Revised Common Lectionary readings for the Sixth Sunday of Easter, Year B: Acts 10:44-48, Psalm 98, 1 John 5:1-6, and John 15:9-17.

Are you a music fan? A classical music fan? I am. I love the great symphonies – Beethoven’s Fifth, his Ninth, Tchaikovsky’s Fifth, Dvorak’s From the New World, and many others – they just bowl me over. I can sit down in a concert venue and no matter what emotional state I may be in, a good symphony or concerto can overcome it – cynicism, depression, grumpiness, whatever my condition may be it will be conquered by the music and I will be uplifted. It doesn’t even have to be live in a concert hall. Sometimes when I’m feeling a bit out of sorts, I’ll put on a CD and just let great music lift me up. In fact, even badly played band music can have that effect.

When we first moved from Nevada to Kansas in 1993, Evelyn was unable to accompany the children and me. We had been unable to sell our home and she was unable to transfer her job for several more months. So she stayed in Las Vegas while in August the kids and I moved into an A-Frame farmhouse on 40 acres just outside the town of Bucyrus, Kansas. The kids enrolled in Circle Grove Elementary School and Patrick decided he wanted to learn to play a musical instrument in the band. So he started instruction on the clarinet. Three weeks into the semester, the Fifth Grade Band had its first concert. Believe me that I am being inordinately charitable when I describe it as abysmal – it was SO bad!

Several weeks later Evelyn was able to join us for a few days at Thanksgiving and it just happened that the band was giving its second concert, a holiday offering, while she was with us. Well . . . to be honest, once again, with still only three months of instruction, the band was terrible. But they were so much better, by orders of magnitude better, than they had been at the end of September that I just couldn’t shut up about how good they were. Evelyn looked at me like I had lost my mind; four months in Kansas had clearly unhinged me! But I just had to get down to the stage to tell the band instructor what a marvelous job she had done! I was simply gushing with excited praise for what she had accomplished.

This is precisely what is happening in John’s First Letter. He is so excited about the love of God, so effusive that words just keep flowing across his page: I can see him sitting with his stylus scribbling away, trying to find new ways to write about this wonderful new Christian faith. The way he repeats things, the way his ideas tumble over one another, you can tell he’s just bubbling over with enthusiasm and eagerness.

By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments. For the love of God is this, that we obey his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome, for whatever is born of God conquers the world. And this is the victory that conquers the world, our faith.

In fact, John’s vision of the Christian faith is just like my experience of sitting in a symphony hall. The way my mood, whatever it may be, is overcome by the music is the way John envisions the world being conquered by our faith. Jesus calls us to love our God and our neighbor in such a way that the world can’t help but be won over. “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. 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.” And John assures us that this call is not burdensome.

It may not be burdensome . . . but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t take some effort, does it?

There is a story of a young sailor on a small ship sailing through the night. The captain instructed him to take the helm while the captain went below for a brief nap. “All you need to do,” explained the captain, “is follow the North Star,” which he carefully pointed out to the sailor. “Do you think you can do it?”
“Yes, sir!” the sailor replied. “You can count on me” as he took the wheel and the captain disappeared below.

Several hours later the captain woke from his nap and came up on deck. One look at the sky he knew immediately that the ship was off course. “Sailor,” he said. “What have you been doing? Why aren’t we headed toward the North Star?”

“Oh,” said the sailor. “We passed that an hour ago!”

Keeping one’s eye on the Pole Star and staying on a heading for it . . . it’s not burdensome, but it takes effort.

In theology there is a concept called adiaphora. It means “things indifferent” and refers to matters which are debatable or spiritually neutral. There are essentials of the Christian faith such as the deity of Christ, Jesus’ physical resurrection, the centrality of the Sacraments in worship, and so forth. But there are also lots of things that we get exorcised about which are non-essentials, things that are neither commanded nor forbidden in Scripture. These include such things as whether to use candles or not, whether to furnish a worship space with chairs or pews, what time of day our services should be held, what sort of music to sing, and so forth. The adiaphora, some would argue, might also include the very important but nonetheless secondary issues that we grapple with, such as war and peace, abortion, marriage equality, healthcare and welfare, and a host of current issues. All of which can, and frequently do, command our attention and distract us from keeping our eye on the Pole Star of our faith, which is Jesus!

As business coach Steven Covey might put it, we forget that “the main thing is keeping the main thing the main thing.” The main thing, Jesus said, is this: “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” That is not a burden, but it does take effort because of all the distractions turning around us in this world. This is what T.S. Elliot wrote about in the poem Burnt Norton one of his Four Quartets, in which we find these lines:

At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.

I love that image, “At the still point of the turning world . . . .” For a Christian, that “still point” is Jesus. “At the still point of the turning world . . . there is only the dance.”

If I’d thought about it, before putting this sermon to bed last night, I’d have included “The Lord of the Dance” in today’s hymns:

I danced in the morning when the world was begun.
I danced in the moon and the stars and the sun.
I came down from heaven and I danced on the earth;
At Bethlehem, I had my birth.
Dance, then, wherever you may be.
I am the Lord of the dance, said he,
And I lead you all, wherever you may be,
And I lead you all in the dance, said he.

Wonderful, joyful piece of music. The tune is based on the Shaker melody, ‘Tis a Gift to be Simple and Aaron Copland used it in Appalachian Spring, which is another of those orchestral pieces of music that can pull me right up out of any funky attitude into happiness.

Have you ever heard the term “dance for joy”? Did you know that’s from the Bible? The Prophet Jeremiah wrote that God will come and gather his people like a shepherd gathers his flock, that there will be an abundance of crops, of grain, of oil, of herds, and that “the young women will dance for joy; the young and old men will join in.” (Jer. 31:13, Common English Bible)

Jesus said in today’s gospel lesson that joy is the very purpose of his not-terribly-burdensome command: “I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.” That’s where the whole gospel is headed, where the whole arc of salvation history is taking us, where God wants us to be. Our Christian faith is taking us – to joy, to the kind of joy that lifts and us completely fills us like a good symphony, to the kind of joy that makes us dance. And that is why our faith is “the victory that conquers the world” at the still point of which there is only the Lord of the dance.

From time to time, we need to be reminded of this. The goal of the Christian faith is not purity; it’s not morality; it’s not bringing world peace or world dominion; it’s not the right to life or the right of reproductive choice; it’s not the sanctity of marriage or marriage equality. The goal of the Christian faith is none of those nor any other secondary thing we can imagine or get distracted by. The goal of the Christian faith is nothing less than joy, a joy that fills us completely and fulfills itself in love.

We . . . each one of us individually, and all of us together . . . need to keep our eye on the Pole Star of our faith, on Jesus, on the Lord of the dance, and remember that the main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing. Amen.