(Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “When Mobs Rule”, originally shared on March 20, 2024. It was the 303rd video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)
Jesus entered Jerusalem
with crowds shouting “Hosanna!” A few days later crowds were shouting “Crucify
him!” What happened? And what does it mean for us? Today, we’re going to find
out.
The Rancho Cucamonga “Quakes”, a LA Dodgers farm team near us, recently
changed its name temporarily to the “Jackets”. Management wanted to find a fun
way to connect with its Spanish-speaking fans for a few games. It was a
reference to the jackets worn by Mariachi bands, but they later, unfortunately,
discovered that it is also a sexual slang term. They had already promoted it
and supported the name with merchandising though, so they decided not to change
it.
I understood that.
When I came back to
my hometown, Manitowoc, Wisconsin, after my first year of college, I realized
that there wasn’t much for college-age youth to do other than to work in our
summer jobs, go to one of the three movie theaters in town, or to hang out at
the beer bars.
I gathered a bunch of friends (and friends of
friends) to open a coffee house.
A board member of
the YMCA in town loaned us a building that had been a drug store. We swept it
out and found $1.65 in the floorboards, and that was our starting budget.
We got cable spools
from the power company to use as tables. We furnished it with donated chairs,
cups, an old Mirro Aluminum (a local company) coffee making urn, a stage, and a
cobbled-together sound system of donated or loaned parts. We painted the
interior in a way that college kids in the late ‘60’s liked.
But we needed a
name. Someone on our board suggested “Laputa”, the name of the island in the
sky in Gulliver’s Travels, and that was it.
Oddly, we thought,
Spanish speaking seasonal workers would walk in occasionally, laugh, and walk
out. We later found out that Laputa, separated into “la” and “puta” meant “the
whore”. Something none of us or, apparently, Jonathan Swift, had picked up in
Spanish classes.
We decided to keep
the name, though, since we already had become known by it, and to promote it in
its original context.
Why?
Why do we continue
behavior even when we know that it’s problematic?
One reason is that we’ve become invested. We
have something to lose.
Plus, everyone
passes the tests they write for themselves.
As Proverbs 21:2
reminds us,
All deeds
are right in the sight of the doer,
but the LORD weighs
the heart.
But, when groups
of people do this, when they overcome conscience and civility and character,
they can easily become a mob.
This coming Sunday
churches around the world will celebrate Palm Sunday, the day Jesus entered
Jerusalem as a hero. All four of the gospels describe the event.
It begins the last
week of Jesus life as a fully human being who was also fully God. The Gospels
of Matthew, Mark, and Luke average spending about 30% of their gospels describing
the last week of Jesus’ life. John spends 43% of his gospel on the last week of
Jesus’ life!
It’s the week that
includes Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday, which
lead up to the Sunday of the Resurrection, all pivotal events in human history.
It’s called Holy Week.
Oddly, the Gospel
reading in the Revised Common Lectionary for this coming Sunday will not
include Palm Sunday. It will be the story of Jesus’ betrayal, judgement, and
death (the Passion) in Mark 14:1 - 15:47 or the shorter Mark 15:1-39,
with 40—47 as an option.
The Palm Sunday text
from Mark will not be heard on Palm Sunday (now called Passion/Palm
Sunday). That’s right, you read that correctly. 😊
I guess it’s in
response to the fear that most people won’t be at Maundy Thursday, Good Friday,
or the night-before-Easter Easter Vigil services, so we need to put all those
things into the Gospel reading for the Sunday before.
Or maybe they will
hear the Palm Sunday text in Mark 11:1-10 read as part of an add-on in
the congregational procession into the church before the service starts.
It will describe
what is sometimes referred to as “The Triumphal Entry”.
Jesus enters
Jerusalem hailed as a hero, the crowds shouting “Hosanna!”, an expression of
adoration or joy that means something like “Pray, save us! “.
The events of Palm
Sunday fulfill scripture, but they also foreshadow a dramatic turn.
Jerusalem had a
significant population for the times in those days, about 25,000 people
normally and around 125,000 or much more during festivals, such as the Passover
that was happening at the same as what we call Palm Sunday. So, it is
reasonable to think that, five days later, some of the same people were
shouting “Crucify him!” as we’ll see in the Passion Sunday text.
What made the
difference between being a hero and a zero? One letter, of course. 😊 But, though no one took Jesus life, he gave it
willingly and then took it back again (John 10:18), the placement of
that letter to describe what happened to Jesus came as the result of a very
small group of people: the Jewish leaders.
The best of the best
incited a mob.
How could that
happen?
I often think of a
philosophy course I took in college where the professor observed that most of
the world’s evil, and probably all of its worst evil, has been done by people
who in their heart of hearts sincerely believed that they were doing good.
Perhaps the
religious leaders engaged in their behavior knowing, at some level, that it was
problematic.
They were invested
in what they believed God had done among God’s people. They required it to
maintain their position. There had been false-Messiah’s before. It’s not too
hard to believe that they thought they were doing God’s will. Except that they
were in the presence of God, Jesus, and didn’t recognize Him.
Given all of that,
and more, I don’t think that it was very difficult for them to turn a crowd
into a mob.
People make up
crowds, and people want to feel important. They are easily filled with
righteous rage.
They will feel what
they are told to feel by someone they see as one in authority, even if that
authority is self-proclaimed and merely loud. Mark Twain once said, “All you
need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure.”
They will believe
what they are told to believe by someone who makes them feel right and personally
important, that they alone have secret knowledge hidden from others, that describes
what it really happening in a world that is increasingly diverse, changing, and
complex to them.
They will do what
they are told to do, or even just what they think that someone in authority wants
them to do. They want to please those who say, “it’s us against them”. They
want to feel that they belong to a group, even if that group is a gang.
The religious
leaders had some concerns about Jesus. I’m guessing that their own insecurities
stoked an outsized response.
And the crowds were
easily provoked. For many it was just the right thing to do, and they fed on
each other. Mobs operate on group think. That’s why people who have been caught
in a mob describe it as being so scary. At some point things turn and no one is
in control, not even those who put it into motion. That’s what’s meant by the
expression “mob rule”.
Author and Methodist
pastor Tex Sample, who wrote several books like, Hard Living People &
Mainstream Christians, observed that some people, especially “hard living
people” will say things like “I don’t take no _ _ _ _ _ from anybody” as self-talk,
while the reality is that they have to take it from everybody, their bosses,
the police, their family, government officials, debt collectors, everybody.
Some people will
continue with beliefs and behaviors that are increasingly problematic just
because the ideas have become their identity. They have become rooted in them,
and in their communities, and it is just easier to go along to get along. Some
will even abandon the reality of their faith in order to seek the false
promises of a counterfeit community.
I am sometimes
discouraged by how quickly some Christians will abandon the very thing that
brings genuine hope and comfort to their lives in order to appease their
“friends” and their position in and with the world, those outside the faith,
that God so loved.
There is a presence
in the universe that is real: God. God is both independent of human
experience and revealed to us personally.
As sci-fi author Philip
K. Dick wrote, “Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't
go away.”
That reality has remade
us, our whole selves, into a new creation so that we can say with Martin
Luther, “My conscience is captive to the Word of God!” Word, with a capital “W”.
Jesus.
How do people go so
far afield? We are broken. We bite the hand that saves us. That is human nature.
How does Jesus respond?
He suffers his trial and physical torture almost without a word.
And when he is dying
on the cross his response is, in Luke 23:34,
Then Jesus said, “Father, forgive them; for they do not know
what they are doing.”
Jesus is not
vindictive. He does not seek revenge. He seeks only forgiveness, which is the
good news of the cross.
We live on
the other side of the cross in time so that, when the mobs seem to rule, we
have an answer: Jesus.
We say, as in Mark
11:9b-10,
9b “Hosanna!
Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!
10 Blessed
is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David!
Hosanna in the highest heaven!”
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