The Flash Mob Nativity

           It was an average afternoon on the New York City subway.  People from all walks of life, reading books, listening to their I-pods, holding onto handrails to avoid falling as the subway lurched along, and generally trying hard not to make eye contact (ah, NYC!).   At one stop, a young woman in a rather distinctive white garb boards the subway and starts reading a book entitled “Galactic Rebellion for Dummies”.  At the next stop, the young woman is frightened to see a group of white armored soldiers board.  The crowd stares in disbelief as the soldiers start searching the car full of people.   By now, camera phones are out in full force, people are twittering away to their friends about the bizarre sight.

            The Imperial Guard find the woman and grab hold of her.  Princess Leia protests, yet she realizes that it’s of no great use to struggle. As the car enters the station for its next stop, it is by now a forgone conclusion regarding the identity of the next person to pick up the subway. 

            Darth Vader boards the train and starts arguing with the young woman.  At the next stop, the group departs the subway, and the otherwise not easily phased New Yorkers cannot stop laughing.

            So what happened?  A group of people learned online that this little prank was being planned.  Via email, social networking (FB, Twitter), and text messaging, the word went out that you could join the event, recreating a scene from Star Wars.  The organizing group is a loosely affiliated, all volunteer gathering of people who come up with silly ideas just like this.

            These events are sometimes called “flash mobs”, or “sudden gatherings of people doing something unusual in a public space” (http://www.npr.org/2010/12/20/132205587/planning-a-flash-mob-better-keep-it-quiet).  The flash mob can take on a variety of forms, though there is one “golden rule” about flash mobs.  Just like surprise birthday parties, flash mobs are best when they are kept a surprise. 

This past week, in Washington, DC, a plan was hatched to get people to show up at various Metro subway stops and go Christmas caroling.  Within a few days, he had 260 people signed up to do the caroling.  Unfortunately, the area newspapers picked up on the story, even published the schedule for the caroling locations.  In other words, the flash mob didn’t happen.  Who wants to be part of a little prank when everybody knows about it?  (Also most ironic:  a newspaper, the same entity being pushed out of cultural relevance, derailed the flash mob.  It’s like the radio star killed video, or something….)

While “secret” is one key element to flash mobs, another element is rehearsal.  Some flash mobs have practice sessions, sometimes to get dance moves figured out so when a crowd suddenly bursts into singing or dancing in the middle of a mall or park, they look quite organized out there, surprising the unsuspecting.            

Recently, a number of people have mentioned a popular video set at a shopping mall food court.  As people are eating all that grease-laden food your doctor would prefer you didn’t, a young woman steps forward, and in a very strong, clear voice starts singing.  A moment later, a young man joins her.  Very quickly, the noise around the food court dies down as more people rise from tables, turn away from their place in line to order food, or enter from another part of the mall, joining voices.  Together, singers young and old perform the famous “Halleujah” chorus from Handel’s Messiah.  

The prank element of this aside, the performance is quite moving, even if the performance space is decidedly not a church or a concert hall.  The strains of Handel’s Hallelujah chorus transform the desultory mall food court.  You even see a person or two in the crowd visibly moved by the music.

The Nativity of the Lord is a story with odd similarities to a flash mob as most of the participants do not know what’s happening next, other than the divine “messaging system” of the angels sent by God.  (You could even argue that the “star of the East” guiding the Magi in Matthew’s gospel is something like a first century GPS unit.) 

The Holy Family says their “yes” to God’s promise of a child, conceived in unusual circumstances and born in the most obscure of places, to raise this child despite the suspicion in the local village of how the child came to be, despite the challenges of raising a child.  The shepherds are bowled over by the sudden “flash mob” of angelic host, bearing the glad tidings.  All of these characters are in search of what God has promised (“characters in search of a plot” as a seminary professor of mine once put it), and they know that something grand is about to unfold as they make their way over hill and dale to the otherwise bucolic town of Bethlehem.

In the midst of the Nativity story, Christian interpreters from the Two-Thirds World, or that is, from less economically privileged countries are very quick to point out that all of these divine messages come to the persons with the least status or importance.  Depending on which Nativity story you read (Matthew or Luke), the halls of power are either oblivious to what is unfolding.  Luke notes the authorities as just the imperial bureaucracy at work, counting and taxing the peasants in a backwater province of the Empire.   Matthew spins the story of Jesus, the babe born in Bethlehem, as a counterpoint to the narrative of King Herod, cravenly jealous of any person that might lay claim to his own power.  It is not local or Roman “powers that be” whom hear the word from on high.  Instead, the angels tell it to those who are deemed the most expendable or marginalized.  God chooses to work with those who are the least likely to be “plugged in” to the powerbase or significant means.

So it is, even at Christmas, we learn about what the Church ought to proclaim year ‘round:  God’s message is not told by a select few for a chosen crowd.  In fact, the gospel of Jesus Christ, the One born of Mary, is handed over to the whole world to hear, to believe and to live out.  The shepherds, the Magi, and the poor Holy Family are engaged in this plot that is just beginning to be told as the angels fill the heavens with their song and the Child’s cry fills the unlikely nursery of an innkeeper’s stable. 

Indeed, that story continues with those who hear and believe the gospel way of Jesus Christ.  It is not enough to hear and believe, as the gospel is all about “the way”, the path of discipleship.  While we tend to think of Christians as a people who come once per week for an hour of worship, really the gospel is more of a flash mob in the making, not to pull some sort of prank or crazy stunt to pass the time.  The gospel of Jesus calls people to work for the greater good, to fulfill the Great Commission to go out to the world and live the gospel to its fullness. 

The 20^th century theologian and poet Howard Thurman wrote,

When the song of the angels is stilled,

            When the star in the sky is gone,

When the kings and princes are home,

            When the shepherds are back with their flock,

The work of Christmas begins,

            To find the lost,

            To heal the broken,

            To feed the hungry,

            To release the prisoner,

            To rebuild the nations,

            To bring peace among brothers [and sisters]

            To make music in the heart.

The Nativity is the first call to those who wish to be found in the midst of public space, doing something the world might deem unusual.  Christians are part of that flash mob of people who show up in the midst of the least remembered places.  We are called to be the ones tending those in need, validating those who are otherwise invisible, or uplifting those who thought themselves beyond reconciliation or redemption.  Such work might seem a bit reckless to those watching on the sidelines, yet it bears witness to the One who first praised by the lowly, followed primarily by those who were among the forgotten, and in whose name you too are called to go forth and live out the gospel.