Don’t Let Them Take Away Your Dance: 2 Samuel 6:13-22
By Rev. Dr. Melinda Contreras-Byrd, Contributing Writer
This scripture tells a story that holds important implications for Black Christians in general and Black pastors in particular. The narrative tells a story about the joy that was felt at the sight of the Ark of the Covenant. This religious statue was a preeminent symbol of the presence of the Lord. It held both cultural and religious meaning.
The cultural custom of Israel contained times of significance punctuated with instruments and dance. The dancers, instrumentalists, and vocalists held an important place in the worship and testimony of the people of God.
For many cultures, dance was an important part of life and an expected means of self-expression. Certainly, this is true of African cultures from which we originate. Anything of significance was highlighted with dance. There were dances of welcome, dances to drive out sickness and evil, dances of celebrations of weddings, dances of rites of passage and spiritual worship. African dance is inextricably connected to life and things of the spirit and has been passed down to people of the African Diaspora.
Black and Latinx children are encouraged to dance as soon as they are able to walk. It is viewed as an anomaly when a person of the African Diaspora shows no ability for dance. So, upon seeing the Ark, the Bible states that David showed his spiritual devotion by participating in an uninhibited, no holds barred dance of pure joy. His stately wife watched from the window above and despised and belittled him for it.
What would others say? This was beneath his station in life. She was not known as a woman full of joy and freedom. Her voiced opinion of disdain was poised to uphold a secular-based hierarchy and keep people in their places. This same voice is alive and active today, serving the same purpose.
When European missionaries proselytized the Africans they enslaved (in one way or another), they issued a decree against African drumming and dance. Unable to see beyond their own culture and armed with a narrowed theological template, they misunderstood dance and drums (and for the most part everything African) to be connected to paganism. They could not understand that God had gifted this particular part of humanity with a freedom of worship and praise that was enacted in the movement of one’s bodily self.
They had never allowed themselves to be moved to abandon by anything nor was the human body seen as a masterpiece of visual and kinesthetic beauty. Their music did not contain the heartbeat of God that drew the listeners to joy, release, and physical surrender. There was no anticipation of spirit movement in their dances. They were orchestrated, genteel, and required a set decorum.
So, just like Michal, they watched from their windows, shaking their heads as they weighed all things African and found them wanting. One of the saddest losses of slavery was the connection with our African selves. One of the traumas and most destructive things that slavery left us to grapple with was taking our dance. In our dance lies an important gift from God. Our dance is a sacred pathway to healing and wholeness that is open to all who will surrender.
The first instinct of those who have been released is to dance for joy. When words cannot express a depth of joy, praise, or excitement, dance gives a means of self-expression. Those who have been abused are made whole through the dance. People are unified through the dance. When our hearts are released of heaviness through the acquisition or loss of something, an honest response requires a full surrender, and this includes our bodies.
We are people of the dance and our hearts betray us as our bodies move automatically to the rhythm. Yet, we struggle in the house of the Lord to maintain control of our bodies because ill-informed teachers have taught us that to do otherwise is undignified and counter-spiritual!
Today, I want to encourage you to honor your roots and take back the joy that has been stolen from you. You will find the joy of the Lord in the freedom of the lifting of the hands, the movement of the feet, and the synchronization of your body with rhythm. Rhythm is the heartbeat of God in this world. So, today, I want to encourage you to broaden, strengthen, and liberate your life by reclaiming your God-given right to dance unashamedly before the Lord.
Melinda Contreras-Byrd is a New Jersey state-licensed psychologist and owner of the Generations Center. The Center specializes in meeting the psychological and spiritual needs of all women, and both men and women of color. She has worked as a school psychologist in urban and suburban districts. She is a graduate of Rutgers University, The Graduate School of Applied & Professional Psychology, and the Princeton Theological Seminary. She is a published writer and poet, an ordained itinerant elder of the AME Church, and joins her husband, the Rev. Vernon R. Byrd, Jr. in pastoral ministry at St. Matthew AME Church in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
