The Voice of the Crowd
By Joe Casad
Peace Mennonite Church; October 21, 2012
“I am innocent of that man’s blood; see to it yourselves!” We heard these anguished words of Pontius Pilate in the passage this morning from the book of Matthew [Matt 27:15-24]. All the Gospels give some version of this scene–the priests, and Pilate, and Herod, and back to Pilate–each of them wanting the others to take the blame for the death sentence on Jesus. And behind them is a chorus of angry voices, a swirling mass of humanity, pressing in on the walls of the palace. In the book of John, Pilate cries, “Take him yourself and crucify him; I find no case against him [John 19: 1-8]. From the scripture:
“The Jews answered him, “We have a law, and according to that law, he ought to die
because he has claimed to be the son of God. And when Pilate heard this, he was more
afraid than ever.”
What a curious moment, when you have a man who is about to die, who isn’t afraid, and a man who is about to sentence him to die, who is afraid. This moment so much sums up the spirit of the Gospels.
When we were brainstorming in the Worship committee about doing a series on disciples of Jesus, we had this idea that maybe another player in this story is the crowd. Certainly many of our images from the story of Jesus include the presence of crowds–extras on the set, if you will. Starting right at the beginning–with those unnamed shepherds, to what we are told is “a great number of people” who followed Jesus as he carried the cross up the hill.
The crowd has a long history in storytelling, starting with the ancient Greeks, who accorded a special role to an unnamed and homogenous group of performers known as the chorus. The unnamed and homogenous group of 50-somethings in this congregation were teenagers and tweenagers, in our prime music-listening years, when Jesus Christ Superstar appeared on the scene, and I have gradually discovered that all too many of us have memorized all the words in that opera from beginning to end.
Don’t worry if you think I’m going to quote JC Superstar as a theological reference, but I will mention that the songs and sounds of the crowd moving through the scenes as a backdrop for the interaction of the protagonists is one of the most powerful parts of the story.
The gospels actually read very much like that–occasional moments of solitude or quiet against a chorus of background voices that rises and recedes from view: food for five thousand, cries of Hosanna, gangs of debating Pharisees, Roman soldiers, lepers and beggars. The voice of the crowd is a vital part of the new testament. But what is it? What can we learn from listening to these cries from the street?
Unlike in Jesus Christ Superstar, in which a single chorus of actors plays all the crowd parts, the real story did not recycle the same few faces. The story of Jesus moves among different cities and ethic groups, encompassing different socio-economic classes, and certainly, different attitudes about the stranger from Nazareth.
The crowd in the Gospels goes by many names. Sometimes it is just called “the crowd.” At other times, “the people of the village” or “the Five Thousand” or “the Four Thousand.” Sometimes, an approaching assembly is referenced by an affiliation or ethnicity, such as “the Sadducees.” The author of the book of John confuses the situation still further by referring to the crowd in the background of the story as “the Jews” — often in a negative light, without an acknowledgment that the followers of Jesus, Jesus himself, and in fact, virtually everyone in the story (with the exception of Pontius Pilate and the wise men) falls under the classification of “Jews.”
These simple monikers and categories that survive the ages give only the faintest hint of the political, economic, an social upheavals that were unfolding at the time of the Gospels. In 6 AD, the Romans placed a remote outpost along the Jordan river under direct rule, creating the province of Judea. The Romans brought many changes, so far as their influenced reached–around the major cities like Jerusalem, introducing a cash economy, as symbolized by the moneychangers in the temple, and throwing their weight and muscle around just enough to maintain a baseline of intimidation, but they were a long, long way from home.
In those days, life was something that happened outside–on the streets, in the fields. Unless you were very wealthy, you wouldn’t have room to actually do much inside your house. People took their energy from gathering in public spaces. And if an itinerant preacher came through to speak and heal, you listened together. If you rose up to follow, you followed together. If you got angry, you got angry together.
But everyone knew what crowds were like–the force of a thousand wills, the sound of a thousand voices. The small Roman garrison certainly knew it. The chief priests knew it. You see, there is a difference between authority and control, and nothing reveals the limitations of what the powerful call their “authority” like a crowd summoned to a single purpose.
The really powerful men in the Gospels–and I’m not just talking about village elders, I’m talking about kings, and governors, and high priests; the one thing they are most scared of is the crowd. People don’t talk about it much, but I would say, it is actually a major theme of the narrative that the powerful live in fear. The crowd is a force of nature that is never subdued, only appeased and kept just a single spark away from conflagration.
Whenever we look into the minds of the so-called authorities in the Bible, we see fear–for life, for social position, for the trappings of elevated status. The crowd serves as a symbol–to them and to us–that the castle of their glory floats without a foundation.
King Herod, for instance, offers to give his wife Herodias anything she wants. The sky’s the limit. Just ask for it. Such is the power of a king. But when she asks for the head of John the Baptist, he doesn’t want to do it. Mark 6:26 tells us that he was “deeply grieved.” But he has to, or what would the people think? He doesn’t want to embarrass himself in front of his guests or let an aura of hesitation drift out beyond the palace walls.
Our eyes are drawn to the weird spectacle of John’s head on a platter, but perhaps the more arresting image is of a king setting out to demonstrate his omnipotence and ending up “deeply grieved,” being forced to show outward resolve to mask an inward fear of his own people.
Or the chief priests, those experts in triangulation. Throughout the story, their primary interest seems to be in invoking various strategies for wielding the crowd as a weapon against their enemies and keeping their heads low, so the weapon of the crowd will not boomerang back against their own interests. We are told, in fact, that at least the earthly reason why Jesus was crucified was because the chief priests were afraid of the crowd.
Luke 22 states “Now the festival of Unleavened Bread, which is called the Passover, was near. The chief priests and scribes were looking for a way to put Jesus to death, for they were afraid of the people.”
When Jesus cleared the moneychangers from the temple, the priests and scribes wanted to stop him, but they “did not find anything they could do, for all the people were spellbound by what they heard.” [Luke 19: 48]. And when they ask Jesus, “on what authority do you do these things?” he catches them tongue-tied by asking “Did the baptism of John come from Heaven, or was it of human origin?” And these are the chief priests–inside their own temple–and they decide they had better not say the baptism of John is of human origin because “…all the people will stone us, for they are convinced that John was a prophet.” [Luke 20: 6.]
When at last they succeed in apprehending him, by waiting until he is alone and away from the crowd, they hand him over to the Roman authorities, hoping to let someone else take the heat. And Pilate, what a basket case. He knows he has to do something to appear strong, but not too strong–not strong enough to actually raise any kind of serious response. In a spectacle of indecisiveness he maneuvers and hesitates, trying to get Herod to make the decision, and finally, he declares that the people should decided whom to release for the Passover festival, thus putting the question to the ultimate authority: the crowd itself.
But you see, Pilate had every reason to be afraid of the crowd–and so did the priests. And Herod, as the titular ruler of a client state, was nothing but an actor in a play, whose only role was to stare down the aspirations of his own citizens. How terrifying it must have been to actually face those citizens.
But not everyone in the story lives in fear. Throughout the Gospels, we see Jesus standing up to mobs, armies, and an endless assortment of pundits and power brokers who claim to represent the crowd’s interest. The crowds surrounding Jesus sometimes follow him, and sometimes they are angry. They chase him out of town and threaten to kill him. The last time I spoke to you, it was on his sermon in Nazareth [Luke 4:14-30], in which, according to one Gospel, the people of the town went into a rage and “led him to a brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff.” Can you imagine Caiaphas or Annas letting the situation get to that point? They would have thrown some kind of bone to the audience long before–calculated a response to redirect the aggression. Or outright denial.
But Jesus takes his message right into the crowd, and he doesn’t back down to anything or anyone. He walks right into the temple and throws out the people with money. He walks right into Jerusalem and proclaims a better kingdom–in the sight of the legions of the Roman empire. He walks into a circle of people holding rocks and says, “Let he without sin cast the first stone.”
And when they finally catch up with him, even when the multitude of his supporters has turned away, and he is a moment from death, he says to Pilate, as if to them all: the crowd of soldiers, the crowd of priests, the crowd of Pharisees, the crowd of Galileans, and even to us: “My kingdom is not of this world…you have no power over me unless it is given to you from above.” [John 19:11]
The Gospels reverberate with sounds of the streets–people rising up, banding together, rioting, taunting, judging, shouting. The crowd is a wild, eerie manifestation of the kingdom of Earth. You might think you can rule this kingdom, but it rules you. The powers you gather, the orders you give, only work within the boxes you build to maintain your illusion, and the smart ruler stays carefully within the walls of the box–even if it means that you yourself are the real prisoner.
But Jesus spoke of a different kingdom. Jesus came to lead this kingdom of Earth into the light. Sometimes the crowd follows, and sometimes it doesn’t, but he still keeps bringing the light. And his message to the people in all these crowds–and to us, in the crowd of the future: You can turn to the light, or you can turn away from the light, but you can’t turn off the light.
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