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“Along the Way: The Crowd,” Rev. Jason-Paul Channels, 3/29/15

“Along the Way: The Crowd”

A sermon preached at

Heart of the Rockies Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)

Rev. Jason-Paul Channels

Palm Sunday March 29, 2015

John 12: 12-19

This text from John about the Palm Sunday events focuses on the power of the crowd. Not on the entry into Jerusalem in terms of palms and coats and parade and pageantry, but on what those that had gathered for this event did/meant/caused.   This is also our focus during our last Lenten emphasis of what we encounter Along the Way of our journey.  We have encountered the guides, the companions, the doubters, the encouragers and this week the Crowds.

The next day the great crowd that had come for the festival heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem. They took palm branches and went out to meet him. They shouted, “Hosanna! Blessings on the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessings on the king of Israel!” Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it, just as it is written, Don’t be afraid, Daughter Zion. Look! Your king is coming, sitting on a donkey’s colt.

His disciples didn’t understand these things at first. After he was glorified, they remembered that these things had been written about him and that they had done these things to him.  The crowd who had been with him when he called Lazarus out of the tomb and raised him from the dead were testifying about him. That’s why the crowd came to meet him, because they had heard about this miraculous sign that he had done.  Therefore, the Pharisees said to each other, “See! You’ve accomplished nothing! Look! The whole world is following him!”

What comes to mind most readily when we talk about a crowd?  The folks who sit with you at a sporting event? The busyness of the mall at Christmas time?  I suspect for many it is a single word equivalent:  Crowd = Mob.   It seems more and more often that when we hear of a crowd gathering in our society it ends up turning into a mob.

Research and experience tell us that there are different types of crowds. Crowds can be active (mobs) or passive (audiences). Active crowds can be categorized as aggressive, escapist, acquisitive, or expressive crowds. Escapist crowds are characterized by a large number of panicked people trying to get out of a dangerous situation.  Acquisitive crowds occur when large numbers of people are fighting for limited resources, such as the crowds who loot after disasters, or early on Black Friday. An expressive crowd is a large group of people gathering for an active purpose.[1]  An example of these types would be both the crowd on that first Palm Sunday and the crowd who gathered to demand crucifixion.

There is a theory (Deindividuation) that argues that in typical crowd situations, factors such as anonymity, group unity, and excitement separate people from their personal identities.  That when a person joins a crowd they can become unable, due to the situation, to have strong awareness of themselves as an object of individual attention.[2]  And when they don’t think of themselves as an individual they can act like the crowd without feeling guilty or bad or any of the things that would keep them from doing that in front of their grandma.  And can cost them the ability to express what they really feel or behave the way they really want to.

In today’s text the crowd and its expression of love and wonder at Jesus was an issue for the Pharisees.  The crowd’s response and support conveyed power and authority on him.  The crowds were proof of a threat to the Pharisees and to their power and control and evidence to the possibility that they might lose it.  The Pharisees had hoped to derail this Jesus figure.  They hoped to trap him and trick him and discredit his teachings and then he would lose the following that had begun to surround him.  Remember the 4,000 that Melissa preached about last week?  The 5,000 the time before?  They could not afford for him to continue to gather these types of crowds because it would not be long before they were sure before the crowd would turn on them.  The Pharisees had to do something to stop him.

You see:

crowds make people do things

make others feel things

make some fear things

crowds can be happy or mad (or sometimes hard to tell just look at Lexington, KY or Mansfield CT following a UK or UCONN national title win).

Crowds can be in the majority or the minority

Crowds can be for change or status quo

Crowds can be be seeking power or holding power

There are crowds that gather with great intentionality and forethought and planning and objectives and foundations and beliefs.  And there are crowds that gather in an instant holding little else than the spark that called them into being.

There are crowds that try and give voice to an idea or a people whose voice has been silenced.

There are crowds that try to shout loud enough to be heard and some who try to shout loud enough so no one else can be heard.

There are crowds who gather to change systems and crowds that gather to change individuals.  And some who care for neither…only themselves.

Crowds can make us do things that we would not normally do for the worst?  But how often do they make us do things we would not normally do for the better?

Crowds often make us do things in the instant, the moment, the short-term but how often do they make us make lasting change in our lives our practices?

How often does the effect of the crowd wear off long before things have sunk in or even before the next crowd gathers?

Unfortunately the Pharisees were not the last to fear what a crowd following Jesus might do.  They were not the last to want to make sure that the radical, culture-changing teachings of Jesus did not threaten their power and influence and authority.

Oscar Romero was considered a kindly, orthodox conservative parish priest when Pope Paul appointed him archbishop in 1977.  He was not a part of the priesthood that had been active in opposing and questioning El Salvador’s ruling regime. He was a safe and non-threatening choice to fill the role.  But not long after his appointment that regime began to round up priests and nuns who said the teachings of Jesus led them to oppose El Salvador’s military rulers. Several priests were killed.   And Romero, and his understanding of both the political realities of El Salvador and the role of his faith was changed.

In his weekly sermons, the archbishop began to read out the names of those civilians who were taken from their homes by the paramilitary and were never seen again: the desaparecido — the disappeared — as they became known. The simple weekly reading of names over the radio reached into every part of the country.

One sermon in 1980, in San Salvador’s central cathedral, Romero spoke directly to Salvadoran soldiers, young men from small villages you’d see at armed checkpoints around the country, who often wore crucifixes around their necks.

“Brothers,” he said, “you are all killing your fellow countrymen. No soldier has to obey an immoral order. It is time to regain your conscience. In the name of God and in the name of the suffering people I implore you, I beg you, I order you, stop the repression.”  It was a call for soldiers, and all people, to heed the message of the crosses they wore, and their own consciences, their own faith above the government.[3]

He tried to create a crowd of witnesses not only to the atrocities of the government but also a crowd of witnesses to the faith and promise and challenge of Jesus Christ in the midst of such oppression and injustice.  Romero tried to gather the people into a crowd that could not be dispersed.  A crowd that would not fade into the mist of the morning.

Romero called upon the crowd to proclaim the names, to to resist the power, to change the rules, to live out in life the truths and beliefs of their faith even in the face of danger and disappearance and death.  Romero called upon the crowds to stand strong longer than the length of his sermon, broadcast or visit.

The government could not afford for him to gather these types of crowds because it would not be long before the crowd would turn on them.  They could not continue to suppress a people that stood up and spoke out instead of hiding and keeping silence.  And so the Pharisees…I mean the government…had to do something to stop him.

The crowd Romero tried to gather could not form quickly enough.  On the very next night after his plea to the soldiers to join this crowd, he celebrated mass in the small chapel where he lived.  On March 24, 1980, while celebrating the Eucharist,  a lone gunman shot Romero to death as he stood at the communion table holding the body of Christ.

And as Jesus gathered with his disciples later that same week in an upper room.   The night he would be betrayed and later brought before a crowd that could no longer remember the testimonies they shouted earlier in the week.  As he gathered with them he broke bread and said this is my body broken for you, and took the cup and said this is my blood which is poured out for you…yet the crowd formed and Pilate and Herod and Peter could not resist it.   Can I?  Can you? Can we together?  Amen.

[1]          The section previous is largely a quotation from the Wikipedia entry for crowd psychology: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crowd_psychology

[2]          Manstead, ASK; Hewstone, Miles (1996). Blackwell Encyclopedia of Social Psychology. Oxford, UK: Blackwell. pp. 152–156. ISBN 978-0-631-20289-9.

[3]          http://www.npr.org/2015/02/07/384327724/oscar-romero-the-murdered-archbishop-who-inspires-the-pope