{"id":2604,"date":"2007-09-06T00:30:15","date_gmt":"2007-09-06T00:30:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/jesuscreed\/2007\/09\/40-days-living-the-jesus-creed.html"},"modified":"2007-09-06T00:30:15","modified_gmt":"2007-09-06T00:30:15","slug":"40-days-living-the-jesus-creed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2007\/09\/40-days-living-the-jesus-creed.html","title":{"rendered":"40 Days Living the Jesus Creed"},"content":{"rendered":"

The following is a chapter from our forthcoming 40 Days Living the Jesus Creed<\/em>. It is as yet unedited; we have forty chapters that explore dimensions of the Jesus Creed in the Gospels and the early Christian leaders.
\nThe Divine Dance
\n\u201cThe Father and I are one.
\nBelieve [my] works,
\nso that you may know and understand that
\nthe Father is in me
\nand I am in the Father.\u201d
\nJohn 10:30, 38
\nWhen we love we join the dance of God\u2019s own love.
\nOnce Kris persuaded me to take dance lessons. To be sure, some might not call \u201cdisco lessons\u201d real dance lessons but it was the days of Saturday Night Fever and I went along with her idea and did my best. It became rather obvious that I simply could not dance so Kris quit trying to persuade me and I was quite happy to return to my old ways of watching others dance. I do marvel at how well some people can dance, whether it is to disco or classical or rock. Their entire body seems to be overwhelmed by the music and the beat and the meaning of the words. Somehow the body moves in such a way that the music begins to take on bodily form.
\nGod is love. The music of God is love \u2013 and the music of God creates a dance within the Trinity that was going on well before creation and is the music of creation now and will establish endless perfect motion in eternity. God\u2019s dance of love is the only dance there is. Anyone who loves God and loves others is dancing, whether he or she knows it or not, to the divine dance. To love is to walk onto the divine dance floor.
\nIt takes three to dance divinely<\/em>
\nAt the bottom of the Jesus Creed is the Shema and at the bottom of the Shema is the word \u201cone\u201d \u2013 and that word \u201cone\u201d is a dance. Let me explain briefly. When Jesus said that he and the Father were \u201cone\u201d in John\u2019s tenth chapter, every Jew who heard him thought of the Shema: \u201cHear O Israel! The Lord our God. The Lord is one.\u201d Now Jesus was claiming that he and the Father were one.
\nHow so? Here are Jesus\u2019 own words: \u201cthe Father is in me and I am in the Father.\u201d The oneness of the Father and the Son is the oneness of mutual indwelling of one another. Now, if we add to the Father and the Son the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, we arrive at something distinct to our Christian faith: the Father and the Son and the Spirit are one because they indwell one another, they interpenetrate one another so deeply that they are one. This \u201coneness\u201d is the dance I am referring to.
\nTheologians call this mutual indwelling the perichoresis, the dance of the Trinity. This perichoretic dance is the love of the persons of the Trinity for each other \u2013 the Father for the Son and the Spirit, and the Son for the Father and the Spirit, and the Spirit for the Father and the Son. Theologians and philosophers reminds us that this perichoretic love is the origin of all the love in the universe, the tone for all the love in the universe, and the standard for all the love in the universe. There is no other love than God\u2019s love.
\nGet up out of your seat and start dancing<\/em>
\nSo when Jesus calls us to love God and to love others, he invites us to join him in the divine dance of the Trinity. Perhaps the greatest news in the universe is that we have been invited to dance on God\u2019s dance floor. We don\u2019t have to worry about whether or not someone will invite us to this dance; we don\u2019t even have to worry about who we might dance with. The only dance in town is God\u2019s dance and we are promised God will show up to the dance.
\nLove isn\u2019t something we produce. Love, like dancing, is surrendering to the music on the divine dance floor. We may need to remind ourselves of the words from the previous chapter: \u201cGod is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them\u201d (1 John 4:16). The gospel invites us to God\u2019s dance floor and the moment we step onto that floor, we enter into that perichoretic indwelling \u2013 we enter into God and we begin to abide in the God who delightfully and perfectly engages in a community of pure love.
\nFacing this day<\/strong>: Join the dance of God today.
\nScripture focus<\/strong>: John 10:38: \u201cBut if I do [these good works], even though you do not believe me, believe the works, so that you may know and understand that the Father is in me and I am in the Father.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The following is a chapter from our forthcoming 40 Days Living the Jesus Creed. It is as yet unedited; we have forty chapters that explore dimensions of the Jesus Creed in the Gospels and the early Christian leaders.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":298,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2604","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-jesus-creed"],"yoast_head":"\n40 Days Living the Jesus Creed - Jesus Creed<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2007\/09\/40-days-living-the-jesus-creed.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"40 Days Living the Jesus Creed - Jesus Creed\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The following is a chapter from our forthcoming 40 Days Living the Jesus Creed. 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