Here’s a fun question: What’s the difference between a Chiefs game and a worship service in church? The list would be long, no doubt. But according to author Barbara Ehrenreich, the two have more in common than we might imagine, or they once did. In her book, Dancing in the Streets, she traces the history of “collective joy,” including modern sporting events, where fans “dress up and paint their faces…to shout and sing and engage in the sports fan’s equivalent of dancing.” Sounds like Arrowhead Stadium to me.
Sports is the focus of the final chapter of her book, whereas she begins with a time well before written language when the earliest humans “danced and understood dancing as an activity important enough to record on stone.” In between those ancient tribes and modern NFL games, she shows how it was mainly Christianity that squelched not just dancing but joy. For example, natives of Tahiti described the missionaries who arrived there as always dressed in black, never joking around, never laughing. Ouch!
Ehrenreich shows repeatedly that humans were made for joy, how even in the Old Testament we read verses like Psalm 150:4, “Praise [God] with timbrel and dancing.” What she eventually demonstrates is that as Christianity began to squelch collective joy, people found it elsewhere, like at Mardi Gras or at a stadium. By the way, if you want to see an amazing display of exuberance, look up Pittsburgh Steelers fans singing “Renegade” by Styx. It’s a tradition at every home game between the third and fourth quarters. You will find it almost impossible not to be smiling.
Only, it turns out, celebrating is a complicated topic. When Jesus finishes his most popular parable about a “prodigal son,” he concludes it with a party. The father tells the jealous older brother, “We had to celebrate” (Lk 15:32). But in the very next chapter, Jesus describes a rich man who “feasted sumptuously” (or in Greek, “celebrated”) while ignoring the poor man at his gate (Lk 16:19).
I’ve talked to lots of committed Christians over the years who felt guilty for enjoying a fancy dinner out or spending hundreds on Chiefs’ tickets when there are poor people all around. I get it. So far as we know, Jesus didn’t have season tickets to the gladiator games, but he seemed to have figured out a solution. Sure, he was always going to dinner parties, but he also spent a lot of his energies feeding the poor and healing the sick. He did both. Is it possible to spend too much on ourselves, too little on the destitute? Absolutely, and everyone will have to figure that out for themselves. This much I know: We humans were made for joy and celebrations, especially in community together. But celebrations are only valid if everyone is invited to the party, if everyone has enough to eat. When that day comes about, I imagine everyone will be dancing.
