The crowds spread their garments and palm branches before him and cried ‘Hosanna!’ They welcomed their king…but they did not understand their king. The fact that, in keeping with prophecy (Zechariah 9:9), he came ‘humble and riding on a donkey’ should have been a clue. The king of the Jews, who was also the king of the world, should surely have made his ‘triumphal entry’ into Jerusalem riding on a magnificent charger, surrounded by great fanfare and a fawning entourage. But no. He came humbly and riding on a donkey. The crowds were right to praise him but he is going to be a different kind of king, and the crowds did not see this yet. Even his closest followers had not understood it.

The praises of the crowds are fitting because their king is surely coming to take up his throne. But I don’t trust crowds. I agree with Eugene Peterson who writes that ‘crowds lie.’ Crowds are not the best place for discerning truth or value:

“…a few moments of personal reflection will convince us that truth is not statistical and that crowds are more often foolish than wise. In crowds the truth is flattened to fit a slogan. Not only the truth that is spoken but the truth that is lived is reduced and distorted by the crowd. The crowd makes spectators of us, passive in the presence of excellence or beauty. The crowd makes consumers of us, inertly taking in whatever is pushed at us.”

(Run with the Horses, 1983)

I have often been struck by the sobering reality that surely at least a large number of those among the crowds who cried out ‘Hosanna’ on what we now celebrate as Palm Sunday, were among those who, just a few days later, would be in the crowd crying, ‘Crucify him! Crucify him!’ (Mark 15:12-14).

Crowds are fickle, crowds can turn quickly. Consider what happened to Paul on his missionary journeys with Barnabas. The same crowds that had wanted to worship then as gods were easily turned so that they next minute they are stoning Paul and leaving him for dead (Acts 14:8-20). Crowds are prey to propaganda, to rabble rousers and conspiracy theorists. Even ‘Christian’ crowds! And now we do not even need to be in the same physical space to be in a crowd. The internet is very crowded. Social media is, for the most part, a crowd. And you cannot trust a crowd.

Again and again we see the gospel writers distinguish between the crowds and the disciples, those who were intent on trying to follow Jesus and his ways, even if they did so very imperfectly. Often the crowds were just curious. Spectators and consumers. Jesus had compassion on the crowds, he taught the crowds, he fed the crowds, he went among the crowds to heal and to deliver. But he did not entrust himself to the crowds. He challenged the crowds as to their true motives in ‘following’ him (John 6:22-70). Although he always ministered out of love for the crowds, there were times when he had to get away from the crowds. He never let the crowds set the agenda. One of the first things that he does after his entry into Jerusalem was to clear the trading crowds from the temple. The crowds had corrupted the temple, turning it from a place of prayer to a place of exploitation. Crowds trample all over the sacred.

Not every crowd is always necessarily bad, of course. We cannot fully avoid crowds but we must ensure we are not conditioned by them. A crowd is not the same thing as a community. Any appeal to stand out from the crowd is not a call to self-focused individualism. We are designed to live in community. But to form true, robust communities of disciples we have to each refuse to be conditioned by crowds. And it is harder than we think. Even Peter, one of Jesus’s closest friends, is going to be intimidated by the crowds to deny his Lord.

But I am struck by a couple of individuals who stand out from the crowds as we consider holy week in the coming days. One is the woman with the jar of expensive perfume who ignored the scolding crowd at the table in order to make her extravagant expression of gratitude to Jesus. And, as he promised, her beautiful act of worship has been remembered since as the gospel has been preached across the centuries (Mark 14:1-9).

Later, from the crowds voices cried out ‘we have no king but Caesar’ (John 19:15) and yet, still later, a single Roman centurion at the foot of the cross declared ‘surely this man was the Son of God’ (Mark 15:39). This heartfelt declaration may have cost him dearly. Only Caesar was to be known as the ‘son of god’ but, at the place where his fellow soldiers had brutally mocked Jesus, this individual centurion makes his simple, sincere and insurrectionary confession.

On Palm Sunday, it is good to join with others in praising and honouring our king. But it is also a good time to ask whether we are just part of what we consider to be ‘the right crowd’. Or will we be followers in the way of Jesus? Will we follow Jesus in the way of his different kingdom, no matter what the cost. Even when it means going against the crowd, standing out from the crowd, even facing the fury of a crowd like the first martyr, Stephen (Acts 7).

Maybe it will not require us to make such a dramatic stand or pay so high a cost. But still we lose something of who we are created and called to be each time we allow ourselves to be conditioned by the crowds. Instead, we are to be formed by our quiet, hidden, simple, ordinary, everyday steps in the way of Jesus. Once again, Peterson says it so well:

“…every time that we retrieve a part of our life from the crowd and respond to God’s call to us, we are that much more ourselves, more human. Every time we reject the habits of the crowd and practice the disciplines of faith, we become a little more alive.”