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Palm Sunday, April 13, 2003
John 12:12-19, David Zersen
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AN INSIDER’S VIEW OF CROWD SCENES John 12:12-19

A number of years ago when it seemed safer to take study groups to Israel, I had a free Sunday morning in Jerusalem and I decided to take a taxi to Bethany and walk the traditional Palm Sunday route back to Jerusalem. It was a quiet morning, birds chirping, children’s voices shouting playfully behind the walls of domestic compounds. I saw almost no one along the way. By the time I reached the Mt. of Olives overlooking Jerusalem, I had seen only a broad meandering path between the walled residential enclosures, scattered patches of gravel and grass, and one dead donkey. Crowds would surely make a difference.

Observing the role and function of crowds
On the Sunday morning in our text, the crowds who had gathered in Jerusalem for the Feast hear that Jesus is approaching the city. They swarm out to meet him and begin to wave palm branches and shout appropriate slogans. They fill the atmosphere with emotion, expectation and enthusiasm. This is what crowds are supposed to do. They aren’t particularly rational and they tend to be swayed by words and songs that appeal to their personal and collective needs. In a humorous and poignant scene at the beginning of an Italian film about the Second World War, Life is Beautiful, a crowd lines the sides of a mountain road awaiting the arrival of some Fascist officials in a motor car. However, the brakes fail in another car driven by the main character and his sidekick and they roar down the road in bewilderment to the acclaim of cheering masses who hail them as dignitaries. By the time the head Fascists actually arrive, the crowd is gone. Crowds can be this fickle and foolish. The scene is symbolic of what follows in this film in which the madness of Fascism and National Socialism overtakes otherwise “normal” people. It also provides insight into the mindset of the crowd in our text.

Outside the crowd scene, there are always larger issues—in this case, an occupied country, a humiliated and tense population, the excitement of an annual festival in which long-separated friends and relatives gather, plots of murder and sedition, songs of heritage and national consciousness. The author, John, says that in addition to this potpourri of issues many people go out to meet Jesus because they have heard of the miracle involving Lazarus’ rising from the dead—and they either want to see Lazarus for themselves or be around in case another miracle takes place. It’s all very emotional and personal, yet there is a collective anticipation that transcends individual needs.

Think of the crowd scenes in which you’ve been a part: Parades on national holidays, waiting for the doors to open at an annual sale, concert or sport event, not to forget demonstrations for and against policies or war. In such settings there are personal concerns for safety, for getting what you anticipated, for making a statement that will be heard. You have a need to satisfy your ego by affirming it with a victory, a purchase or an affirmation. On the one hand, such action justifies your personal reason for being there in the first place. On the other hand, there are collective needs to feel part of something larger than yourself as well as to understand your place in a heritage or a victory that can never be yours alone because it belongs to your whole community or country.

The crowd on the Jerusalem road that Sunday understood such needs well. If miracles are being distributed, they don’t want to be left out! If a new leader is on the horizon, they want to be able to say they have seen him or shaken his hand! If anything will take place that promises affluence or affirmation they want to be on the receiving end! This is why people go to casinos or buy lottery and raffle tickets. If there’s any possibility to increase my personal advantage, I want to stand in line! Furthermore, as John Donne put it, “no man is an island.” We want to share in the nostalgia and collective memory that belongs to families and national groups just as we want to participate in the prospect of any future achievement. In fact, we may commit ourselves to such future dreams, encouraged by the passion of the moment, and give our lives to bring in the millennial kingdom.

Spurred by such hope and even greed, crowds have sometimes called for demonstrations, crusades, rallies and wars. On this particular day, things didn’t get that far out of hand, but it’s quite possible that Jesus’ own actions or demeanor subdued the crowd. There were personal and political overtones. Individuals whose lives were shabby and subjugated in this Roman colony longed for the leadership to move things in a new direction. Those who recalled the short period of Maccabean independence and others who had weapons hidden in caves in the hills had greater collective designs. One can’t be sure that the palms they somehow acquired and waved had political significance (they represented victory on the coins they used), but the shouts that John recalls for us were clearly nationalistic. The call is for freedom and salvation now (“Hosanna”)! They hail a potential leader (“Blessed is the King of Israel”). They anticipate the fulfillment of prophecy by chanting a traditional psalm for this day ringing with messianic hope (“Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord” Ps. 118:26).

John interrupts the story to share an insight
What follows next in John’s version of this story is quite interesting. We have been hearing a crowd revel and react much as we might carry on in similar circumstances. However, Jesus does something which intrudes on the developing meaning of the moment and nobody seems to catch the point until much later, in retrospect. John almost gives us the impression that in the midst of all the hype and confusion in the crowd about to run away with its emotions, Jesus just happens to see a young donkey and continues his journey sitting upon it. The crowd, including Jesus’ own disciples, apparently made nothing of this, but John tells us that after the resurrection they came to understand this symbolic action in the light of prophecies. I think of the futuristic movie, Minority Report, in which employees of a special government agency are able to determine what’s about to take place because they have access to sensory equipment attached to the brains of people floating in a tank—people who have previously experienced these situations. The story is a bit far-fetched, but we find it fascinating because we would give anything to “jump out of our skins” and discover for ourselves the real meaning of what’s currently happening or the impact of something that will happen in the future. In our text, John gives us a remarkable forward flash into the future which allows us to see something that too easily gets lost in the crowd.

We are able to discover through John’s recall an insight of the Christian community that was available to it only after Jesus’ resurrection. Then, in searching the Scriptures to find meaning in their confusion, they come to understand Jesus’ choice of the donkey in the light of passages from Zechariah and Zephaniah—and they are enabled to explain them in such a way that Jesus’ entire ministry becomes clear to them. In both passages, Israel’s king comes riding (“gently” it says in Zechariah) on a donkey, not on a horse of war. In fact, as the passage continues in Zechariah (9:10), God promises to take away the war-horses and proclaim peace to the nations—a peace that will extend to the ends of the earth. John continues this thought by combining the Zechariah passage with one from Zephaniah (3:16). In that passage, the daughter of Zion, the inhabitants of Jerusalem, are encouraged not to fear because the proud and the haughty will be removed, the meek and the humble will remain, and the lips of all people will call upon God’s name and serve him “shoulder to shoulder”

John’s choice of wording (different from the Synoptic writers) suggests that for him this is precisely what Jesus has it in mind to proclaim by choosing to sit on a donkey in that propitious moment. It was a time for insight, for discovery, even if the crowd didn’t grasp it-- and we are privileged to discover it after the fact. Jesus is not “there” or “here” to cater to our personal needs for self-aggrandizement and acquisition. He has not come to allow us to use him for nationalistic or ecclesial purposes. We are not to claim him as the one who defends Americans against Iraq or North Korea, Lutherans against Catholics or Presbyterians. He is not the hero for the conflicts we choose to wage or the defender of those who subjugate others out of pride or arrogance. This is no triumphalist messiah! This is rather he who, in the tradition of Zephaniah, will quiet you with his love and gather the outcast. This is he who, in the words of Zechariah, will come with righteousness and salvation proclaiming peace to the nations. As Israel’s king and our king, he will wear no golden crown and purple robe, but the crown of thorns and the robe of mockery. When in the depth of his humiliation he is finally crucified, he also puts to death all our egotistic claims for self-assertion and national pride. Their power over us is destroyed in his death. And in the life which is resurrected from death to continue with and within us, he frees us to join him, ennobled by an extravagant kindness, in reaching out to the marginalized and underserved people of this earth. His life lives within us to reach beyond ecclesial and national boundaries to claim all people for a new community, or a new crowd, if you will, without personal agenda, without divisions and walls.

It is, of course, wonderful that John gives us this insider’s insight or we might be left standing in the old crowd. As the story continues, this crowd goes about its business, reaffirming a crowd’s desire to meet individual and collective needs. They spread the word that this is the guy who raised Lazarus from the tomb (…and maybe there are more miracles to come!). The Pharisees grumble because they are left out of the loop. And life goes on as if not much has changed; at least as far as such crowds are concerned. However, there are a couple of hints from John that the insight we were allowed to glimpse is already taking on form and fulfillment. The Pharisees say “Look how the whole world has gone after him,” hinting in John’s hyperbolic language at the universalistic intent of Jesus’ life and work which exceeds petty nationalism. And in the very next section, as if by plan (whether John’s literary one or a divine one is left to the reader), Greeks from that very wide world to which Jesus is sent come to seek him out (12:20f.)

Dealing with John’s insight and its application to our lives
We are left to wonder in today’s Palm Sunday gathering, more or less a crowd, if it’s possible for us to see things differently as a result of having been allowed by John to step outside the old crowd for a moment and understand things as they were meant to be, not as we in our humanness all too often allow them to be. What might be different about our thoughts and actions if we in the light of resurrection insight reject any claims upon Jesus as defender of personal or national interests? How might our prayers change if our view of the Messiah changed—and we understood him to be here not merely to grant our egotistic needs but to help us reach out to the disenfranchised, whether in Harlem, Iraq or Zambia? How might our nationalistic strategies change if we accepted a Messiah who called us to reject the horses of war in favor of the donkey of peace? And how might our international views change if we hear God calling us to work “shoulder to shoulder” with all humankind because the challenge to reclaim the outcasts and the forgotten is too great for any of us to bear alone?

Those questions are put to us in a very contemporary way in a book entitled Play It Forward (which became a movie starring Haley Joel Osment) by Catherine Ryan Hyde. The story asks each of us: When we do something for another, and they respond, “How can I pay you back,” could we not say, “Don’t pay it back, pay it forward!” In other words, motivated by this good feeling of affirmation you have received in being graced by another’s kindness, could you seek to change the world by affirming others in their respective needs? Trevor’s teacher (Kevin Spacey) in the movie tells the boy that his plan is a bit “idealistic,” and no one in Trevor’s support system of family or friends really believes that this concept envisioned as a school project to change the world has much application. But the man on the donkey on the road to Jerusalem was counting on Trevor’s idea being realized. He was worried that crowd hysteria coupled with personal greed and national arrogance might take his mission in the wrong direction. He was troubled that it never occurred to people that traditional human approaches (establishing meaning through acquisition, shows of strength, power plays, and wars) never brought humans to a higher level. His self-emptying lifestyle wanted and wants so very much to live in and through us, helping us to transcend our human limitations. His extravagant kindness seeks to claim us personally-- and lay claim to all humankind potentially.

You and I, grateful to John for giving us his insider’s view, sit here pondering this ancient story, wondering if its meaning can provide anything of value for our ordinary days. Again and again, we know how easy it is to get lost in the crowd, to follow human nature’s need to establish personal and collective self-worth with acquisition, self-affirmation and arrogance. One thing we’ve learned from this text, however, is that there are different kinds of crowds. Some which are merely in it for themselves will get lost on the road—no matter how much shouting they do. There is good reason, therefore, to check before you go too far to see whether the crowd you’re following has a man on a donkey up front!

Dr. Dr. David Zersen, President Emeritus
Concordia University at Austin
E-Mail: dzersen@aol.com


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