Dancing in the Streets

Today, we begin a new series of sermons entitled the Summer Soundtrack. We will be looking at summer music and the power of music in the psalms to reveal the character of God to us.
When I was growing up, we had a house down in Bethany Beach, in Delaware. We would often spend much of the summer down at the beach and I can remember boom boxes playing music, cars riding by with summery songs, and different tunes acting as the soundtrack across those years. I can recall making mixed tapes off the radio of songs I was sure were telling my own story… The song track of summer changed each year, but it always included songs that got you up and dancing, quiet ballads, sad laments, and reassuring soul songs.
The people of Israel also had a song track. The book of Psalms is a collection of poetry that captures the emotions of living as the people of Israel. There are psalms of praise and joy. There are psalms of sadness and lament. There are psalms of desperation and hope. The people of Israel travelled three times a year up to the Temple. There are Psalms to sing on to the Temple, the songs of Ascent. There are Psalms to sing as they return, the psalms of return or descent. The book of Psalms were known so intimately by the people of Israel it was not written down until generations after it was developed. It almost reminds me of the way that we can sing songs on the radio without ever having seen the written lyrics.
As I was deciding what summer songs would accent our worship and teach us about the character of God today, I listened through popular songs across decades. Marvin Gaye, Mickey Stevenson, and Icy Jo Hunter originally wrote our song today. When Martha Reeves first sang this song, she imagined her home in Detroit with the record player on the porch and neighbors gathering together. Let me play for you the debut of this song on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1965.
(Play video – https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=22&v=RGpgkCE41x8 )
The summer song, ‘Dancing in the Streets’ has been covered at least 35 times, by musicians from the Grateful Dead and Van Halen to Ramsey Lewis and Laura Nyro, and its opening riffs inspired the Rolling Stones’ “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.”
Many of you might remember that this song was not only a “get up and dance” song popular at weddings. It also was a call to action song in 1964 as a nation struggled against the Ku Klux Klan who would firebomb over 3 dozen African American churches that summer. The Civil Rights Bill had just passed in June of 1964. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee launched its Summer Project, a campaign to register rural black voters in Mississippi; that same day, three of its volunteers, one black and two white, went missing. Calls to actions were all over the country for something to change. It was in this atmosphere that “Dancing in the Street” was released on July 31st of 1964. The action began with gathering in the streets for all to have a chance to lift their voices. Mark Kurlansky writes after the riots of 1965, “This was the first time it was suggested that the song had a second meaning.” The black-power movement was first to embrace this meaning.1 Incidentally, there is a wonderful book, Ready for a Brand New Beat: How ‘Dancing in the Streets’ became an anthem for a changing America by Mark Kurlansky that informs some of my information this morning.2
But dancing in the streets did not begin in 1964 in the United States of America. Gathering for celebration to sing and to dance has always been slightly countercultural. From the earliest days of people, we heard tell of dancing as signs of exuberance and joy, worship and praise. Even the early church fathers and mothers of the second and third century record Christian services of dancing and singing in worship.3 Such were the actions of David that Karen read for us this morning out of 2nd Samuel. It is the bringing of the Ark of the Covenant to rest in the test that sets David’s feet to dancing. It is the presence of God that has him moving his body and dancing the joy in his soul. In fact, his dancing, we can imagine seemed so exuberant and full of life, that it was undignified for a king.
There is something within us that reacts to this kind of adoration as if it was not proper to be so positive and with such abandon. This was the reaction of Michel, when she saw David dancing before the Ark. She was positively mortified by his behavior. There was nothing dignified about a king dancing before the Lord in such a way. There is something in us that tries to determine what is proper and appropriate, to say there is one way to praise and know God. However, as Michel found out, God is known and praised not just in one place, by one people and in one way, but around the world by many people and in many ways.
God is to be praised here and there. Not just one place, but all around the world in all of the places we have known God’s presence. From the beach to the mountains, under a tree to Longwood Gardens, from the grocery store to a cramped room overfilled with children, when we have known God, we praise God! When we have experienced love and presence, support and care, we praise God and learn that this is God’s character. Our God is a God of joy and presence, care and compassion. We learn that God is worthy to be praised.
Now, we could look around us and find other responses. We could watch the news, listen to the latest need for our prayers, and know the pain and suffering around us. There are times of the questioning and concern. There are times of pain and suffering. There are times of confusion and wondering. And we will find many other of these in the Songbook called the Psalms. However, Shauna Niequist, blogger and finder of God in the ordinary writes that we need celebration of the everyday as a “a tap dance on the fresh graves of apathy and cynicism, the creeping belief that this is all there is, and that God is no match for the wreckage of the world we live in. What God does in the tiny corners of our day-to-day lives is stunning and gorgeous and headline-making, but we have a bad habit of saving the headlines for the grotesque and the scary.”4 I believe that the psalmists would agree.
In fact, this is not so different from the call to praise in Psalm 84. The psalmist praises God for how different life is when the psalmist in the house of the Lord, when the psalmist is living in the way of God. From the Message version, we hear in verses 5-7: “And how blessed all those in whom you live,
whose lives become roads you travel; They wind through lonesome valleys, come upon brooks, discover cool springs and pools brimming with rain! God-traveled, these roads curve up the mountain, and at the last turn—Zion! God in full view!”
God in full view is worthy to be praised. God who cares for us and loves us, calling us to live as disciples is worthy to be praise. God who is near to us on the summer days of sunshine, when all is right with the world (even just for a moment) as well as when all is crashing on our heads (even if just for a moment).
Take some moments this week to sing/say/ dance your praise to God. God is worthy to be praised!
This is the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, thanks be to God, Amen.

1http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/dancing-in-the-street-detroits-radical-anthem
2Ready for a Brand New Beat: How ‘Dancing in the Streets’ became an anthem for a changing America by Mark Kurlansky, 2013.
3Ehrenreich, Barbara, Dancing in the Streets: a History of Collective Joy,, 2005, page 65.
4Cold Tangerines: Celebrating the extraordinary nature of everyday life. Niequist, Shauna, 2007, page 10.

Old Testament Lesson: Psalm 84
The Joy of Worship in the Temple
How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord of hosts!
My soul longs, indeed it faints for the courts of the Lord;
my heart and my flesh sing for joy to the living God.
Even the sparrow finds a home, and the swallow a nest for herself,
where she may lay her young, at your altars, O Lord of hosts,
my King and my God.
Happy are those who live in your house, ever singing your praise. Selah
Happy are those whose strength is in you, in whose heart are the highways to Zion.
As they go through the valley of Baca they make it a place of springs;
the early rain also covers it with pools.
They go from strength to strength; the God of gods will be seen in Zion.
O Lord God of hosts, hear my prayer; give ear, O God of Jacob! Selah
Behold our shield, O God; look on the face of your anointed.
For a day in your courts is better than a thousand elsewhere. I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than live in the tents of wickedness.
For the Lord God is a sun and shield; he bestows favor and honor.
No good thing does the Lord withhold from those who walk uprightly.
O Lord of hosts, happy is everyone who trusts in you.

Old Testament Lesson: 2 Samuel:6:14-19
David danced before the LORD with all his might; David was girded with a linen ephod. So David and all the house of Israel brought up the ark of theLORD with shouting, and with the sound of the trumpet.
As the ark of the LORD came into the city of David, Michal daughter of Saul looked out of the window, and saw King David leaping and dancing before theLORD; and she despised him in her heart.
They brought in the ark of the LORD, and set it in its place, inside the tent that David had pitched for it; and David offered burnt offerings and offerings of well-being before the LORD. When David had finished offering the burnt offerings and the offerings of well-being, he blessed the people in the name of the LORD of hosts, and distributed food among all the people, the whole multitude of Israel, both men and women, to each a cake of bread, a portion of meat, and a cake of raisins. Then all the people went back to their homes.