Grace-Mobbed

Theologians write learned books about grace. But I’m not that sophisticated. When I think of grace, what comes to mind is a flash mob.

If you ever witness one firsthand, you’ll never forget it. You’ll be in a bustling public place like a mall, surrounded by folks who, like you, may be stressed out by the demands of everyday life. Suddenly, someone in the crowd calmly takes out a bass or a flute and begins playing. One by one, other musicians emerge from the crowd with violins, cellos, and clarinets. Together they freeze time with music so beautiful and so unexpected that all you can do is stand and marvel.

Then, as suddenly as it began, it ends. The performers melt back into the anonymous crowd. The busyness of everyday life, temporarily suspended, resumes.

Yet everything is different, too: refreshed, transfigured.

A crowd’s first response to a flash mob is surprise and sometimes even confusion. But delight and joy quickly take their place, and by the time the performance is over, everyone is luminous with a sense of well-being. You can see it in their faces. Their lives, at least for a few moments, have been transported from the everyday here-and-now to a place of wonder and goodness. Something deep, something fundamental, has been touched.

This is exactly how grace works. In the Christian tradition, grace is an unexpected gift from God, lovingly bestowed for no other reason than to rejuvenate the recipient. The word is derived from the Greek chairō (χαίρω), “to be glad,” “to rejoice,” or “to be delighted.” When we’re seized by a grace moment—when we’re grace-mobbed—it takes us by surprise. A surge of gladness, love, and hope lifts the curtain of our everyday lives just enough for us to catch a revitalizing glimpse of the fullness of creation, the beauty of humans, and the glory of God.

When that happens, our faces glow. How could such a revelation not invigorate jaded hearts and inspire weary minds? How could we not be delighted?

Back in the fourth century, Saint Augustine likened grace to a healing tonic. Too often, he pointed out, the busyness and minutiae of everyday life, not to mention its heartbreaks and tragedies, can get to us. Our spirits grow sluggish, our souls shut down, our imaginations go into hibernation. Like the injured wayfarer in the parable of the Good Samaritan, we need help to recover our sense of wonder and gratitude. We need to be grace-mobbed, and God, the Good Samaritan, obliges us.

Happily, this in-breaking of grace is everywhere. Grace abounds. It’s encountered in the laughter of children, the beauty of the ocean, the kindness of a stranger, a good meal shared with friends, the softness of a summer night, the majesty of an electrical storm, the intimacy of lovemaking, the silence of prayer, the holiness of liturgy. Any situation, no matter how ordinary, can be a channel of grace. The Nag Hammadi scroll known as the Gospel of Thomas tell us that the world is shot through with it. “Split a piece of wood,” Jesus says in the gospel, “and I am there. Lift a stone, and you’ll find me.”¹

Search just beneath the surface of the ordinary, and what you discover is the marvelous, the enchanted, the mysterious. You never know when musicians will step out of the crowd and transport you to a beautiful place of wonder and delight. You never know when the Divine will grace-mob you. As the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins vividly reminds us, “the grandeur of God, shining like shook foil,” can be encountered anywhere.²

The glorious thing about the gift of grace is that once it’s received, it refuses to be contained. When we’re grace-mobbed, the joy we experience can’t help but overflow, and we yearn to gift others with what God gave us. Grace emboldens us to love with abandoned profligacy, because grace opens our eyes to the sheer lovability of creation.

Some of us may try to resist grace, just as a curmudgeon might turn away from a flash mob with a sour “bah!” We may be too mired in the busyness of life, too swamped with everyday concerns, or too consumed by pain and suffering, to allow grace to open us up. But that’s okay, because grace, like the Love that gifts it, is patient. Sooner or later, all of us get grace-mobbed.

And when that happens, we caper with joy. Afterwards, everything is different. Refreshed. Transfigured.³

1. Gospel of Thomas, in The Nag Hammadi Library, trans. Members of the Coptic Gnostic Library Project (New York: Harper & Row, 1977), p. 126, #77.

2. The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;

It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil

Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?

Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;

And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;

And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil

Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;

There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;

And though the last lights off the black West went

Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent

World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

3. Adapted from my book, Faith Matters: Reflections on the Christian Life (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2019), pp. 56-57.