Theology and Dancing with the Stars

A sermon preached at Faith Episcopal on May 25, 2008

Do not be anxious about your life – don’t worry about what you look like or have to wear. Don’t even worry about where your next meal will come from. I wonder how this sounded to the people that followed Jesus – many of whom were poor and didn’t always know where their next meal would come from. I would imagine that there was a lot of “That’s easy for you to say – I’ve got kids to feed” kind of murmuring.

Be like the lilies and the birds and know that God provides what you need. That would be really nice if only we didn’t have to pay for our food, but we can’t just sink roots down in the soil and draw nourishment from it, or swoop around in search of seeds and bugs that are just lying there for the taking. So once again, there goes Jesus, being completely unrealistic, just to make a point. And the point is what? Know who, or what, you trust. Do you trust to God’s criteria – what God has to say about you or do you trust what the world has to say?

We all have a ready cast of characters that do us wrong when we listen to them. They are the voices that will tell you that you aren’t good enough because…because you aren’t pretty enough, or tough enough or smart enough, rich enough, because you are not white enough or not patriotic enough or not Christian enough. The lilies of the field and the birds of the air don’t have to worry about those voices, blessedly simple creatures that they are. They are unencumbered by the necessity of having to live in a complex social system in order to survive. When was the last time you heard two birds conversing cattily about another saying “Did you see the size of those tail feathers!”? Birds don’t care what other birds have to say about them, in fact, they are not aware enough to have those kinds of thoughts. Only humans, being highly social animals, must carry the awareness of what other people are doing and saying about them. After all, being on the outside can feel like death. And unfortunately, it is also this very concern about conforming in order to survive that makes us the only species so willing to harm others who don’t conform, with our prejudices, our attitudes, our thoughtlessness.

Lilies are beautiful, wherever they bloom. It doesn’t matter whether they are in a beautifully planned garden, or along a peaceful country road, or pushing up through cracks in the pavement in a rundown part of town. They are beautiful because it’s what they are and that’s the underlying lesson here—bloom where you are planted and be beautiful!!! Just go ask any of those kids running around back there with Claire. God made us beautiful – it’s the world that tells us that we are not. I think when Jesus refers to the two masters in this passage that is exactly what he is talking about—you can serve the master that loves you and sees your beauty or you can fall in behind the ones that want you to doubt yourself and your holiness. Not both. You have to choose.

Reality TV came of age when I was in seminary and thus had no time for anything except readin’, writin’ and ruminatin’, so I was never on board with any of it. What little I did hear about sounded as though it were driven by manufactured conflict and animosity, and I’ve never had any interest in that. Imagine my surprise this year when I’ve found myself completely caught up in the battle of the Davids on American Idol as well as the other blockbuster “Dancing with the Stars.” Of course, now I get to claim that it was sermon research so I can absolve myself of any guilt in the pleasure.

The two shows are completely different – American Idol gives people the chance to do what they do, in front of judges and the audience with a pretty big payoff at the end – a recording contract and great publicity to launch a career. Dancing with the Stars, on the other hand, is all about taking people who are not ballroom dancers and sending them out to “play one” on TV. The payoff is a cheesy mirror ball trophy. I’d never really watched it before this season, and the first time I even turned it on Peter’s eyes rolled so far back in his head I thought he was possessed. But in the next second he said “Oh yeah, I heard Jason Taylor’s on this show!” Jason Taylor is a stand out defensive end for the Miami Dolphins and, as it turns out, one of the most elegant 6’6” imposing lineman you have ever seen – but could he DANCE? We were hooked. The precedent had been set a couple of seasons ago when Emmett Smith – former Dallas Cowboy running back—won the competition. But Jason had formidable competition in the mighty if diminutive Kristi Yamaguchi – the Olympic Gold medalist figure skater. That Kristi won the competition last week was almost no surprise, so it might have been easy to miss some of the extraordinary things that happened during the competition. There were several competitors who were clearly fish out of water, who illustrated the axiom “you can either dance or you can’t.” Monica Seles – tennis great but not a dancer. Neither were the magician – he couldn’t pull fleetness of foot out of his hat—nor the comedian, who kept them laughing only long enough to survive a couple of rounds. Most interesting were three women contestants, Priscilla Presley, the oldest competitor ever on Dancing with the Stars, Marlee Matlin, the Oscar winning actress who is deaf and Marisa Jaret Winokur, a Tony award Broadway star who is decidedly not a size 2. These three women received such enthusiastic support from their various constituencies. Marlee Matlin was held up as “isn’t it amazing that someone who can’t even hear the music can do that!” and the deaf community said “thank you Marlee for showing that we can do anything we set our minds to.” Marlee had a lot riding on how well she did – because in some way, every deaf person in America was out there on the dance floor, vulnerable to looking awkward or foolish. It was brave and she had a ball.

Priscilla received support from women over 40 and Marisa from those over a size 12. But they also were the object of some fairly vicious comments in the media and the internet. Priscilla was lampooned for the obviousness of her cosmetic surgery, and who really wants to see an old woman doing such sultry dances anyway. But I think it was Marisa who risked the most. In our “the thinner the better culture”, did people really want to see her plump self in a sequined dance gown showing lots of leg and moving her hips to a Latin rhythm? There were lots of people on the dance floor with Marisa, too. She made it to the semi-finals.

Marisa Jaret Winokur chose to ignore the voices that had no doubt called her fat girl and every other unkind thing they could think of. It was not easy for her to say yes to such an arena that is the realm of sleek, taut, agile people doing very showy moves. But she listened to the joy that she got out of dancing, the fun of learning, competing and improving and proclaimed, the week after she was eliminated, that nothing else had ever made her feel so beautiful or so sexy – two things that are inherently human. I think her exact words of advice were “Get out and do something that’s fun and shake what your Mama gave you!”

Belief in yourself as a beautiful child of God is not always easy to maintain in the complicated and mean streets that we inhabit so there’s a good lesson in the lilies of the field and the birds of the air. Nothing that we could ever say to a lily or a bird would interfere with their ability to express the beauty and goodness that abides in them – nothing interrupts their embrace of their God-given extravagance in bloom and in flight. In their simplicity they don’t know much, but they know enough to serve the Master of Creation. May we be as wise as they are.