The good crowd and the bad crowd

If we were to cast this story as a play, The Crowd would be a character. The Crowd followed Jesus here, The Crowd followed Jesus there, The Crowd was fed and there were twelve baskets left over, The Crowd was in awe at what he had to say. And this week in particular, the Crowd has a particular and polarizing role to play.

Today is Palm Sunday meaning the Crowd greets Jesus on his entry into Jerusalem and they threw down palms and laid down cloaks and cheered his triumphal return to the city where the culmination of this story happens. And it is the Crowd, just five days from now on Good Friday who will call for him to be killed, asking Pilate to punish him, asking for Barabbas to be released instead and insisting even at Pilate's second guessing "crucify him! crucify him!"

The Crowd is a character but I scarcely know what kind of character the Crowd is in this story. They like Jesus, they need Jesus, they celebrate him, and then they turn and condemn him, and it is a part of the story that I have never quite understood. What happens in the next five days that causes them to turn on him?

It might be fair to say, well, Pastor Ethan, don't you think it could be a different crowd? Maybe it was a good crowd that was following him around out there in the world and a bad crowd that followed him into Pilate's courtroom? A crowd full of seekers and disciples and honest questioners versus a crowd full of mean religious officials and government conspirators? And the answer is, ya, that could be it, but part of what it means to describe a group of people as The Crowd is that you don't know everybody who is in it. The Crowd behaves as a unit. We're not really told all the kinds of people who were among the 5000 who were fed, we aren't told who exactly it was that celebrated his entry into Jerusalem except that the Crowd was "great" and we know that among the people condemning Jesus were chief priests and religious leaders but we're also told that there were a great many others as well, and who could those people have been? We just don't entirely know.

I guess I say this not to that the Crowd is good or bad, the Crowd is both, can be both. The Crowd is needy, the Crowd sometimes celebrates the good, the Crowd can condemn the good, the Crowd can also celebrate the bad, or condemn the bad. In a story like this one, we have the benefit of hindsight -- we know how the story plays out -- and it helps us assess the actions of the Crowd as good or bad. The Palm Sunday crowd was good, the Pilate crowd bad. We know that Jesus is the Messiah. We know that Judas is the villain. We know that Pilate was a coward. We know that the resurrection overcomes all the circumstances of the story. But they didn't know those things. One crowd had hope in a man. And one crowd called for his head. One was right, and one was wrong. And they might've even been the same crowd.

It feels as true as ever that the Crowd is a character that still exists in the Christian story today. There are big, big groups of people with big, polarizing, and differing opinions. There are crowds that are looking for hope. There are crowds that are angry. There are crowds that are scared. And there are crowds that are calling for heads on platters. And in some cases, they are the same crowds on different days of the week. We are as needy and as hopeful and as mad and as scared as the people in the Gospels were, and it drives us into crowds looking for an outlet for hope, for anger, for fear, in much the same way it did them, then.

The trouble with a crowd, is that in a crowd, you almost always feel right. You almost always feel justified in what you are thinking, wanting, asking for, because you are surrounded by people who agree, even if you are wrong, whatever wrong means anymore. I don't say any of us to say that what we need to do is avoid the crowd, go it alone, be entirely self reliant, because that's not the answer either. We need other people. And,... but... when enough people get together who are mad or scared or desperate, sometimes something we don't mean to happen happens. And look around at just how many people are mad, scared, and desperate these days.

It is just not enough to find yourself in a vocal majority, or to have people around you who are angry about the same things, or who are scared of the same things, or who hate the same people you hate or celebrate the same people you celebrate or condemn the same people you condemn. It is not enough just to feel right. The way that we channel our anger, our hope, our fear, our desperation, our celebration has got to be rooted in the values that Jesus repeated over and over throughout his ministry: love of the poor, care of the least and last among us, respect of the dignity of our neighbor and a real open mindedness about just how far the definition of neighbor can stretch.

It is not enough just to be angry, we have to be angry about the right things.

It is not enough just to be hopeful, we have to put our hope in the right things.

It is as tough as ever to know what the right things are, and every crowd will have it's own answers. And it feels fair enough to say that our answer comes in the form of the Gospel of Jesus-- and that means if it's not about the poor, if it's not about the love of neighbor, if it's not about mercy and grace and forgiveness, if it's not about the resurrection hope,,,, then,,,, it might just have nothing to do with us. Amen.