If you’ve never seen Stephen Colbert do a liturgical dance to “Who is this King of Glory?” then, well…

I think of this video every single time we sing or read Psalm 24 in church, as we will this Sunday: “‘Who is this King of glory?’ ‘The Lord, strong and mighty, the Lord, mighty in battle.’” (Psalm 24:8) As you may know, Colbert is a faithful Catholic; while his politics don’t always align with his church hierarchy’s, he’s become more comfortable over time speaking openly about his faith. His song and dance, as silly as they are, aren’t a sacrilege, a mockery of Christian faith: they’re a delightful expression of the joy he finds in it.

King David, too, is a joyful dancer. In this Sunday’s first lesson we’ll hear the story of David escorting the Ark of the Covenant toward Jerusalem, accompanied by 30,000 of his nation’s “chosen men.” (2 Samuel 6:1) You could imagine a solemn procession, the sort of thing Anglicans excel at: an array of mitred bishops and coped clergymen led by a cross and torches as the choir sings a stiff-upper-lip kind of hymn to the accompaniment of a well-tuned organ. We often quote another psalm to express our reverential worship, saying that we “worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness.” (Psalm 96:9) And this holy beauty can indeed be, well… beautiful!

But David’s procession was another kind of holy beauty. “David and all the house of Israel,” the story goes, “were dancing before the Lord with all their might, with songs and lyres and harps and tambourines and castanets and cymbals.” (2 Samuel 6:5) It’s not so much a procession as a Groovy Baby music class crossed with a 30,000-person rave, as the crowd leap and dance and bang on hand percussion instruments with all their might, pouring into their whole bodies the joy they feel at the presence of their God. This is another kind of holy beauty altogether!

The good thing is that we don’t have to choose! Our faith can be solemn, and it can be joyful. It can be serious enough to change the world, and it can be silly enough to make you cry. We can be “wise as serpents and innocent as doves” and “fools for the sake of Christ” all at the same time, (Matthew 10:16; 1 Corinthians 4:10) because all our wisdom and all our innocence, all our foolishness and all our joy, flow from the one God who is the source of all the good things in our world.

Banging cymbals and dancing around and shouting for joy are acts of worship, just as much as bowing our heads in reverential, silent, prayer. And thank God for that—or at least thank our kids.