Dancing in holy places — that's the theme of this text. I don't know about you, but sometimes in parish life you just don't feel much like dancing, especially when as a pastor you have to deal with several deaths in one week, and still have to get up and preach with a smile on your face. In a reversal of that British movie, Four Weddings and a Funeral, I remember one week when I was in the parish when we had "Four Funerals and a Wedding," and it was a bittersweet time for all of us.

With two expected deaths (seemingly expected, that is, because when is death ever really expected?) and two tragic deaths, one a car accident and the other a plane crash, the only dance some of us seemed to be doing that week was the dance of death. Maybe that's not all bad. Sometimes when parishioners come on…