"The Shouts of the Crowd"

     Dear Friends in Christ,  

     One thing that I think we could all agree on at the outset of this sermon is that crowds can be noisy.  Whether it’s more than a thousand teenagers screaming at the top of their lungs as happened last Sunday evening at the Silver Ring Thing  in the Salem High School gym or more than 74,000 football fans crammed into Sun Life Stadium in Miami, FL as happened a couple of months ago at this year’s Super Bowl game, when you get a bunch of people together like that cheering about the same thing, you can be sure there’s going to be a lot of noise.  I’ve often times wished we could get that kind of enthusiasm in our churches on Sun. morning, not necessarily the noise factor, but the excitement factor – people wanting to be here; people willing to offer big bucks to be here; people staying glued to their seats and getting even more excited when the service goes into overtime. 

   Well, this morning we want to examine one crowd of people that had perhaps the greatest impact that any crowd has ever had in the history of the world for the shouts of this mob brought about the crucifixion of the only perfect man to ever walk the face of this earth, the Son of God, Jesus Christ.  And as we study the mob mentality of that day, we will learn some valuable lessons for ourselves, including the fact that times have not changed, for we are still surrounded by the shouts of the crowd even today, a crowd not at all unlike the one in our text – people who would rather see Jesus dead than to see his influence felt in our society. 

   But first a little about the crowd that Jesus faced on that fateful day that we know as Good Friday.  It was Passover week.  During that week Jerusalem’s population of about 20,000 mushroomed to 10 times that many, to close to 200,000 for the week.  People camped in the streets, outside the city walls; anywhere they could find a spot.  During the week, the city was like a powder keg just waiting for the right match to set it off, which I’m sure is one reason why Matthew tells us in his Gospel that the Jewish leaders were plotting to kill Jesus in “some sly way.”  Then they added, “But not during the Feast or there may be a riot among the people.”  So you get the picture?  The whole situation in Jerusalem was already very volatile, very explosive.  But the Jewish leaders added fuel to the fire and ignited the match when Pontius Pilate brought Jesus before the multitude and they used their power and influence to persuade the crowd to demand his crucifixion.

   So let’s spend some time now examining the shouts of the crowd.  And the first point that I want to make is that the shouts of the crowd can be fickle.  We see that all the time in the world of sports, don’t we?  I remember when Kurt Warner was playing for the Rams and he led them to a Super Bowl victory, he was cheered and idolized by so many.  But then when he started having a pretty tough time in his career, the crowd turned on him and even began to boo him.  Some even demanded that he be traded, which is what happened.  And when he went to the Arizona Cardinals his career took off again and he became one of the premier quarterbacks in the NFL.  Then when he came back to St. Louis, many of those same fans who had once booed him cheered again, even though he was playing for another team.  So there’s no doubt about it; crowds can be fickle.  We even have a name for them.  We call them fair weather fans.

   Well, if Kurt Warner felt bad after the fans booed him, I hope he talked to Jesus about it because Jesus could relate.  Going back to that first Palm Sunday, he comes riding into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey.  People line the streets of the city.  They wave palm branches in the air and spread their cloaks in the road for him to ride on, which would be the equivalent of us rolling out the red carpet for some famous dignitary.  And they cheer.  Oh, how they cheer!  “Hosanna to the Son of David!  Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!  Hosanna in the highest!”  In essence they were proclaiming Jesus to be their hero, their champion, their Messiah, their king.

   But fast forward 5 days and some of those very same people were now calling for the crucifixion of Jesus.  They were fair weather fans of Christ.  When he didn’t do what they thought he was going to do, what they were hoping he would do, what they were expecting him to do, namely, lead the Jews in rebellion and victory over Rome, their cheers turned to boos and they revealed how fickle the human heart can really be.

   But not only can the shouts of the crowd be fickle, they can also be persuasive.  We see this especially with Pilate.  He was the one who held all the trump cards in his hand that day.  He was the one that possessed all the power of Rome.  And when you read the Gospel accounts, you cannot deny the fact that Pilate believed with all of his heart that Jesus was innocent, that he was not deserving of any kind of punishment, especially the death penalty.  Luke 23:4 says: Then Pilate announced to the chief priests and the crowd, "I find no basis for a charge against this man."  Later on, as the crowd became more adamant in their demands that Jesus be crucified, Pilate said, "Why? What crime has this man committed? I have found in him no grounds for the death penalty.”  And at that point Pilate should have called an end to the proceedings and sent everyone home.  But he didn’t.  Luke writes: “But with loud shouts they insistently demanded that he be crucified, and their shouts prevailed. So Pilate decided to grant their demand.”   

   Oh, how persuasive the shouts of the crowd can be.  Have you ever had to deal with them?  “What do you mean you go to church every Sunday?  Isn’t that a little old-fashioned, a little antiquated for our modern times?”  “You’re kidding!  You’re still a virgin?  Do you have any idea what you’ve been missing?”  “Come on, one joint won’t hurt you.  You’ll be amazed at how good it will make you feel.”  I think we’ve all felt the pressure of the shouting mob, haven’t we?

   And you know what’s the best way to handle that pressure?  Two things: first, be firmly grounded in your faith.  Because the more grounded you are in your faith, the more you’re going to love your Savior.  And the more you love your Savior, the more you’re going to love what he loves and hate what he hates and want to avoid what he wants you to avoid.

   Then secondly, decide beforehand what you will do in certain situations so that if or when they arise you’re not caught off guard.  I learned this lesson well during my 2^nd year of college when I received word that my high school graduating class was going to have a 2-year reunion.  I thought it would be great to go back and see some of my buddies again whom I hadn’t seen for a while.  But when I went, I found out that it was nothing but a good excuse to have a big party.  And the ones I called my best friends in high school told me earlier that day that there would be a lot of marijuana available that night and they would be smoking it.  Well, I had already made the decision long before that that I would never partake of any illegal drugs so it wasn’t difficult for me to say no when I was offered it several times that night.  So be firmly grounded in your faith and decide beforehand, and you’ll be much more prepared and much more able to handle the pressure and persuasiveness of the crowd.

   Then the 3^rd thing we want to note about the shouts of the crowd is that they can also be perilous.  Our text for this morning ends with Pilate washing his hands and proclaiming that he is innocent of this man’s blood.  To which the shouting crowd responds, "Let his blood be on us and on our children!"  That was a perilous proclamation to make because in essence what they were doing was pronouncing a curse on themselves.  They were inviting God to punish them if they were wrong about Jesus.  And God, who has a very good memory, did just that in the year 70 AD when the Roman soldiers surrounded the city of Jerusalem and laid siege to it.  That means they surrounded it and prevented anything from getting into the city, like food, and anyone from getting out of it.  Things got so bad inside of Jerusalem that a secular historian by the name of Josephus tells us that women even cooked and ate their own children to keep from starving to death.  But that still wasn’t enough to keep them alive.  For eventually the Romans charged the city and completely leveled and destroyed it, including those inside of it, thus bringing to fulfillment the curse they had pronounced upon themselves some 40 years earlier.

   Sometime ago I came across a story I’ve never forgotten that really illustrates how perilous the shouts of the crowd can be.  It was about a high school football player named Mike.  Mike was a good kid.  He stayed out of trouble and pretty well kept to himself.  But one night he was invited to a party where the beer was flowing freely.  He’d never drunk beer before, but when he was offered it and his fellow classmates and teammates urged him to try some, he gave in to the pressure of the moment.  He drank one; then another, and another, and another.  His new friends kept urging him on: “Go, Mike, go!”  Mike quickly discovered that not only was the alcohol intoxicating, so also were the shouts of the crowd.  He’d never been the center of attention like this and it felt good.  Finally the party ended and a very drunk Mike got in his car to leave.  Those who had egged him on all night left shortly after he did and soon caught up with him because you see, in his drunken state, Mike had crossed the center line and hit a car with 4 adults in it, killing every one of them.  Mike, however, did not die, but he was trapped in his car.  And when his buddies arrived on the scene, they got there just in time to see that car burst into flames and to hear Mike’s final screams as he burned to death.

   Make no mistake about it.  The shouts of the crowd can be perilous.  And then one more thing, they can also be wrong.  The crowd was wrong about Jesus.  Peter made sure the people understood that in his famous sermon that he preached on Pentecost.  He said, "Men of Israel, listen to this: Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders and signs, which God did among you through him, as you yourselves know. This man was handed over to you by God's set purpose and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross.”   

   Nobody knew better how wrong the crowd was that day than Pontius Pilate.  There’s an old legend that somewhere in the Alps between Italy and Switzerland, there’s a pool.  It’s ringed by mountain peaks and inaccessible except by a narrow footpath.  The few who have stumbled across it over the centuries say there’s a man there, dressed in the toga of imperial Rome.  He kneels beside the water, repeatedly dipping his hands into the icy liquid bubbling up from underground springs.  “I am innocent,” he mumbles over and over again, “I am innocent of the blood of this just man.”

   Now again, let me emphasize that is a legend.  But it reminds us of what Pilate attempted to do to purge himself of the guilt he experienced over sentencing an innocent man to death.  He tried to remove that guilt himself, but to no avail.  There was a better way however.  It’s the way we need to follow for the times when we have listened to the shouts of the crowd.  And that is to take all that guilt, all that shame, and lay it down at the foot of the cross.  For it is there and only there that the greatest cleansing agent of all time can do its work.  And that is the blood of Jesus which, according to John’s 1^st epistle, can cleanse us not just of some sin or most sin, but of all sin.  That’s why Jesus came.  That’s what this season of the year that we call Lent is all about.  That’s what this week of the year that we call Holy Week is all about.  And while Lent is traditionally a solemn and sober time of the year for us Christians, it’s also a time to celebrate.  It’s a time to shout.  It’s a time to join our voices together with those of our fellow believers so that the shouts of praise that we offer to our Savior for all that he did for us and all that he went through for us might prevail over the shouts of all those in our world today who would dare to oppose him.  

      Amen.