Sacred Dancing

Now, Religion in the News, a report and comment on religious trends and events being covered by the media. This week’s item is from the National Catholic Reporter, March 29, 2005, with the headline “The Dancing Jesuit (Chenni, India)—King David danced before the ark of the Lord with all his might (2 Samuel:6:14And David danced before the LORD with all his might; and David was girded with a linen ephod.
See All...,16), and proclaimed, ‘I will make merry before the Lord’ (v. 21). Likewise, Indian Jesuit Fr. Saju George uses India's ancient Bharatanatyam dance not only as a means of making merry before God but also as a medium of evangelization. ‘Dance is integral to my priesthood,’ says Saju mopping the sweat from a supple body that has just performed Mary's Magnificat. His magical mudras (dance gestures conveying meaning) enthrall appreciative audiences, worldwide, and give Indian worshippers a glimpse of God.

“ ‘Liturgy is sacred performance,’ explains Saju referring to the role of dance in Catholic liturgy. ‘The Eucharist is “community worship” and the faithful assemble -- very much like the audience in a theatre -- for a communitarian God-experience. The priest is the “main performer” who animates worship from the front.’ Saju feels that dance is a comprehensive form of worship: ‘For the dancer, it involves the mind, heart, body and soul, and for the faithful it is both, an audio as well as a visual means of encountering God.’

“ ‘Indian classical dances express the deep yearning of the human being (jivatma) for an experience of the Divine (Paramatma), and this experience is conveyed by expression,’ says Saju ….Saju considers himself a 'servant of God's word'. ‘The word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword’ (Heb:4:12For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.
See All...), but, says he, ‘that sword must be wielded. Through dance, I give momentum to God's word in tangible form. When God's word is proclaimed in body-movements the impact is incredible.’ Saju 's mudras, and bodily movements synchronized with meaningful words, are heartrending homilies on creation and reconciliation, crucifixion and resurrection….

“Saju's dancing has opened doors to the Divine and built bridges between believers of religions, especially the Hindu majority in India. His dance ‘gurus’ (teachers) include Hindus …who respect the young Jesuit's bhakti (devotion) and provide him with valuable suggestions in the development of Christian dance themes.

“When there were rumblings among ecclesiastical circles to disallow dance in liturgy, Saju was dismayed. ‘Most misconceptions come from the West,’ he explained, ‘since dance developed there in the secular world hostile to anything sacred. However, in India, dances have a sacred, spiritual origin and were originally performed in temples as a form of worship.’”

Tom: Dave, this is kind of important, because you remember last week we talked about icons and images, and so on. And in the evangelical church we have great concern that they’re moving to very experiential ways of worshiping God, very experiential ways of supposedly communicating with God, or communicating things about God through visual imagery. Now we have dance, and since many of the evangelicals are turning to Catholic mystics, now here we have a contemporary…not only form, dance, but we have this Catholic priest introducing it.

Now, dance has always…dance is certainly being used in the Emerging Church as an expression of, or a way to communicate things about God, and the thing I don’t understand is, not only why are we turning to these forms when we have the Word of God, but number two, how is dance, along with icons and everything else that is generated by men, supposedly created activities, created expressions—how do they communicate the truth about God?

Dave: Well, Tom, they can’t. You know the old saying, “A picture is worth a thousand words,” but you don’t know what the picture means. Anybody can interpret it. Now we’ve got dance… you could sit there and a dozen people could have different ideas of what these gestures mean, how they relate to the Bible, how it expresses some truth from the Bible, supposedly. The Bible stands on its own. Paul writes to Timothy: “Preach the word.” That’s what you do with the Word. You don’t make it into a movie, you don’t dance about it, you don’t make pictures, icons, about it. You preach the Word.

Words have meaning; words are powerful. And just study what the Bible…I mean, listeners out there, just study what the Bible says about words. Study what words are. Words communicate something. We refine our words; we carefully choose our words. We put them together in a way that will express clearly the meaning. And to retreat from that into dance—which…you can’t interpret a dance, okay? But they love it, because now we can kind of get into it with the emotion of it. But it’s a retreat from the truth.

Tom: Dave, this article started out by saying that “King David danced before the ark of the Lord with all of his might…

Dave: Mm-hmm.

Tom: ....And proclaimed, “I will make merry before the Lord.” Wasn’t David communicating something here? Was he trying to explain some biblical truth or some great truth of God?

Dave: No. David was expressing in dance the joy in his heart that the ark was coming back…

Tom: So it was personal and subjective. It wasn’t choreographed to communicate something…

Dave: No, David was not trying to teach the Bible by dancing. He was expressing his joy to the Lord, and there’s nothing wrong with that. I remember Richard Wurmbrand, a very dear friend —14 years Tortured for Christ was his first book, I think, saying that…I mean, he was tortured—red-hot pokers in his body, and there were times, he said, where the joy of the Lord was so great as he’s in intense pain in his cell, he danced just to give vent to his joy and his love for the Lord. That’s okay.
But now, that I’m going to teach the Bible, or I’m going to teach people about God…

Tom: Or you’re going to encourage people to draw closer to God by going through these kinds of expressive experiences…

Dave: It’s not going to work, Tom, but the tragedy is it’s not just this Jesuit, but it’s in the evangelical churches now, in the emerging church, and it’s taking us away from the truth of the Word of God.