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

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