Actually, THIS is the Greatest Show: The Circus and the Mass

I’m posting all the lyrics to the opener to the show here, interspersed with commentary, (I don’t have a video clip to share; here’s the official song, though), which I won’t do for the rest of the posts. It is an impressive, attention-getting opening and closing, and from the little bit I said about ritual, it marks the doorway in and out of a liminal space; it gets the audience charged up and prepared to enter into a different world. And I couldn’t help thinking, as a Catholic, “This is what mass should be like!” (Sorry, this one is going to be more relevant to those in high-liturgical churches).

And I mean that seriously. If you believed what Catholics profess, then the Mass should be “the greatest show.” It should be a liminal moment where “the impossible comes true.” “It’s everything you ever want. It’s everything you ever need. It’s here right in front of you. This is where you want to be.”

Look, I know that’s probably not your weekly or daily experience. It’s not mine, unless I’m really focused on the meaning of what we’re doing. But consider what we claim to be true about what happens when we get together:

The God who creates and sustains everything meets with us.
We recall that God has mercy on us for everything we do wrong.
We hear God speak to us through sacred Scripture and preaching.
God changes simple bread and wine we bring into His body and his blood in a participation in the sacrifice of God’s own Son to reconcile us to Him.
We eat the Body and Blood so that we can be united with God.

If we understand God as the all-powerful Creator of all things and also understand this all as an expression of God’s intense love for each of, specifically, well, that’s a lot more “impossible comes true” than tigers, elephants and stunts.

I already talked about the power of ritual to lead us to a transcendent reality. Just look throughout these lyrics at how strongly that liminality is evoked. And, if you profess that the ultimate purpose of life is union with God, and that this is the one path to get there, the hunger in the first verse is understandable, tangible.

Ladies and gents, this is the moment you’ve waited for (woah)
Been searching in the dark, your sweat soaking through the floor (woah)
And buried in your bones there’s an ache that you can’t ignore

That “ache you can’t ignore” evokes St. Augustine’s famous line in his Confessions: “Our heart is restless until it rests in you.”

Taking your breath, stealing your mind
And all that was real is left behind

Maybe it goes without saying that that one line tips the hand that this song is about the circus, about an empty show, rather than about ritual.

Don’t fight it, it’s coming for you, running at ya
It’s only this moment, don’t care what comes after
Your fever dream, can’t you see it getting closer
Just surrender ’cause you feel the feeling taking over

It’s fire, it’s freedom, it’s flooding open

It’s a preacher in the pulpit and you’ll find devotion

Besides the obvious religious allusion of the last line, there is a long history of Christian mystics reporting ecstatic personal encounters with the holy that sound much like this.

There’s something breaking at the brick of every wall it’s holding I’ll let you now

So tell me do you wanna go?

Where it’s covered in all the colored lights
Where the runaways are running the night

Impossible comes true, it’s taking over you

Oh, this is the greatest show
We light it up, we won’t come down
And the sun can’t stop us now
Watching it come true, it’s taking over you
Oh, this is the greatest show

colossal we come these renegades in the ring
(Woah) where the lost get found in the crown of the circus king

Lost get found – another bit analogy in Christian literature, echoing Jesus’ declaration that He is the good shepherd that searches for his lost sheep.

Don’t fight it, it’s coming for you, running at ya
It’s only this moment, don’t care what comes after
It’s blinding outside and I think that you know
Just surrender ’cause you’re calling and you wanna go

Where it’s covered in all the colored lights
Where the runaways are running the night
Impossible comes true, intoxicating you

Oh, this is the greatest show
We light it up, we won’t come down
And the sun can’t stop us now
Watching it come true, it’s taking over you
Oh, this is the greatest show

A note on the “colored lights.” One of the things that sets spectacles like circuses, sports and shows apart is the sensory overload of colors and lights. Recall that Christian churches have often tried to design their sacred space with stained glass and bright candlelight. While this is now more about consistency with earlier tradition, at the time, those were the “high-tech” means of “wowing” a crowd.

It’s everything you ever want
It’s everything you ever need
And it’s here right in front of you
This is where you wanna be (this is where you wanna be)
It’s everything you ever want
It’s everything you ever need
And it’s here right in front of you
This is where you wanna be
This is where you wanna be

This bridge, repeated like a religious chant, is one that has far more truth for religious ritual than a show.

When it’s covered in all the colored lights
Where the runaways are running the night
Impossible comes true, it’s taking over you
Oh, this is the greatest show
We light it up, we won’t come down
And the sun can’t stop us now
Watching it come true, it’s taking over you
This is the greatest show
When it’s covered in all the colored lights
Where the runaways are running the night
Impossible comes true, it’s taking over you
Oh, this is the greatest show
We light it up, we won’t come down
And the walls can’t stop us now
I’m watching it come true, it’s taking over you
Oh, this is the greatest show

‘Cause everything you want is right in front of you
And you see the impossible is coming true
And the walls can’t stop us (now) now, yeah

This is the greatest show (oh!)
This is the greatest show (Oh!)
This is the greatest show (oh!)
This is the greatest show (oh!)
This is the greatest show (Oh!)
This is the greatest show (oh!)
(This is the greatest show)
This is the greatest show (oh!)
This is the greatest show!

So listen to this song and think about what a mass would look like that lived up to the claims this song makes. What we profess we believe meets this over-the-top standard. What we deliver as a Church seldom does, and that’s usually because the community, which both performs and attends, ceases to remember how profound we proclaim it to be. It’s also because we have (usually) sapped the “liminality” out of the mass through familiarity and safe choices. But that fails to render it any less true that this really is the greatest show.

We should strive for worship that warrants the lyrics of this song.

One response to “Actually, THIS is the Greatest Show: The Circus and the Mass”

Come Alive? | Reading Francis

February 6, 2018 at 2:06 am

[…] reality to experience an ecstatic spiritual realm. What I described there and is enacted in “The Greatest Show” is described in “Come Alive.” This ritual of initiation is, for Christians, Baptism. We […]

Reading Francis