Joyful and Triumphant

O come all ye faithful
Joyful and triumphant
O come ye o come ye
To Bethlehem
Come and behold Him
Born the King of angels

"Joyful and Triumphant." I've heard those words sung in that Christmas carol since childhood. But recently at a church concert these same words were belted out by a church choir at the top of their lungs singing songs I have never heard before. Not just one song. The whole concert was one of Christian triumphalism sung loud and proud. To me, Christmas carols never sounded quite so, well, contrary to Christian humility. But that could just be me.

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Then I heard about a Plano megachurch's Christmas pageant that featured "performers, suspended by stage rigging, fly[ing] over auditorium seats playing drums." Someone recorded it and posted it to TikTok, where it went viral. The person responsible said he's not against Christmas pageants. He just personally found the concept of flying drummers to be objectively funny. It's hard to argue with him. Nevertheless, in an editorial in The Dallas Morning News, Commentary Editor Ryan Sanders felt it necessary to do just that — argue in favor of flying drummer boys.

Sanders says a lot of things that aren't helpful to his cause.

"The bigger the splash a church makes, the more the trolls come out." Well, yeah. That's called punching up.

Sanders: "There is a segment of American culture that is endlessly fascinated with big churches and big performances." Again, yeah. Does he consider this bad? Later, he'll argue that the big performances are designed to get the message out. So, if people are fascinated, that's good, right?

As for the critics, Sanders says, "The church should budget more for its homeless ministry instead of entertaining suburbanites, they argue, ignoring the fact that tickets to the Gift of Christmas run from $19 to $59." How Sanders thinks this helps his case is anyone's guess. Later, Sanders talks about how, in the Bible, Jesus's disciples have a "pattern of constantly missing the point." Apparently, that trait still applies to Jesus's disciples today.

Of those who criticize the church for misplaced spending, Sanders says, "People said the same thing about Jesus." Well, not quite. Sanders is referring to Mary Magdalene anointing Jesus's feet with expensive oil. Sanders says, "Jesus's disciples...were indignant." In fact, the only disciple mentioned as being indignant was Judas, whom the disciple John says was indignant "not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief, and having charge of the moneybag he used to help himself to what was put into it." Jesus says "Leave her alone, so that she may keep it for the day of my burial." Jesus's burial does seem like a worthier cause than giving money for flying drummers. Or to thieving church moneybags for that matter. But again, that may be just me.

Defending extravagance, Sanders turns to the wedding feast of Cana, where Jesus turned water into wine. Sanders says, "This is how he announced himself to the world. At a party. With booze. An irresponsible amount of it. And on the day he did so, there were people in the world without access to clean water or adequate health care." Aside: It's exactly because ancient peoples lacked clean water that they drank wine (or beer). The alcohol killed the bacteria in the water. In a way, you could say Jesus turning water into wine was a way of providing health care, whether Jesus knew bacteriology or not. (Just kidding. Of course He did. He was Jesus.)

Sanders: "The bigger the expense, the more scrutiny it will attract." We've already been over this. Yes it will. But Sanders acts like scrutiny is wrong. He doesn't suggest there's any amount of extravagance that would be over the top. Or rather, he thinks "over the top" is good. He says this explicitly in his editorial's headline. He goes on to say that the Bible "teaches the beauty of extravagance. Profligate oversupply. Wasteful overabundance." If he draws the lesson that such extravagance is good, well, so be it.

"I'm not minimizing serious problems like inequality or homelessness. Those are important. Nor am I defending $100 million ad buys or flying drummer boys", Sanders says, while doing nothing other than defending $100 million ad buys and flying drummer boys.

Sanders says, "If grace is what has motivated donors to break their piggy banks and write big checks, I won't condemn them for it." What if it isn't grace? What if it's pride? Arrogance? Pretentiousness? Or what if it's being in the spell of a person of tremendous charisma who makes followers feel loved and accepted and eager to break their piggy banks for flying drummer boys?

In Sanders's concluding sentences, he says, "Prestonwood's Christmas pageant is over the top, too expensive to make much sense." With that, I wholeheartedly agree.