Dr. William A. Ritter
First United Methodist Church
Birmingham, Michigan
Scripture: Luke 19:28-44
Palm Sunday - April 4, 2004
While I remain a great fan of athletics, it has been years since I looked up to athletes….at least in the sense of idolizing them, worshiping them, or falling for the fallacy that they can do no wrong. Still, when the athletes are basketball players, I have little choice but to look up to them, given that their heads are so much higher off the ground than mine. The one (and only) time I was granted access to the Pistons’ locker room, my single-most overwhelming impression was how big these guys are.
Which permits an awkward segue to the plight of Chris Webber. I first saw Chris as a high schooler at Country Day. My local high school team, the Harrison Hawks, had somehow made it to the district finals, which meant a game against Country Day on the home court of Country Day. It wasn’t much of a game. Chris Webber stole their lunch….ate their lunch….handed them their lunch (use whatever idiom you like). This was accomplished in front of my I-can’t-bear-to-watch-this eyes….along with the wouldn’t-it-be-wonderful-if-we-could-bring-him-to-our-campus eyes of the head coaches from both Michigan and Michigan State.
But you know the rest of the story as well as I do. Chris Webber went to Michigan, joined the Fab Five, made it to the Final Four, borrowed (I use the word liberally) occasional lunch money from a numbers runner in the auto industry, left Michigan, turned pro, achieved stardom, and is now trying to bring an NBA title to an unlikely California city called Sacramento. But in his wake gamblers have been indicted, coaches have been fired, titles have been surrendered, banners have been lowered, witnesses have been subpoenaed, sanctions have been levied, and reputations have been tarnished. While Chris plays on.
Although not this year. A combination of troubles with the law, troubles with the league, and troubles with his leg have kept Chris on the pines (as they say in basketball lingo) until recently, while his coaches couldn’t wait to play him and his fans couldn’t wait to embrace him. That is until they booed him….uncharacteristically and, at times, unmercifully….because after fifty or sixty games spent in street clothes, Chris had the unmitigated gall to return to the floor rusty.
Oh, he’s playing all right. He’s scoring all right. He’s rebounding all right. But he’s not meeting expectations. Never mind whether the expectations are reasonable or realistic. He’s not satisfying them. And while I don’t feel the least bit sorry for him (given that I still haven’t forgiven him for handing the Harrison Hawks their lunch), I do understand how abruptly the cheering sometimes stops, and how the people who were once turned on by you can suddenly turn on you. I’ve had ministers tell me that for the first three or four years in a church, they couldn’t do anything wrong. Then, overnight, everything they did was wrong.
Often it’s a matter of not fulfilling expectations. Talking with an esteemed and respected colleague about how things were going (or not going) in her church, she said: “It’s okay, I guess. But the only pastor who will ever be beloved here will be the pastor who can make it be 1955 all over again.” Which is going to be hard to do. We can tinker with the clock by an hour or so. But I have yet to meet anybody who could tinker with the calendar by fifty years or so.
Anybody who teaches preaching knows that there are really only three Palm Sunday themes. One involves what I call “dueling kings and kingdoms.” The people want a king of clubs. Jesus wants to be the king of hearts. That’ll preach. And has. Multiple times.
A second Palm Sunday theme is that of “the resolute Jesus”….the one who set his face steadfast toward Jerusalem. “I know it’s not safe there….none of you think I should go there….no one in his right mind would head there….but God has work for me to do there….which explains my decision to proceed there.” That’ll preach. And has. Multiple times.
The third Palm Sunday theme is “the fickle crowd” theme. First they love him. Then they hate him. Eventually they turn on him….deny him….forsake him….and kill him. That’ll preach. And has. Multiple times.
This morning I find myself once again interested in the crowd. In part, because of Mel Gibson’s film. In part, because of a pair of verses in Luke’s account of Holy Week that I never really saw before. And in part because of an excellent essay by John Dominic Crossan that has helped me rethink the old debate about how many were for him and how many were against him.
While I have chosen to save most of my remarks about Mel Gibson’s film for Tuesday night’s discussion, it is clear that every director who films the events of Good Friday morning (especially the crowd scene in front of Pontius Pilate) has to make a decision: “How many extras do I hire?” I have often heard it said that while “two’s company, three’s a crowd.” But Gibson clearly said to himself: “Why stop at three when you can have three hundred? And why stop at three hundred when you can have three thousand?” Now I don’t know how many extras he actually employed, but the square was full of them and, more importantly, the screen was full of them. Full of who? Full of people demanding the crucifixion of Jesus. And if Jesus had any friends on that Friday, Gibson would have us believe they were few in number and (with scant exceptions) female in gender.
Against which one reads these lines from Luke concerning the daily activities of Jesus between Palm Sunday and Maundy Thursday….in other words, the very days when tensions were building and loyalties were eroding. Luke writes:
And he was teaching daily in the temple. The chief priests and the scribes and the principle men of the people sought to destroy him. But they did not find anything they could do, for all the people were spellbound by his words.
Now I ask you, doesn’t that make you wonder….at least a little….about the alleged abdication of Jesus’ Palm Sunday congregation?
Enter John Crossan. John tells us that unlike Gibson, who relied almost completely on Matthew and John, we would be better served to start with the gospel of Mark. Why? Because although Mark’s gospel appears second in the printing, it was first in the writing. Mark was written about 70 AD and was, almost certainly, the primary source for Matthew and Luke which came later. Mark may have also been a secondary source for the gospel of John, which came much later.
Does that mean that Mark is less likely to have a personal slant or bias? No, none of the writers is free of a personal slant or bias. But does it mean that Mark, being first, may have had fewer years and fewer reasons to “flavor” the story than the others? Quite possibly. At least it’s worth a look. So let’s follow Mark’s chronology.
On Sunday (Palm Sunday), “many people” (Greek word polloi) spread their cloaks on the road while others spread leafy branches they had cut from the fields (Mark 11:8-10).
On Monday, the chief priests and the scribes kept looking for a way to kill him, for they were afraid of him. Why? Because the “whole crowd” (Greek words pas ho ochlos) was spellbound by his teachings (Mark 11:18).
On Tuesday, after Jesus praised John the Baptist, the authorities were afraid of the “crowd” (Greek work ochlon) for they knew that the crowd regarded John as a true prophet (Mark 11:32).
Later that day they wanted to arrest him, but they feared the “crowd” (Greek word ochlon), so they left him and went away for a while (Mark 12:12). Still later that day, the “large crowd” (Greek words polus ochlos) was listening to Jesus with delight (Mark 12:37).
On Wednesday, the chief priests and the scribes were looking for a way to arrest Jesus by stealth, rather than seizing him openly. For they feared “a riot among the people” (Greek words tou laou). Which explains why Judas is hired and a secretive nighttime move is orchestrated (Mark 14:2).
Clearly, in Mark, the Jewish “crowd” in Jerusalem (at least from Sunday through Wednesday) is both directly supportive and indirectly protective of Jesus, while the portion of the Jewish crowd seeking to do him in (in spite of whatever administrative positions they may have held in and around Jerusalem.…including the temple) was much, much smaller. Else why in their efforts to undermine, sabotage and even kill Jesus would they have passed up so many opportunities to do so, unless his crowd (Jesus’ crowd) was larger than their crowd?
I could go on with a careful line-by-line analysis of Mark’s account of Holy Week, but I’m going to stop and ask you to trust me as I make one carefully considered point. In Mark, there is not one crowd, but two. The crowd with Jesus was large and loyal, hanging in there most of the way. While the crowd against Jesus was much smaller but, unfortunately, well positioned. They had a lot to lose. And they had Pilate’s ear.
Moreover, Passover in Jerusalem was a tense time. In 4 BC there was a Passover riot in which three thousand Jews were killed. And in 50 AD there was another Passover riot in which thirty thousand were killed. Things were so tense during Jesus’ Passover week….Holy Week….that Mark says it took courage for Joseph of Arimathea to even request the dead body of Jesus for purposes of burial. And I ask you, isn’t it unusual to associate great fear with the mechanics of burying the dead?
Perhaps you are ready to give consideration to Crossan’s conclusion. “When I put together the dangerous context of Passover, the volatile temper of Pilate and the pro-Jesus sentiments of the large crowds in Mark 11-14, my best historical reconstruction of the anti-Jesus crowd calling for crucifixion (Mark 15:6-9) is fewer than a dozen people. But it is absolutely clear that as later gospels copied their Markan source, they greatly expanded the size of that original, anti-Jesus crowd.” In fact, by the time we get to the gospel of John (somewhere around 100 AD), the crowd against Jesus is said to include “all the Jews.”
So let’s you and I make a little agreement today. Let’s lighten up on the Palm Sunday crowd, effectively removing the words “fickle” and “fair-weather” from a description of their personalities, and the words “turncoat” and “Christ-killer” from a description of their actions. For it is questionable….even to the point of being unlikely….that the same crowd shouting “Hosanna” on Sunday returned to shout “Crucify him” on Friday. Many of them….probably a majority of them….still loved him. But by Friday, the Jesus majority had become a silent majority. Fear will do that to you, don’t you know.…shut you right up. And there was plenty of reason to be afraid.
So let’s give the Palm Sunday revelers their due. They praised him more freely than most of us can. They loved him more passionately than most of us do. They followed him further than most of us go. And they hung in there longer than most of us would.
My request is simple. All I am asking you to do is climb off the backs of the Palm Sunday crowd, the better to climb on the bandwagon with the Palm Sunday crowd. In the hopes that you will go them one better.
I have always been moved by the story of a little boy around the turn of the century who lived out in the country. He had reached the age of twelve and had never in all his life seen a circus. Therefore, you can imagine his excitement one day when a poster went up at school that on the next Saturday a traveling circus was coming to the nearby town. He ran home with the glad news, and then came the question, “Daddy, can I go?” The family was poor, but the father sensed how important this was to the lad, so he said, “If you will do your Saturday chores ahead of time, I’ll see to it that you have the money.”
Come Saturday morning, the chores were done and the little boy stood dressed in his Sunday best by the breakfast table. His father reached down in his overalls and pulled out a dollar bill—the most money the little boy had ever had at one time in his life. The father cautioned him to be careful and then sent him on his way to town. He was so excited his feet hardly touched the ground all the way. As he reached the outskirts of the village, he noticed that people were lining the streets and he worked his way through the crowd until he could see what was coming. And there, lo and behold, in the distance approached the spectacle of a circus parade! It was the grandest thing he had ever seen. There were animals in cages, bands in uniforms, along with midgets and all that goes to make up such a phenomenon. Finally after everything had passed, the traditional circus clown, with floppy shoes, baggy pants and a brightly painted face, came bringing up the rear. As the clown passed where he was standing, the little boy reached into his pocket and got out that precious dollar bill. Handing the money to the clown, the boy then turned around and went home.
What had happened? The boy thought he had seen the circus, when all he had seen was the parade.
Maybe I like that story because I wasn’t much more than twelve when I said:
· Yes to Jesus.
· Yes to the journey.
· Yes to its occasional agony.
· Yes to its more-than-occasional ecstasy.
· Yes to a few nights in my life that felt like Calvary.
· Yes to several Sunday mornings that felt like victory.
· Yes to a quartet of churches that, for the last 39 years, have felt like company.
Like that kid, I didn’t have much more than a buck in my pocket and a suit on my back when I started. But I’ve seen the big show. And I’ve lived the big show. Because for sheer life-grabbing drama, the greatest story ever told is the only life I’ve ever lived. Waste no pity on me.
But how about you? There’s a parade a-comin’. Are you going to watch it? Or will you dare to join it? Oh, you can pay your money to some clown on the sidewalk. Truth be told, some of you already have. Or you can lay everything on the line for the real thing.
I’m talking about Jesus Christ. Don’t sell him short. And, for God’s sake, don’t quit too soon.
Note: I’m indebted to John Dominic Crossan’s essay in a recent issue of The Christian Century for the careful analysis of the “crowd” in the gospel of Mark. I am also grateful to John Claypool for passing along the story about the boy and the circus parade. While it probably wasn’t original with John, he retold it well. Finally, the references to Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ anticipated a panel discussion of the film which, when held, drew over 150 interested persons.
