Lord of the Dance

It was at an Easter Vigil in an old Episcopal church. The liturgy began in the darkness of Saturday evening with the lighting of the new fire. The Paschal candle was then lit, from which the worshippers lighted their own candles. The deacon processed into the church singing, “The Light of Christ.” Then the deacon sang the joyful Exsultet, “Rejoice now heavenly host and choirs of angels….” With only candlelight to see by, the lectors read the traditional nine lessons from the Hebrew Bible. The priest said a short prayer and then joyfully shouted, “Alleluia, Christ is risen!” The people joyfully responded, “The Lord is risen, indeed, alleluia!” As the lights blazed on, organ and people broke into a joyful “Gloria,” the people accompanying the organ with bells and tambourines. There followed the reading of the Epistle and Gospel for the Eucharist, the Prayers of the People, and the Peace. The offertory hymn was a kind of dancy number, with a strong rhythm. The choir began to sway as they sang. The rhythm was contagious. The priest began to sway and move his hands to the music. By the last verse, the rest of the altar party members were dancing in place, while the congregation had begun to clap.

Could this really have happened in an Episcopal church? We have such a strong tradition of dignified – almost staid – worship. “All things decently and in order,” we like to say. Part of the reason why we insist on order is that our liturgy follows the Latin mass. This is a form of worship, in medieval times at least, in which most folks were mere spectators. Another reason is that our liturgy came of age in the 16th and 17th centuries, a time that emphasized a penitential spirituality, somber sorrow for one’s sins rather than joyful praise of God. Add to that the emphasis on propriety in the Victorian era, and in most places we have a very sober style of worship indeed.

Of course, we do now have a robust musical tradition. If you look through our current hymnal, you’ll see that some of the hymns are translations of Latin hymns. Lutherans were ahead of us in adopting congregational singing, but we quickly caught up and translated the best of the German hymns. Eighteenth-century hymnodists such as Charles Wesley and Isaac Watts, Victorian hymn writers, and twentieth century writers and composers added to our store of English hymns, and collections such as LEVAS have given us back African American hymnody. So, some of us are perfectly comfortable with music in worship. But dance?

And yet, why not? Dancing was a regular part of religious life in ancient Israel. In fact, Scripture gives us many different examples of people dancing in praise of God. The book of Exodus tells us that, after the Israelites walked through the Sea of Reeds, Miriam, Aaron’s sister, “took a tambourine in her hand; and all the women went out with her with tambourines and with dancing” (15:20). After Judith assured the victory of the Israelites over the Assyrians by killing Holofernes, “All the women of Israel gathered to see her, and blessed her, and some of them performed a dance in her honor” (Judith 15:12). And, of course, we hear the explicit command in Psalm 150 to praise God with “trumpet sound; praise him with lute and harp! Praise him with tambourine and dance; praise him with strings and pipe! Praise him with clanging cymbals; praise him with loud clashing cymbals!”

Today’s reading from 2 Samuel shows David doing just that. The shepherd boy, the youngest of all of Jesse’s sons, was unexpectedly chosen by God to be Israel’s next king. Now grown up, he has defeated his enemies, the Philistines, and Israel’s first king, Saul, whom God had rejected. Two weeks ago, we heard David’s lament over the deaths of his beloved friend Jonathan and of Saul. Now he is going up to Jerusalem in triumph. Showing that Jerusalem is both the political and religious capital of Israel, David leads those bearing the Ark, the sacred chest that is a sign of God’s presence with Israel. David is wearing a priestly garment, the ephod, as he exuberantly praises God in dance. The Tanakh, the Jewish translation of the Hebrew Bible, tells us that David was leaping and “whirling.” Can you picture it? Certainly, you can almost hear the shouting and the sounds of harps, tambourines, castanets, and cymbals that accompanied David’s leaping and whirling. Talk about “making a joyful noise to the Lord,” as six of the psalms tell us to do!

The text does allude to Michal’s reaction to David’s dancing. Here, we might infer that Michal thought David’s dancing was unseemly for a king. Yet there’s much more to the story than that. Michal was Saul’s daughter, and she was married off to David without her consent. We might imagine that her reaction to David’s dancing reflects not only her grief at her father’s death but also her resentment at having been a political pawn between Saul and David and having been mistreated by both of them. Clearly, everyone else in the story views David’s exuberant worship positively, not only because the Ark is installed in its rightful place, but also because, after the worship is concluded, David blesses the people and generously feeds them.

So, what can we learn from this story? Do we ever get as excited about worship as David? I’m not suggested that we dance with only an ephod on, but shouldn’t we dance in some way? Does worship ever fill us with joy and amazement, when we realize that God is with us and in us? Or are we just bored and disengaged from worship? Or worse, does the very thought of God depress and frighten us, as we wait for God to condemn us for our sins and brokenness? Perhaps we’re afraid of the Michals among us, of those who would frown at any sign of joyful celebration in our worship.

Yet, why shouldn’t be exuberantly joyful in worship? Why shouldn’t we dance and shout? We just heard, in the opening verses of the letter to the Christians at Ephesus, that, through Christ, God has adopted us as God’s children, and that we have been blessed “with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.” Do we forget that we are truly and irrevocably God’s children, and do we listen instead to the voices that harp on our sinfulness and brokenness?

My friends, am I being sacrilegious in suggesting that we should praise God in joyful song and dance? Theologians remind us that the Trinity is a relationship among the three persons of God, a relationship of never-ending, ever-circling praise, joy, and love. There is even a name for this relationship: perichoresis, which can be translated as “rotation” or “dance.” In fact, our Lutheran brothers and sisters even have a hymn that expresses this relationship: “Come, Join the Dance of Trinity.” They even set it to an English folk tune! Here’s just the first verse: “Come, join the dance of Trinity, before all worlds begun – the interweaving of the Three, the Father, Spirit, Son. The universe of space and time did not arise by chance, but as the Three, in love and hope, made room within their dance.”

And consider this: when Katherine Jefferts Schori was invested as Presiding Bishop at the Washington National Cathedral in November, 2006, the liturgy included lovely, expressive liturgical dance. I have no idea what Bp. Michael Curry is planning for his investiture, but I have no doubt that it will include loud, exuberant, joyful praise of God in music and dance.

And what of us? We no longer localize God in an Ark, but can we acknowledge that it is important to experience delight and passion in worship? Can we find a way of dancing our praise of God?

In 1963 English song writer Sidney Carter wrote a hymn entitled “Lord of the Dance.” It was sung to a Shaker tune, “Simple gifts,” and tells the gospel story in Jesus’ own voice. Carter was inspired to write it by a statue of Shiva Nataraj, Lord of the Dance in Hinduism, and by the Shakers, who incorporated dance into their worship. Carter later said of the hymn, "I did not think the churches would like it at all. I thought many people would find it pretty far flown, probably heretical and anyway dubiously Christian. But in fact people did sing it and, unknown to me, it touched a chord.... 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. I sing of the dancing pattern in the life and words of Jesus.”

I invite you to share the dance. Listen as “The Lord of the Dance” is sung by the Resurrection Singers, a group of former orphan boys now a part of the St. Joseph’s Family in Port au Prince, Haiti. Stand if you can or want to and join the dance. If the Spirit can catch a congregation at an Easter Vigil, why can’t the Spirit catch us?