A Face In the Crowd

This sermon was preached for Palm Sunday on March 28, 2010 at the Presbyterian Church of Laurelhurst. The day's Gospel reading was John 12: 12-16.

What’s the biggest crowd you’ve ever been in? As I think back on my own life experiences, I would have to say that the biggest crowd I’ve ever been in was in Boston in the mid 1980’s, when I went to one of those Fourth of July Boston Pops concerts on the Esplanade in front of the Hatch Shell—the one where they play the 1812 overture with cannons, and then follow up with fireworks. It was already crowded when we got to the Esplanade early in the morning and spread out our blanket—and by concert time some 12 hours later—8:30 pm—I was just one of about 500,000 people waiting for the festivities to begin.

I bet some of you have stories that would put that one to shame. Maybe you’ve been in Times Square for New Year’s eve, or in New Orleans for Mardi Gras,—or maybe you were in Paris on VE Day in 1945, or listening to Martin Luther King in Washington, DC in 1963, or in London for Princess Diana’s funeral in 1997.

Or maybe the biggest crowd you’ve ever experienced was somewhat closer to home—a basketball game at the Rose Quarter, or the Rose Festival Parade, or a political rally at Waterfront Park.

How do you feel when you’re in a crowd? Are you thrilled? Are you energized? Are you comfortable? Do you feel powerful? Do you feel claustrophobic? Do you feel confident? Or are you afraid?

In today’s gospel reading, as well as all the ceremony and festivity of this day, Palm Sunday, we as readers and listeners and believers are not only brought together as a people in worship—but we are also brought together as participants in the sacred story—as members of the celebratory crowd that surrounds Jesus with waving palms, and shouts of “Hosanna!”

The word “liturgy”—the word we use for the order of worship itself—comes from the greek word “leiturgia,” meaning “work of the people”—and our work for today is to be part of the story—to celebrate this miracle-working Messiah who arrives in triumph.

Like the palm-waving crowds lining the Jerusalem road, straining to catch a glimpse of this superstar riding into town, we know who Jesus is, and we just can’t contain our excitement. Jesus will be our leader. We know he will be our savior. We know he will embrace his own power, rescue us from Roman occupation and restore us to our rightful place before God and in the world. We know he will do great things, and he’s going to do them for us.

And today, just for today, we are confident enough and courageous enough to dance in the aisles and proclaim the new reality we know is coming: “Hooray for Jesus! He is the King of Israel! God bless the one who comes in the name of the Lord!”

But if you’re following the story in the gospel of John, you know that all of the excitement and celebration of the palm-waving crowd on this day are only a brief respite from the clouds that have been gathering over Jesus on his way to Jerusalem, and the shadows that await him after he enters the city.

The authorities have been plotting to discredit and arrest Jesus almost continuously through John’s gospel, but after Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead in Chapter 11, just before the jubilant crowd’s palm parade in chapter 12, the authorities’ plots take a more sinister turn—as John tells us in chapter 11 verse 53, “From that day on, the council started making plans to put Jesus to death.”

Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem is a celebration—but by entering the city and revealing himself in such a public way, Jesus is making himself a very visible target for those who would arrest him and do him harm. He is also making himself the focus of the crowd’s messianic, political, and revolutionary expectations—high expectations that he will not fulfill in a way they can understand or expect.

Before the week is out, Jesus will be betrayed, and beaten, and bound; and as he stands for judgement before Pilate, the crowd outside—perhaps some of the very same people who danced around with palm branches—will be a street mob, angry and frustrated over unfulfilled expectations, howling “Crucify him! Crucify him!” and demanding his execution.

As we follow the story of Jesus—here in John, and as we come to it in worship throughout this Holy Week leading up to Easter—I think we have to acknowledge that if we see ourselves as part of the jubilant crowd, we can also, with a terrible convicting honesty, know that we have it in us to be part of the angry mob as well.

Could that be us, there in the streets of Jerusalem, one moment celebrating the arrival of the Messiah, and the next moment demanding the execution of the lamb of God? The gospel of John thinks so, and part of the ironic power of the Palm Sunday story is the way it requires us to hold up the mirror of truth and see ourselves in it—see our fickle, and frustrated, and fearful selves as we really would have been, and perhaps even now as we really are.

I’ve been thinking about the power of crowds—and the power of mobs—quite a bit these past few weeks as I’ve watched the health care debate and advocates both for and against the health care bill kindle debate and discussion—and also incite anger, and fear, and polarization.

I’ve seen some really ugly things happen this week—people getting spit on and called names—acts of violence, death threats—and I will confess to you that I have had some really unpleasant moments in my own heart as I read postings and blogs and heard comments from old and dear friends of mine that revealed their thinking on this issue is different from mine—and I’ve been so tempted to just cut off all those people I disagree with—“well, if that’s the way you think, we can’t be friends!”.

I’ve been thinking about how easy it is to get polarized, to see issues and relationships in terms of winning and losing; I’ve been thinking about all the times I’ve been right about something and all the other times I’ve been wrong. I’ve been thinking about the crowd that first celebrated Jesus and then demanded his death, and how we are all so much like them, and how it is so hard—when we stand at a liminal moment, a doorway moment between one event and the next, between one reality and the next, between one stage of life and the next, between one relationship and the next, between one destiny and the next—how it is so hard, standing in that doorway, to see what lies ahead, to understand it—and how important it is that we choose how we react—that we choose how we treat one another—that we choose to trust the future to God.

The crowd that celebrated Jesus with palms when he entered Jerusalem knew what they wanted—a Savior and a King—they were so angry and disappointed when they didn’t get it that they turned into a mob and turned their backs on Jesus.

What the crowd didn’t understand was that God’s heart, God’s wisdom, God’s providence was bigger than they could possibly imagine; that what God was accomplishing through Jesus wasn’t just the salvation of a person, or a people, a city or a country, but the salvation of the world itself.

Remember that saying, be careful what you ask for, you just might get it? Despite their frustration, their fickleness, their fearfulness, and their fury--this crowd got so much more than they were asking for, more than they could ever have imagined—forgiveness, redemption, eternal life and joy--and so did we, and our children, and our children’s children, to the end of days.

How hard it is, when we are in a liminal moment—a doorway moment between one stage of life and the next—it is so hard, standing in that doorway, to see what lies ahead, and to understand it. John’s gospel tells us that we can trust the future to God—and that in those moments of frustration, of fearfulness, of fury—it matters most how we treat one another.

Imagining ourselves as part of the crowd on Palm Sunday, and as part of the mob on Good Friday, helps us to understand that neither of those things—crowd or mob—is who Jesus calls us to be. Instead, we can look again to the gospel of John—to the next chapter, when Jesus gathers the disciples around him and bends to wash their feet—to see the kind of relationship Jesus calls us to have with him and with each other.

Jesus washes the disciples feet and then he tells them, “I am giving you a new command. You must love each other, just as I have loved you. If you love each other, everyone will know that you are my disciples.”

Jesus calls us to be not members of a crowd, but members of a community.

At a time of social upheaval and unrest not too far in our past, Rev Martin Luther King spoke time and time again about the potential for non-violence to create something he called “The Beloved Community.” Dr. King said,

"Love is creative and redemptive. Love builds up and unites; hate tears down and destroys. The aftermath of the ‘fight fire with fire’ method which you suggest is bitterness and chaos, the aftermath of the love method is reconciliation and creation of the beloved community. Physical force can repress, restrain, coerce, destroy, but it cannot create and organize anything permanent; only love can do that. Yes, love—which means understanding, creative, redemptive goodwill, even for one’s enemies—is the solution to the problem."

Members of a crowd can keep score. Members of a crowd can be winners or losers, can dominate and punish, hurt and exploit. Members of a crowd can indulge in fear-mongering and one-upmanship and hate. Members of a crowd can give tit for tat and blackmail and payola.

Members of a community, on the other hand, know each other; are invested in each other; are honest with each other; hold each other accountable; live with each other; serve each other; comfort each other. Members of a community love each other and work together. Members of a community trust one another and trust in God.

We as a church are called to be not a crowd but a community. We are called not to jostle one another for position or privilege but to wash each other’s feet, to learn from one another, to pray for each other, to see the face of God in one another.

We are called not to compete with each another but to love one another; not to dominate each other but to serve one another; not to stir up fear in each other but to build up hope in one another. We are called to join hands with one another and to trust in God. And in living this way we not only claim the gospel promises for ourselves, but we proclaim them for others. “If you love each other,” Jesus says, “everyone will know that you are my disciples.”

Like people throughout the ages, we live in turbulent times. As we navigate our own stormy waters--as we travel into the gathering shadows of Holy Week—let us live and let us worship not as a crowd but as a community—as a Beloved Community—serving one another and loving one another and putting our trust in God.

Amen.