They’ll be Dancin’ in the Pews—Well, Maybe Almost
For Sunday, April 19, 2026
Lord of the Dance arranged by Barnard
By David Jolliffe
One thing I love about the liturgy of the Episcopal Church is its salutary mixture of solemn focus and darned near unbounded joyfulness. We experience the former in, for example, the confession, the collects, and the Great Thanksgiving that launches the Holy Communion. We dwell in the latter in the sung Gloria, in the affirmation proclaiming “the mystery of faith during the Communion, and in the “thanks be to God” at the end of the service.
Folks attending the 11 a.m. service on Sunday, April 19, can look forward a healthy dose of this ecclesiastical joy emerging from the adult choir’s singing of “Lord of the Dance,” penned by the English songwriter Sydney Carter in 1963. The melody comes from the American Shaker song, “Simple Gifts,” composed in 1848. The song embodies the same idea as the traditional English carol, “Tomorrow Shall Be My Dancing Day,” which tells the gospel story in the first-person voice of Jesus, portraying his life as a dance.
Here are the lyrics for “Lord of the Dance”:
I danced in the morning
When the world was begun,
And I danced in the moon
And the stars and the sun,
And I came down from heaven
And I danced on the earth,
At Bethlehem
I had my birth.
Dance, then, wherever you may be,
I am the Lord of the Dance, said he,
And I’ll lead you all, wherever you may be,
And I’ll lead you all in the Dance, said he.
I danced for the scribe
And the pharisee,
But they would not dance
And they wouldn’t follow me.
I danced for the fishermen,
For James and John -
They came with me
And the Dance went on.
Dance, then, wherever you may be,
I am the Lord of the Dance, said he,
And I’ll lead you all, wherever you may be,
And I’ll lead you all in the Dance, said he.
I danced on the Sabbath
And I cured the lame;
The holy people
Said it was a shame.
They whipped and they stripped
And they hung me on high,
And they left me there
On a cross to die.
Dance, then, wherever you may be,
I am the Lord of the Dance, said he,
And I’ll lead you all, wherever you may be,
And I’ll lead you all in the Dance, said he.
Sydney Carter himself reported that when he wrote the lyrics to “Lord of the Dance,” he was inspired partly by the statue of the Hindu deity Shiva posed as Nataraja, Shiva’s dancing pose, which he kept on his desk. He added, “I see Christ as the incarnation of the piper who is calling us. He dances that shape and pattern which is at the heart of our reality. By Christ I mean not only Jesus—in other times and places, other planets, there may be other Lords of the Dance. But Jesus is the one I know of, first and best. I sing of the dancing pattern in the life and words of Jesus.”