By Father Casey

A few weeks before Christmas back in 2010, the 80-person choir in Niagara Falls gave a performance of the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel's Messiah. This wouldn't be all that noteworthy – Messiah is sung by countless choirs around the world each year – except for the fact that it happened in the food court of the local mall.

It was just another busy Saturday, the food court filled with hungry shoppers, when all of a sudden a woman stood up, cell phone pressed to her ear, and began to sing the first hallelujah. Few paid her much attention at first – just another random person at the mall doing something odd – until a man nearby joined in. Then a couple across the way. Then the janitor. Slowly the chorus built, until all 80 singers scattered around the atrium were joyfully singing Handel's masterpiece in front of the Arby's and across from the Gap.

The whole thing was recorded by a local photography business, and you can watch it online.[1] You'll see the wonder on everyone's faces, as concern gives way to awe. You can see it registering that they are witnessing a sort of miracle, the modern banality of a food court transformed into a cathedral of astonishment.

It would seem to be a lovely and silly thing. A flash mob bringing a bit of surprise joy to some holiday shoppers. Except what happened that day was Christmas. Smack dab in the middle of the mundane, in a congregation of the distracted and disenchanted and disinterested, Hallelujah came to life. The sacred was born in the midst of the secular. Holy voices sang, heavenly glory rang, and divine light broke into the darkness of the world.

I watch that video every time I need a little Christmas right this very minute.

Sometimes it feels like we're shouting into the wind, that the world cannot hear the gospel of grace over the bullies with their bullhorns. We wonder if the peaceable kingdom announced by the angels can really compete with the cruelty of tyrants. Perhaps we need to raise our voices, and hoard our own power, and take up arms like everyone else. But that would be counter to everything we see in our Savior, starting with his humble birth. What we have to give our weak and weary world is not more of the same, but something radically, magnificently, hallelujah-deservingly beautiful.

One of my favorite contemporary Christian voices, Brian Zahnd, writes, "If the church of the 21^st century will lay down its anger and frustration, and instead joyfully sing the melody of Christ in the malls of meaninglessness, we can perhaps once again astonish a weary world with the beauty of the gospel."[2] Beauty is able to break through the numbness of the world, just as it did on a fateful night in Bethlehem long ago. For what could be more beautiful than the life of the one whose birth we will once again celebrate this week?

So don't stop listening for the voices of angels, and don't be afraid to join with them in singing the melody of Christ. Be your own Niagara Chorus and surprise some people with a few of your own hallelujahs, figuratively if not literally. The bullies may wield their bullhorns, but they will be silenced by the eternal Word of the Father, wielder of goodness, truth, and beauty.

"And He shall reign forever and ever,
King of kings! and Lord of lords!
Hallelujah!"

[1] Christmas Food Court Flash Mob.

[2] Brian Zahnd, Beauty Will Save the Word (Charisma House, 2012), xvii.