Category: Pop. Culture & the Arts

Rev. Bror Erickson

I was introduced to the work of Stanley Spencer in the late 90’s while visiting the Hirshhorn museum on a day off from my duties at Bowling AFB. They had on display that day many of his paintings, and the intense Christianity of them intrigued me. “Crucifixion” held my attention for the better part of an hour with its grotesque distortion of time and space in the death of God. At the time I remember contemplating the almost empty room, and wondering where all the detractors of “Piss Christ” were now that a national museum was exhibiting an artist with overt Christian sympathies. Here was a man who understood the meaning of the death and resurrection of God, and hence the meaning of life.

Stanley Spencer (1890 -1958) was an English painter who grew up in the town of Cookham in Berkshire, England. He was for the most part homeschooled until attending the Slade School of Art before enlisting in the military to fight in World War I. At first in the ambulance core, he would later see combat in Macedonia fighting against both German and Bulgarian forces. He is recorded to have said that he buried so many of his fellow friends and soldiers that he could not believe death was the end. After the war he found it a bit difficult to paint as he had before. Yet, “In 1922 Spencer had journeyed with the Carlines to Munich and Vienna, and his encounters there with the work of Northern masters such as Cranach and Breughel helped reconcile him to a less idealized reality.” (Source: tate.org.uk).

The Crucifixion caused almost as much controversy as the violence shown in the Breughelian faces adorning its canvas. It was not well received at the Aldenham School that had commissioned it, a school funded by the red capped brewers shown to be nailing Christ to the cross. Stanley helped matters even less by explaining the meaning of the painting to the students. “It is you govenors and you that are still nailing Christ to the Cross.” Echoing the words of Peter “you killed the author of life” (Acts 3:15). It is as true of each and every one of us as it was to the council before which Peter spoke. It is our sins that caused the death of God to be necessary, it is our sin that pound the nails home. And though the events of Christ death and resurrection belong to the historical record of time, they are eternal realities of an ever present and loving God who gave His life for you. Or as Stanley Spencer himself puts it:

“When I lived in Cookham I was disturbed by a feeling of everything being meaningless. Quite suddenly I became aware that everything was full of special meaning, and this made everything holy. The instinct of Moses to take his shoes off when he saw the burning bush was very similar to my feelings. I saw many burning bushes in Cookham. I observed the sacred quality in the most unexpected quarters.” (Source: gresham.ac.uk).

Rev. Bror Erickson

And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn. – Luke 2:7 (ESV)

In 2014, the graphic novelist, Everette Patterson, of Portland Oregon decided to do a Christmas card in the vein of the graphic novel pioneer Will Eisner, “who so often depicted, with religious reverence, noble individuals enduring the many minor discomforts and petty indignities of urban America.”

The result was a very untraditional nativity scene, perhaps on first blush, looking almost blasphemous, but more accurately depicting the true nature of the story than the typical nativity scene nowadays. The true story just wasn’t as nice as we make it out to be in children’s Christmas pageants.

In his Gospel, Luke hints at the indignities suffered by the Holy Family when he writes that there was “no room for them in the inn.” Despite the twisting and hoop jumping of modern scholars who want to say that the inn was the last place Mary and Joseph would like to be, and that the grotto with the barn animals was preferred, the text itself indicates otherwise. Luke would not have mentioned the inn, if that weren’t the preferred place to be. But the text doesn’t say there was no room. The text says there was no room for them. And this is the cause for a little head scratching. How is it that Joseph can’t find hospitable lodging for him and his pregnant wife in his home town? No uncles, or brothers? Why should he have to knock on the door of the inn in the first place? And do we really think the whole country side was so anxious to pay their taxes that the small inconsequential town a half an hour walk away from Jerusalem had absolutely no vacancies? Why would not one of these Middle Easterners so famed for their hospitality allow the young family to share quarters?

The answer is consequences. A whole village intent on making sure there were consequences for the improprieties of this young woman. Joseph taking her in rather than divorcing her or having her stoned was not doing “the right thing” according to these people. His response was corrosive to the moral fabric of the whole nation by sparing this young woman the consequences of her (apparent) actions. So there would be no room for them in the inn, lest their own daughters should be given wild ideas.

It would be just the beginning of the indignities Jesus would suffer at the hands of the sinners He came to die for — indignities that would culminate in crucifixion. And that is what Everette depicts for us with this wildly popular scene full of hidden innuendos. (Look all over the picture to find details from the Nativity story in Luke’s Gospel. How many can you find?) A modern-day Joseph and Mary, using the last pay phone in town, trying to find shelter across the street from the sort of motel that conjures images of Jesse Pinkman getting a root beer for Wendy from jailed vending machines. It’s a dark world and the only hope is the shoot from Jesse’s stem breaking through the concrete. A shoot that thirty some years later would be a tree bearing the fruit of life so that all of us would escape the consequences of our own indignities shared in failing to see Christ himself in the least of these.

Rev. Bror Erickson

Ok, so it wasn’t a bushel that Pastor Steve Olson was looking through, but a Janitor’s closet in 2007 when he stumbled upon the painting “Christus Consolator” that is now on permanent display at The Minneapolis Institute of Arts. A curious find indeed, could this really happen in small town Dassel, MN? Pastor Olson was just looking at different ways the church could expand its Sunday School program as he cleaned up the closet and noticed this a stack of posters in the corner, underneath them was an old deteriorated painting of Jesus, a light of compassion and a face of mercy upon life’s downtrodden in the darkness, and a curious signature, “Ary Scheffer.”

Pr. Olson had a feeling he was looking at an original after googling the name Ary Scheffer. But how could such a famous artist for the 19th century French royal court find its way to a janitor’s closet, when its sister once graced the Lutheran Chapel of Princess Mecklenburg-Schwerin in the palace of Versailles? Van Gogh himself was known to have kept a second rate copy of this painting among his most treasured possessions! This was the skepticism, Pastor Olson met with wherever he turned in the art world trying to find someone who might know what to do with it, where to go to get it authenticated, maybe restored.

Ary Scheffer was inspired to paint “Christus Consolator” by the words of Christ in Luke 4:18. A paraphrase of this verse is inscribed on the frame of the primary version now found in Amsterdam’s Historical Museum. It reads: “I have come to heal those who are brokenhearted and to announce to the prisoners their deliverance; to liberate those who are crushed by their chains.” It was the subject matter of the compassion of Christ on a slave that caught the attention of the prominent Bostonian abolitionist and champion of the poor, William Story Bullard who would have visited Ary’s studio in 1851. It changed hands a couple of times after that before Pastor Nordling acquired it as a pastor in Connecticut, before taking a call to serve in Dassel, MN in 1929. When he died in 1931 the painting was left as a gift to Gethsemane Lutheran Church, but after years of deterioration due to less than ideal climate conditions the painting was taken down and left in the janitor’s closet only to be discovered by Pastor Olson decades later.

When Pastor Olson finally prevailed over the skepticism of the art world to look at the painting appraiser, Patrick Noon’s jaw dropped. The skepticism and wariness of a two hour drive from the cultured city of Minneapolis to the boonies of Dassel disappeared as he recognized that here he was beholding an icon of Western and Christian culture that had inspired the sympathies of Christians around the world to put an end to the slave trade, and have compassion on their fellow man as Christ showed mercy to the world with his death and resurrection. Here, hiding in a janitor’s closet, had been a sublime sermon in paint, a gospel light that needed to shine.

Today, those who are interested can visit the Minneapolis Institute of Art and see this wonderful painting once hiding in a janitor’s closet but now shining for all to see. Patrick Noon who authenticated the painting has written many articles on the painting one of the best can be found here. It was during Holy Week of 2009 Pastor Olson was invited for the unveiling and overwhelmed at the opportunity to share the gospel with worldwide media explaining, “sometimes we have treasures hidden in a closet and have forgotten they were there, this could not be more true for us than the gospel as depicted in this painting that we too often take for granted.”

Pastor Bror Erickson is pastor at Zion Lutheran Church, Farmington NM. 


Rev. Bror Erickson

“Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” = Matthew 16:24 (ESV)

Another Stanley Spencer painting “Christ Carrying the Cross” echoes El Greco’s famous illustration by the same title, but with more narration as it shows Christ willfully, almost cheerfully carrying the cross through Spencer’s hometown of Cookham in place of Jerusalem as the people absent mindedly follow Christ by going about their own business of carrying their crosses of vocation. The carpenters carry their ladders go to work as Christ goes about his work.

When the Tate Museum applied the title “Christ Bearing His Cross” Stanley explained his displeasure with the title saying it conveys “A sense of suffering which was not my intention. I particularly wished to convey the relationship between the carpenters behind him carrying the ladders and Christ in front carrying the cross. Each doing their job of work and doing it just like workmen… Christ was not doing a job or his job, but the job.” (Source: gresham.ac.uk)

Perhaps this isn’t always what we think of when we think of picking up our crosses and following him. And yet there is in this a profound understanding of the meaning of Christ’s cross for the Christian life. It’s not about you and what you do for him, but about him and what he has done for you. Christians are often dissatisfied with this sort of thing. It belongs to the core of our sinful nature, the Old Adam within us that we want to make Christianity about us. For instance as Rachel Evans talks about what the Millennials want from the church, “We want to be challenged to live lives of holiness, not only when it comes to sex, but also when it comes to living simply, caring for the poor and oppressed, pursuing reconciliation, engaging in creation care and becoming peacemakers (Source: religion.blogs.cnn.com)

This, however, is not how the Christian becomes holy or lives a holy life. Rather it is Christ who sanctifies us, that is makes us holy, in the washing of the water with the word. (Eph. 5) Our holiness is not about a challenge, but the fruits of forgiveness, it is the new life that comes when we are resurrected with Christ to walk in the newness of life that comes in baptism. (Rom. 6:4) Then our crosses are not found in self chosen works of monasticism, self-denial, social activism or eco-tourism. No, our crosses are found in the midst of our vocations, doing the work God has called us to do in the midst of the communities in which he has placed us. Our work as fathers and mothers, as children, students, professors, carpenters and auto mechanics is the holy work God has given us to do, the crosses we bear in which there is no glory to be seen or beheld, the pain of the cross often nothing more than the mere tediousness of the ho hum work, and yet by virtue of Christ doing the job this work is blessed by God who works through our hands to take care of his creation often as hidden in these crosses as Christ himself is hidden behind the cross in this painting.

Of course, there are times in life when perhaps one is blessed to feel the pain of his cross more acutely than at other times. Jesus promises us that this world will give us tribulation as it gave him tribulation. “It is enough for the disciple to be like his teacher, and the servant like his master. If they have called the master of the house Beelzebul, how much more will they malign those of his household. (Matthew 10:25 (ESV) Yet, there is no promise here that the tribulation a Christian experiences will be any different from that which the world will give to all, either. But at these times the Christian is given opportunity to take heart in Christ who has overcome the world, who carries the burden of the cross willingly and bids “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28-30 (ESV)) We don’t have to make life harder than it already is, in order to be good Christians. We only need to let Christ do the job.

Pastor Bror Erickson is pastor at Zion Lutheran Church, Farmington NM. 


Rev. Bror Erickson

“For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps.” – I Peter 2:21

Fernando Botero (1932-pesent) perhaps most famous for his paintings of half-naked and rotund women looking at themselves in the bathroom mirror, turns his attention, style and skill to more serious topics while wrestling with his own faith in “Via Crucis”, a series of 27 paintings and 34 drawings depicting the Stations of the Cross. In this particular station, “The Flogging of Christ”, Fernando depicts a Colombian police officer beating Jesus as he carries his cross.

“The most Colombian of Colombian artists,” Botero became the most beloved artist of the art world in the mid to late 20th century, and has been going strong throughout the 21st century as he has turned his attention to more serious subject matter. A Botero is instantly recognizable, and they are found everywhere. For instance, Botero’s fat squatty statues outside the Israel Museum invite pilgrims to crack a smile and enjoy life just blocks away from the Via Della Rosa, the actual site of Christ’s passion that inspired “Via Crucis”. Like encountering old friends, his fat and happy remakes of classical masterpieces greet you from the walls of the Fine Arts Museum in Houston. These are the paintings that cause the name of Botero to conjure up bold colors, and simple yet sophisticated caricatures of Latin American life. His love for life and Colombia, his hometowns of Medellin and Bogota bleed through his paint, allowing his style to transcend cultures and inspire a cosmopolitan patriotism.

This love for life, so often shown in the humor of earlier paintings, shows itself here in the humiliation of Christ being beaten by a police officer. Amidst the beautiful strangeness of proportion characteristic to Botero the details of a Latin Jesus comes to life in bright red blood, and a bold brown and thorny crown. The officer in green and a mustache reminiscent of Hitler, towers over Jesus ready to deliver another blow with his night stick. It’s a powerful presentation of the violence familiar to Fernando himself.

Botero’s hometown of Medellin gave birth to some of the most notorious criminals of the 20th century, men like Pablo Escobar who started the Medellin Cartel, women like Griseldo Blanco who terrorized the streets of Miami throughout the 80s. Columbia broke into civil war as the government tried to put an end to cocaine trafficking with the help of U. S. military leadership, and FARC Rebels tried to bring about the Cuban Revolution in South America. Though many of these threats have been put down to greater or lesser degrees the conflict continues in many areas. Thrown into the mix was the popularity of “Liberation Theology” among the poor farmhands in the rural areas. A theological system known now to be a KGB invention (Source: cruxnow.com), Latin American Liberation Theology sought to justify communist revolution. Police and government crackdown against the church and revolutionaries could often be overzealous, the people often caught up in the violence. Such alignment of the church with various political causes to the right and to the left often causes confusion among those who would believe. When Botero says he is “at times a believer, at times an agnostic” (Source: artitude.eu a person can sympathize with him the way he sympathizes here with victims of police brutality.

The police belong to the good order and authority that God has placed on earth to “punish those who do evil, and praise those who do good.” (1 Peter 2:14) These are the words of Peter, written at a time when persecution of the Bride of Christ was already known within the Roman Empire. At times the words of scripture concerning obedience to the civil government, and other authorities, indeed even to slave masters, strikes us today as naïve. Of course, Paul and Peter, the rest of the disciples who saw the flogging and crucifixion of Christ knew that government could overstep its bounds, that evil people could inhabit office and use it for evil ends, that the government sometimes also praised those who do evil, and punished those who did good. Paul himself once led the persecution with civil blessing until Christ chastised him for kicking against the goads. Goad being a term used for a stick used to prod cattle along in a stockyard. They were not naïve when it came to the corruption of power and authority, nor did they believe that government could not ever be resisted, as they themselves obeyed God rather than man. (Acts 5:28-29) And this is what Peter has in mind as he comforts his flock saying, “when you do good and suffer for it you endure, this is a gracious thing in the sight of God. For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps. He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth. When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly. He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed. 25 For you were straying like sheep, but have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls. (1 Peter 2:20-25) For it is the Shepherd and Overseer of our souls who says to us, “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” (Matthew 5:11-12) For when they persecute you for his names sake, they kick against the goads of Christ their Lord and Savior who carried the cross also for them, and calls them to repentance.

Pastor Bror Erickson is pastor at Zion Lutheran Church, Farmington NM. 

Rev. Bror Erickson

“And he arose and came to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him” Luke 15:20 (ESV).

In this painting, The Prodigal Son (1924), Giorgio de Chirico revisits one of his favorite themes, a motif he first drew in 1917 as the “Great War” was coming to an end, and first painted in 1922. He would paint the motif several times again with near compulsiveness until his death in 1978. Only then would he be reunited with the father he lost as a child, even as the Father received him into the kingdom with His heavenly embrace.

Chirico gained early fame. It was his father, an engineer working on the railroads of Greece, who first taught him to draw before sending him to art school in Athens. Later, as a young man, Chirico would study art in Munich where he would soak up the ethos of Nietzche and Schopenhauer.

Existentialist philosophy emerged in his early metaphysical art that in turn would pave the way for Surrealist painters such as Salvador Dali and Max Ernst. From 1909 to 1918 he gained notoriety, mostly for empty town squares with distorted light and elongated shadows giving the vibe of an existential crisis, and capturing the sentiment of society caught up in the midst of World War I that claimed the lives of 16 million people.

This painting marked a transition for Chirico, who denounced modern art after the war, but found a return to classical techniques and themes to be difficult, especially as those he inspired with his early works became estranged from their muse. It’s a painting of transition that still carries themes of the proto-surrealism that he was known for in his early works. Yet here the embrace of the prodigal occupies the center of the canvas. Everything else fades off into a distant existential emptiness.

It’s a stunning portrayal of the beloved story. The son returns from his sordid sojourn in foreign lands. The life of debauchery, the inheritance squandered running from responsibility and family have reduced him to a mannequin-a shell of his former self-and everything he owns is carried in a hobo bag tied to a swineherd’s staff. But before he can repent, the cold image of his father, a stone statue worried about his image in the middle of the town square breaks loose from dignity, and free from his pedestal of honor gives him a dad’s embrace. It is an embrace that reflects the Father’s love for all His children as my friend Scott Keith says in his new book on fatherhood, Being Dad, which expounds upon the same parable:

“The love of a father is deep magic that can be sensed by all readers both Christian and non-Christian. The grace of an earthly father is a mere shadow or foggy picture of the grace of our Father in heaven. This story feels true because it is true. This tale tells everyone that the father’s love for his children, for us all, exists even though he is fully aware of all that we have done. This isn’t the story of a doting grandfather who doesn’t really know the details of the situation and just steps in with a smile saying, ‘I’m sure it will all work out in the end.’ We know that without the father stepping in and fixing it, it won’t work out in the end. This is the story of a father and his sons. The father knows of both our greed and our licentiousness. The Father knows of our pride and sanctimony. The father knows of our deep despair, our mistrust of him and our hopelessness apart from him. Yet the father loves us and shows us mercy, and in this tale, Christ tells us precisely that.” (Being Dad, Scott Keith, pg. 19)

Rev. Bror Erickson is pastor at Zion Lutheran Church, Farmington, New Mexico.

Rev. Bror Erickson

“I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep. And I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd. For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it up again.” – John 10:14-17

It was the herding life that John Muafangejo was born into as a member of the Kuanjama tribe on the border of Namibia and Angola in 1943. He understood the patience, care, and self-denial it took to be a good shepherd, the patience, care and self-denial that Christ bestowed upon him as one of his sheep leading him by still waters and laying him down in green pastures even amidst the conflict and turmoil of life in 20th century South Africa where racial tensions raged high.

John was not born a Christian. It was the traditional religion of the Kuanjama that elders would hand down to him as the village gathered about bonfires at night under the African sky. After his father died in 1955, his mother as one of John’s father’s eight wives was left with nothing, and moved to an Anglican mission station in Namibia. It was only then that he converted to Christianity. It was at this mission station at Epinga that his artistic talent was noticed by Father Mallory who would then send him to the famous art school at Rorke’s Drift in South Africa that had been started by the Swedish Lutheran missionaries Peder and Ulla Gowenius. They saw art as one way to empower Africans in the fight against apartheid, and the school they started would at Rorke’s Drift would become a major influence in the international art world during the second half of the 20th century. Mallory had taken notice of his carving abilities, but it was at the Arts and Craft Centre of the Evangelical Lutheran Church that John learned to perfect the medium that would make him famous, black and white linocuts depicting all aspects of life in Africa. The school specialized in linocuts because the material needed was extremely cheap, and yet because one linocut could produce many prints the medium offered the school hope of economic success. John so enjoyed the possibilities of the medium that he averaged a linocut a day for the next twenty years leaving over 5,000 for prosperity. (Source: culturebase.net)

“A Good Shepherd” is typical of John’s style of linocut. It looks a bit primitive, and yet his play on black and white would not only carry a subtly sophisticated commentary on life amidst turmoil during the period of apartheid in his homeland, but it would also communicate his “Hope and Optimism” for the future of Africa that he shared with Nelson Mandela. His linocuts would be jammed packed with all sorts of animals upon animals, people and running text explaining the events as in “Anglican Seminary Blown Up” commemorating a sermon given by Bishop J.H. Kauluma to a racially mixed congregation after the bombing of a seminary on the Namibian border of Angola in 1981, the mission station where John was first brought into the Good Shepherd’s fold. No one took responsibility for the event, the sort of which was common to everyday experience in John’s life and yet exacting a heavy tax on the soul. Still, even in the midst of this, John would know the comfort of Christ’s rod and staff, “A Good Shepherd” indeed. The Good Shepherd that restored his soul as he prepared a table of international fame before him in the face of his enemies. It would be Christ, the shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep, the good shepherd that would be the anchor of John’s hope. The shepherd who constantly calls his sheep from different folds around the world, even from the Kalahari cattle herds of northern Namibia.

Pastor Bror Erickson is pastor at Zion Lutheran Church, Farmington NM.

Rev. Rich Heinz

It’s coming! We have waited 32 years for it, but the events and characters in the fictional Star Wars galaxy will finally have their next chapter revealed. Fans of all ages can share the thrill and excitement of the story.

The classic heroes are coming! Luke, Leia, and Han will be there, along with many supportive roles. The new heroes are coming! Bits and pieces have been shown in theatrical teasers and trailers. And new villains are coming!

The Advent of this film is quite exciting for many in my generation. We were children when the first Star Wars film hit the theaters. We had a 16-year wait before the second trilogy came about. Now, another 16 years have passed, from the release of Episode I. We are bursting with anticipation over the coming of this film. And in a matter of days, it will be here!

For the Old Testament Church, there was far more than a 16- or 32-year wait. Thousands of years passed since Eve first heard the promise of the One who would crush the serpent’s head. Close to 2,000 years had passed since Abraham heard of the Seed that would come through his son of promise. King David had died some 1,000 years before his descendants returned to their family’s home town, where the Messiah would be born.

He came! The Seed of the Woman, The Seed of Abraham, the Son of David came for us! He comes! Christ Jesus comes for you, through Baptism, Absolution, the preaching of His Gospel, and His Holy Supper. He joins Himself to these earthly means, and brings forgiveness and salvation to you! He will come! The Lord of the Church will return in glory, coming to take His Bride to the joyful Resurrection, where we will enjoy His blessed Paradise without end!

There is nothing wrong or sinful in being excited about a new film coming. The Lord blesses us with gifts of entertainment and recreation. But infinitely more important and exciting is the joy of the coming of Christ our King! He continually comes to us to save us from our sin!

George Lucas has crafted a story that in many ways is affected by false religions and philosophies from the Far East. However, we can observe some unintended correlations. Far better than some impersonal “Force,” the Lord God has entered time and space to bear our sin and be our Savior. He is the true and ultimate “Hero” who is, in truth, the “only hope.” And good does triumph over evil — not because we can overcome anything or anyone, but because the Lord rescues us from sin, death, and the power of the devil. This is most certainly true!

Rev. Rich Heinz hasn’t gone by the name “Pastor Kenobi” since, oh, since before you were born. He is pastor of St. John’s Lutheran Church and School in Chicago, Illinois. He also serves as Worship Coordinator for HT Conferences.

by Kim Grams

OK, confession time. In 8^th grade, I did a liturgical dance number (cringe) for Easter Sunday (double cringe) up by the altar (oh no, she DIDn’t!!!). Ran right up the aisle doing something swoopy.

Before I married my husband, now an LCMS pastor, I took adult instruction. As I studied Lutheran doctrine, I learned about worship. It’s not about MY performance, but about God giving and me receiving His gifts. Looking back, I’m horribly embarrassed. Now I let my church just be church and my entertainment be entertainment. (As my husband says regarding the trend of turning church into an entertainment showcase: “I can’t find the ‘Jesus of Entertainment’ in the Bible”).

But while we don’t need to “get jiggy with it” (yes, I’m THAT old) in church, it’s nice to see the current resurgence of dance shows, and other programs that are “throw backs” to the old variety shows (and no, I’m not THAT old). I can watch them with my tween daughters and share my love of dance. “Dancing with the Stars” brought Ballroom back, but “So You Think You Can Dance” (henceforth referred to as SYTYCD) is even better. Here’s why . . .

Standard of excellence: In every couple, both dancers vying to be “America’s Favorite Dancer” have experience in at least one dance genre, and sometimes training in several. While I enjoy watching celebrities learn a new skill, some are not cut out to be dancers. That awkwardness can impede my enjoyment of the dancing. Generally, I hate the slow stuff like Waltz and Fox Trot. But when the dancers have experience, the choreographers can go beyond the basics, tell a story – or at least keep me from using the skip button. On SYTYCD, I know the dancing will be amazing.

It’s uplifting:  Seeing a B-girl like Sara strutting her ballroom stuff in heels or hearing Cedric’s speech about the importance of street dancers studying the craft if they truly want to be dancers? Watching Debbie Allen offering him a place in her dance academy with a scholarship? Wicked cool. How about Sabra, who walked away the winner, but has only danced for 4 years? Pasha, the Russian Ballroom dancer, is nailing Hip-Hop and ‘80’s Jazz. Witnessing a group of people striving for excellence in any field is always a positive thing. It bugged me that the judges kept Cedric at the expense of better, trained dancers. But, watching him strive beyond his comfort zone? Inspirational.

You learn something: I’m a decent dancer. I took tap, ballet, and jazz for years, and do choreography for community stuff. I can watch a tape, learn it, and teach it to beginners. I’m competent in the basics and have more experience than the average arm-chair critic. But I’m always hungry to learn more. I don’t have Ballroom experience, but I learned about dancing down into the floor. A break-dancer is called a B-boy or B-girl (although I don’t really get the difference between Krump and Hip-Hop). Everybody knows about Jazz hands, but what about African Jazz? And wasn’t it nice to learn the Hustle isn’t just the line dance that we thought it was? For the rest of America, a door to the Arts has been fan-kicked wide open.

Huge variety and excitement: The chemistry of the couples.   Changing partners. More dance styles than “Dancing with the Stars”. Rotating choreographers. Dominic and Sabra doing “soft” Hip-Hop – a romantic routine by Shane Sparks set to Ne-Yo’s “Make it Work”. And Wade Robson always does something jaw-droppingly original, like this season’s Jaimie/Hok Flower-Butterfly dance and the Sara/Jesus “Bums at 3 a.m.” number. How about a Latin-style Vienesse Waltz? Ok, hated that, but it WAS original. Icing on the cake: the lifts! Danny and Lauren were the bomb in the final 6 with their daring disco lifts. If you missed the ending of Neil and Sabra’s Paso Doble you need to go online and try to find it because it was killer. Lacey and Pasha’s mannequin Hip-Hop and Sabra and Neil’s boardroom table Jazz numbers were unforgettable. (Judge) Nigel conveyed his hope that the finale could live up to the excitement of that show. I agree.

Depicting faith on TV: So often, the portrayal of faith on TV is offensive to me. Not to bum you out, but my Dad just died in July. My sister and I sang “Amazing Grace” while he was dying, and then it was sung again at his funeral. SYTYCD is not a Christian show, but one of the choreographers used “Amazing Grace” this season. To see that song used on TV meant double to me this year. Then there was Mia Michael’s stunning routine based on the death of her father – it enacted their reunion in heaven. I don’t know if she’s a Christian, but for a mainstream show to acknowledge anything remotely Christian is cause for celebration in my book. Those dances touched me personally. I already know I’ll see my Dad in heaven, but it was nice to see that message portrayed on prime time TV.

By the end of the week, maybe by the time you read this article, there will be no more dance on TV until a new season premieres. I’ll be happy no matter who wins this season. Lacey, Sabra, Danny, and Neil – I love them all. They are ultra-talented and fun to watch. Although it might be nice to for a girl win sometime.  🙂

Reality TV is a mixed bag. Some of is wonderful; some is atrocious and makes me want to hurl. SYTYCD is one of the good ones. If you haven’t seen it yet, you are really missing out. Next season, set your TiVo for the top 20 dancers – that’s the meat of the show where the best dancers are combined with outrageously good choreography. Unlike my foray into dancing in church, you won’t regret it.