that brings into vitalization for all of us. Positive in, positive held, we have positive coming out.

As I was doing the research for all of this, there was a phrase that kept popping up and that's counterculture. And I had to go look that up because I thought counterculture was the hippies and the flower children of the last century. So, I was kind of confused on all of my resources that I was reading.

I went to the Oxford Dictionary and it says that counterculture is a way of life. It is a set of attitudes that are opposed to or at variance with a prevailing society, cultural, or norm.

I was just like, “Oh, that's more than just the hippies. That's more than the flower powers.” And as I thought about that, I was like, “That is something that we have experienced all throughout history. We've always had the counterculture.” And I'm just like, “Hmm, well, who are they?”

Revolutionary war patriots, they were counterculture. Abolitionists were counterculture. Suffragists were counterculture. A little bit more closer to present times. Civil rights activists were all counterculture.

And civil rights is more than just race and ethnicity. It's also civil rights for the religious, civil rights for the non-religious, civil rights for the veterans, for the disabled, and for many other marginalized groups.

These people have all been counterculture throughout history. They rejected the values of the world that they were given. They rejected the self-reliance. Self-reliance, the way that I had understood it was trusting in your own abilities and your own judgment.

They rejected self-sufficiency. That's being able to meet your own needs without external existence. They relied on community. They relied on the church. They relied on the body. They relied on God. They depended on God's steadfast love. They were the hands and the feet of the church. They did God's work in the world. They liberated the oppressed. And they brought the marginalized into community. They brought them into communion.

This type of counterculture, it is an act of sacred holiness. Christ was counterculture. He looked at the empire of Rome and he said, “No, we're not cool with this oppression.”

Christ relied on God the Father and he brought the marginalized of the society at the time into communion. He brought the marginalized back into community. That was not freely granted. That was not freely given. Christ gave his life.

And the previous mentioned groups that I had said, you know, the patriots, the abolitionists, the suffragists, the civil rights activists, they all relied on God. They said no to the oppression that they were seeing, whether it be a person owning a person, sexism, racism, whatever it may be. They said no. They said no to oppression.

And then they fought for the equality. They fought for the respect of the oppressed. And that was not freely given. A lot of the people who were in those movements, a lot of them lost their lives. A lot of them were imprisoned. A lot of them had to pay restitutions to society at the time. These are modern examples. We got the 1700s of the revolution all the way up until present time. And I would just say, well, that's pretty cool.

Let's look at the Bible. There's a person in the Bible who emphasizes the dance of life. The dance of life is when he was in step with God, then fell out of step with God, and then he got back into the step with God.

That was King David. King David, he was beloved by God. He had an affair with Bathsheba. And he said, “Ooh, not good. We got to get this fixed.” So, he ordered her husband Uriah to be murdered. Then he married Bathsheba. And then God sent Nathan to confront him. And then David's repentance is in Psalm 51.

That was the dance of life for David. David was in favor. He fell out of favor. He got back into favor. And through God's grace, God forgave him.

Here is a modern example. There is a minister by the name of Reverend Mel White. When he was a young man, he was active in his church and he was blessed. He attended college. He received a Bachelor of Arts in History and Science. He received a Master's of Arts in Communication. And afterwards, I believe it was California, he was making religious films and he was hosting a live television youth show. He married his high school sweetheart. He went off into seminary. He got his Master's of Divinity and his Doctorate of Ministerial Work. He was ordained and he was pastoring a small church. He was also a ghost writer for the conservative evangelical movement. He used to write for Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Billy Graham.

And he was struggling with society at the time. He was struggling with where he was in society, where he was in his life. He was struggling with what society was saying and teaching because society was saying and teaching that he was a bad man. He had attempted suicide. He had fallen out of step with God. His wife came to his side and helped him back to health and they spoke. He came back to his wife and his wife and he amicably divorced. They've been friends for the rest of their lives. Mel White came out in ‘93 or ‘94 publicly.

And, when he got back into step with God, God said, “Great, you are back in step with me. Let me bless you.”

He became the Dean of the Cathedral of Hope in Dallas. He had gone through his discernment process. He had gone through the first phase of his dancing of life. And while he was down there, he was repenting for the malice and the harm that he caused marginalized people. He was working to right his wrongs. He was focusing on ministering to the exact community that he had been shunning and sending out from the church.

He remarried. He and his husband in ‘97 or ‘98 started a non-profit organization called Soulforce, which is a non-violent resistant grassroots operation that fights oppression.

I'm going to say we're not probably going to be grandiose like Reverend Mel White or grandiose like King David or even grandiose like the people I mentioned earlier, the civil rights activists, the patriots, the whatnot, the suffragettes. I don't think we're going to be as grandiose as any of them, but I'm pretty sure that we can see where we’ve separated ourselves from God, where we were feeding our own egos, where we were giving into our own desires. We can see where we were breaking God's law, we were practicing hatred of ourself or hatred of others. You can choose hate, you can choose dislike, whatever word fits for you.

I'm sure that we can all see where we were also in step with God, where we walked with humility, we practiced temperance, and we were being just with God's law. We were practicing, love of self, love of others, the sanctity of life.

And I'm not sure about you, but when I see the dance of life, when I go through my discernments about my own life, my own private maskil, I can see where I am on both sides. I can see where I have stumbled and fallen. I see those a lot.

I also see where I gave up and I have walked with Jesus, where I walked with God, and I have been blessed. And that's just life. That is the dance of life that we all have. We all experience trials, tribulations. We all fall out of step. We all go through our contemplations. We all go through our learning. We all go through our blessings, and through God's grace and love, we're all brought back into righteousness with him.

And when I rely on myself, I want to say this, that's bad news bears. That's just bad news bears. We're not going to get into details. I'm just going to tell you that's bad.

But then when I rely on my faith, when I rely on being united with God, it's like having angels in the outfield. Those are the good times. Those are the blessings. Those are the times that we all need to be focusing toward and trying to do, trying to stay in step with God.

And the joy here, is that this is experienced by everyone, the dance of life. You know, from the biblical times to the historical times to the modern times. And it's a story of life. It's the story of the good, the bad, the ugly.

We all do our maskils of life where we sit down and say, “Hmm, I'm contemplating this. Was I in union? Was I not in union? Was I boogie-woogie-ing with Christ? Was I stumbling and tripping over my two left feet?” That's the story of life. That's what we need to do.

We need to focus on staying in union. Because when we are in union, we're given the chance to become a better person. We're given the chance to grow, to learn through our blessings.

And we're also to share. We're to share in blessings. We're to share in our abundance for others to bring the blessings into them. To be the work of the church, to be open for the Holy Spirit to use us, to move through us, to help others. And when we are separated from God, when we have stumbled over our two left feet and fallen, you know, flat on the dance floor in our faith, that's when we've separated ourselves from God.

But that's perfectly wonderful. That's fine. That gives us a chance for betterment also. That gives us a chance to grow, a chance to learn, a chance to repent, and a chance to be reunited through God's grace and God's forgiveness, through God's blessings and abundance. He is there with us all through the dance of life. And with this dance, whether we're boogie-woogie-ing with God, or we're out of step with God, we need to remember that God's grace and God's love is there for us.

God's grace and God's love is there for everyone, regardless of where we are in that dance, where we are in our life, where another person is in their dance, where another person is in their life. We all need to focus on how to be in step. We all need to focus on how to get back up when we fall down. We all need to be in discernment so we know how to stay in step with God. We need to remember to be in step, to stay in step, to love like Christ, to love like God.

Amen.