The Crowd

Today, I led a Bible study on Mark 15:1-15. The passage tells of Jesus going before Pilate, having been condemned by the chief priests in a secret meeting the night before, and now put before Pilate as an enemy of the state, a treasonous threat to Caesar's authority.

The passage deals with Pilate's reluctance to convict Jesus, and with his attempts to allow Jesus to go free. He appeals to the crowd, having the usual custom of releasing a prisoner in honor of the Passover feast, encouraging them to let him release Jesus to them. The crowd resists, instead asking for Barabbas, the murderer who had just been involved in an insurrection against Rome.

This whole scene made me think of a number of things (the amazement that Pilate has toward Jesus' demeanor, the envy that the chief priest show toward Jesus), but the one that stuck out the most was the crowd's flip flop. Just a few days earlier, they were praising Jesus, and honoring his triumphal entry into Jerusalem, placing their outer garments on the road his donkey was walking on, so that even the donkey would not be made dirty. Yet only a few days later, they are calling for his death.

We often shake our heads at the crowd there, lamenting their fickle hearts, seeing them as mindless ogres of history, that killed Christ. In reality, though, I don't think they are all that different than us.

Jesus was a hot religious figure. He blazed onto the scene and attracted big number quickly. People wanted to be part of this movement. They were attracted to the bigness of it, if not the truth of it. However, when Jesus is presented before them by Pilate, this is not the same conquering hero that they had welcomed into Jerusalem a few days earlier. This man was instead a man who was dirty and ragged. He had been up all night being cursed and beaten. He was bound like a criminal, and was now on a public trial before them all, again, not as a hero, but as a criminal. In this context, it becomes a bit easier to see the crowd's anger. They feel like they have been fooled by this guy. He came in and preached all of these glorious things, but here he was not presented as a criminal.

Think of how much we revel in the times that our celebrities fall. When you see a mugshot of someone, we see them as broken liars who deserve punishment, not as the heroes that we had once hailed them as. Even more so when that figure is a religious leader. We as a culture seem to love to see religious leaders fall. Many times, even the accusation of wrong doing is enough for us to condemn them.

Why is that?

I wish it was harder to relate to this crowd than it actually is. I wish that crowds weren't so easy to follow, even when we know that they are wrong...