Been re-listening to Adele’s interview with Peter Rollins over on the podcast.
Really digging his parallel between the Kingdom of God and TAZ moments (which he best describes as a flash mob).
Wikipedia explains a flash mob as…
a large group of people who assemble suddenly in a public place, perform an unusual action for a brief time, then quickly disperse. The term flash mob is generally applied only to gatherings organized via telecommunications, social media, or viral emails.
Improv Everywhere is notorious for their great flash mobs…
Rollins explains in the podcast that the Kingdom of God should be like these TAZ or flash mob moments, where people are taken out of their reality and brought towards real change.
These little moments live some sort of alternative. They question your everyday reality. Everyone stops and asks, “what’s happening” and it takes you out of your everyday mundane existence — just for a moment. For me the Kingdom of God we instantiate that in little ways. Living an alternative way of being. They can never be fully realized. If they’re there for too long they get colonized, they get taken over, they become something less. But for these little moments we live an alternative, we live the Kingdom. These little TAZ moments. In doing that we challenge the very core and structures of society — not directly challenging Caesar but indirectly just living an alternative.
I love it!
A great representation of the upside down Kingdom.
Taking people out of their norm to experience the God of love and grace. Challenging the system and the norms.
This is the Kingdom I believe Jesus said was at hand. This is the Kingdom that’s still at hand today and we’re all invited to take part in.
The:Priest:Hood shares more on the idea…
The kingdom of God is like a flash mob. It rises up from the underground. It ruptures the status quo. It throws a party in the middle of the commonplace and infuses the mundane with joy of a pure kind. It causes others to be swept up in its flow, to be captivated by it’s surprise, to be caught off guard and engaged by its ecstatic frenzy.
If we look through the lens of a theology of flash mob, we can begin to see, for instance, the Day of Pentecost as a flash mob initiated by the Holy Spirit. The city center happened to be in Jerusalem. It created an experience that ruptured reality, that shocked the ordinary, that generated a lively buzz of conversation. And it created change both in its participants, and in its bystanders.
May we all create TAZ and flash mob moments in the world around us.
May those around us be shocked out their ordinary lives as they witness the Kingdom of God come to life around them.
To me, Laundry Love is one of those TAZ moments. As are other acts of random kindness.
