Club Dance
Zorobabel begat Abiud; and Abiud begat Eliakim; and Eliakim begat Azor; and Azor begat Sadoc; and Sadoc begat Achim. – Matthew 1:13-14 (KJV)
Hospitalized after surgery, writer Ben Birnbaum couldn’t concentrate to read, so he drowsed to TV, day and night. One afternoon, he awoke to Club Dance, a program emanating from a country-western music hall where people line-dance for hours on end, and you watch them.
Watch them long enough and you’re mesmerized by evidence of every vanity, vice, sorrow, loss, and mishap that ever was. Smooth, wrinkled, comb-overs, beehives, sculpted abs, beer-bellies, on the make, on the fence, on a lark, on the skids, on the mend.
At first, Birnbaum couldn’t distinguish the words of the song they were dancing to. When he did, something weird happened.
“When I get to heaven, I know they’ll let me in.” The TV pulsated.
“When I get to heaven, I know they’ll let me in.” It glowed.
“When I get to heaven, I know they’ll let me in.” It levitated.
Just then, the nurse entered. Tears streaming down his face, he announced, “I’ve seen the Truth on television!”
She said, “It’s the Percocet.”
Maybe. But it was still a divine revelation.
I usually skip over scripture’s endless “begats.” But I miss divine revelation when I do. As historian Peggy Bendroth says, the genealogies reflect a conviction that individual lives matter. Thousands of years later, we know their names, including the embarrassing and disreputable ones.
The great cloud of witnesses, she notes, is no undifferentiated blob. It’s particular and distinctive, a vast array of all the “experiences, convictions, talents, achievements, sins, and failures of God’s people across space and time.”
Exactly as we are, we’re linked in one long mesmerizing Electric Slide stretching from the dawn of human history to the door of Club Dance Eternal, where Jesus leads the line and they have to let us in.
Prayer
Mesmerize us with the holiness of our human particularity, the joy of our connection in faithfulness and flaw, the glory of the line.
About the AuthorMary Luti is a long time seminary educator and pastor, author of Teresa of Avila’s Way and numerous articles, and founding member of The Daughters of Abraham, a national network of interfaith women’s book groups.