Found at littlementees.com (at Café Press).
Note to Reader: The Acts of John is not part of the Christian canon, mainly because of its docetic teachings, which read more like myth than history and depart widely from orthodox Christianity. This text, like others in the Gnostic tradition, teaches that Jesus’s physical body was just an illusion, as was his crucifixion, and that salvation is attained only by those select few to whom he chooses to grant “secret knowledge,” not by all who respond in faith and obedience to the atoning work of Jesus Christ.* This post presents a picture of this Gnostic Jesus, not the historical Jesus of Nazareth we find in the four canonical Gospels. The words attributed to him below are probably not his own. Nevertheless, I thought the passage relevant to this series because it presents an early view of Jesus as a (literal) dancer. You don’t have to accept the Gnostic worldview to be able to find some beauty and truth (however partial) in the poetry.
The Acts of John, a second-century Gnostic text, records an episode that supposedly took place the night before Jesus’s crucifixion, in which Jesus leads his disciples in a song and dance: “‘Before I am delivered to them, let us sing a hymn to the Father and so go to meet what lies before us.’ So he commanded us to make a circle, holding one another’s hands, and he himself stood in the middle. He said, ‘Respond Amen to me’” (Ehrman). Jesus starts off the song by ascribing glory and praise to the Father, and then he moves into a bunch of riddlelike self-declarations: “I will be born and I will bear. . . . I will eat and I will be eaten. . . . I will be kept in mind, being all mind” (Barnstone and Meyer). And so on. This call-and-response song and accompanying round dance are thought to have been used in the liturgy of some of the early Gnostic communities.
The Acts of John was rejected by the church as heretical in the fourth century, so almost all copies were destroyed. But some surviving fragments were discovered in 1897 and published (in English translation from the Greek) in 1899 by Cambridge University Press. The text received greater attention in 1917, when Gustav Holst set a portion of it (known as The Hymn of Jesus) to music. The work was written for two mixed choruses, a female semi-chorus, and an orchestra, and it lasts about twenty-two minutes. Continue reading
“My dad created the universe and all I got was this lousy T-shirt?”
Found at happygoodies.com.
St. Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church in San Francisco is home to a 3,000-square-foot icon of ninety dancing saints (and four animals), who wrap themselves in two large rings around the rotunda as they follow the lead of Jesus, the Lord of the Dance. This monumental work is by iconographer Mark Dukes, who is also an ordained deacon at St. John Coltrane Church in San Francisco.
Interior view of St. Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church in San Francisco, featuring a multi-panel icon by Mark Dukes, called “The Dancing Saints.” The work was completed in December 2008.
The church’s founders, Rick Fabian and Donald Schell, commissioned the Dancing Saints Icon in 1997 to give visual expression to the theology of the church’s patron saint, Gregory, who lived in the fourth century. In his commentary on the Psalms, St. Gregory wrote, “Once there was a time when the whole rational creation formed a single dancing chorus looking upward to the one leader of this dance. And the harmony of motion that they learned from his law found its way into their dancing.”
. . . Just think about that for a second. In Eden, God established a fundamental unity between himself and man, and between man and his environment. He beat out a rhythm, and all of creation—sun, moon, stars, trees, water, man, beast, and bug—danced to it, in sync with their Creator and with each other. But then man got out of step. He listened to and followed the calls of a different leader. He started making up his own rhythm, so that this universal dance that God set in motion at Creation can no longer be said to be harmonious. But Jesus came to restore the harmony that was once there. To bring all of creation back into sync. St. Gregory’s sees it as their duty and joy to point people toward this Jesus, this leader of the dance. Their mission, according to their website, is to invite people “to see God’s image in all humankind, to sing and to dance to Jesus’ tune, and to become God’s friends.” Continue reading
Found at goodnewsclothing.com.
This is a guest post by an American artist who has an interest in nonwestern art but prefers to remain anonymous. I asked him to share some of his work with us.
‘He will crush [the serpent’s] head’
Dancing Jesus, 2003. Acrylic on brown papyrus, 12 x 8.75 in.
Krishna dances over the subdued Kaliya Naag in river Yamuna. From a Bhagavata Purana manuscript, c. 1640.
This painting is primarily a visual experiment based on South Asian Hindu art and Tibetan Buddhist thangkas. Jesus is dancing on (crushing) the head of Eden’s serpent (Genesis 3:15), much as Krishna does on the serpent Kaliya.
The body position of Jesus is derived from temple carvings at Angkor Wat in Cambodia, while his face is based on the site’s monumental smiling faces. Continue reading
A throwback to the 2008 U.S. presidential race. And a reminder that we shouldn’t put all our trust in political officeholders to change the world. They can do good, yes, but they can never offer the kind of lasting change and total world redemption that Jesus does.
T-shirt found at Christian T-shirts Planet.
Here’s another English hymn—a Christmas carol, really—that characterizes Jesus as a dancer. It’s medieval in origin, perhaps from a mystery play, but it wasn’t published until 1833, in William B. Sandys’s Christmas Carols, Ancient and Modern. Since then, it has been adapted by several composers, the most well-known adaptation being John Gardner’s.
The hymn has eleven verses; the first one is a prologue, and the other ten recount significant events from Jesus’ life: his conception, birth, baptism, desert temptations, ministry, betrayal, trial, crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension. The speaker is Jesus, and he’s presumably speaking the day before his conception. Tomorrow, he says, I will dance into a human womb, and grab the hands and hearts of my true love (his chosen bride, his church), as I invite her to dance with me. As the lyrics point out, this is the motivation, the objective, behind all Jesus’ acts: “to call [his] true love to [his] dance.” Continue reading
Our Lord is the Dancer, who, like the heat latent in firewood, diffuses His power in mind and matter, and makes them dance in their turn.
—Tiruvatavurar Puranam (stanza 75), a fifteenth-century sacred text written by Kadavul Mamunivar; translated by Nallasvami Pillai (source)The Supreme Intelligence dances in the soul . . . for the purpose of removing our sins. By these means, our Father scatters the darkness of illusion (maya), burns the thread of causality (karma), stamps down evil (mala, anava, avidya), showers Grace, and lovingly plunges the soul in the ocean of Bliss (ananda). They never see rebirths, who behold this mystic dance.
—Unmai Vilakkam, vv. 32, 37, 39 (source)The ‘Lord of the Dance’ or ‘Nataraja’ in the Shaivite tradition, is the Creator who is both a giver of life, but also a destroyer of all that stops us from being set free. He carries the fire of destruction and transformation, while at the same time assuring his disciples that they should not fear, and beating the drum of the rhythms of the Cosmos. As he dances he steps across the demon of darkness and blindness, showing the way to a new life.
—Jyoti Sahi (source)
Last week we looked at how an Englishman (Sydney Carter) perceived of Jesus as Lord of the Dance—how all Jesus’s activity, from his first creative act until today, is part of a series of rhythmic, patterned movements that express who he is, in an artistic and joyful way. And how he invites us all to join this dance, to be swept up into its steps, with him as the leader, showing us how to move, where to step, where to place our hands and feet, etc., while at the same time allowing us the freedom of spontaneous expression.
Today I will explore how Hindus perceive of Shiva as Lord of the Dance, and then consider how we might apply a similar characterization to Jesus, as does Indian Christian artist Jyoti Sahi in his woodcuts and paintings. First, though, it’s important to note that not all the characteristics of the dancing Shiva can be said to belong to Jesus. I am being purposely selective for the sake of focus.
Try not to get too bogged down by the foreign words and symbols. Just let Sahi’s art be your guide through this discussion. He is one of my favorite artists, and although some background information will likely enhance your appreciation of his art, you can still enjoy the art without it. Continue reading
The Jesus Question 