There is No Crowd
...a meditation on the passion
“Let him be crucified!”
The words rolled like thunder from the throats of two hundred parishioners this week, and I trembled at the sound. Each Palm Sunday the Gospel, rather than being read by the priest or deacon, becomes an interactive experience, in which the congregation is cast as “crowd” that nebulous designation in which we raise our voices and participate in the death of the Son of God.
As the passion narrative commences, the crowd calls for Barabbas to be freed, the crowd taunt a blindfolded Jesus as they strike Him, the crowd tells Him to save Himself, come down from the cross, and, of course, the crowd calls eagerly for the crucifixion.
The crowd demands blood, and it is blood they receive.
Standing amongst strangers, friends, and neighbors as we all call for the crucifixion of Our Lord and Savior is a powerful experience. It is easy to close your eyes and picture the Jerusalem dust swirling around our feet. To smell the angry bodies close about, to picture the lone man painted red with his own bodily fluid, dressed in the mockery of finery. It is easy to imagine being one among many, as a heavy cross is laid on his back, and carried out of the city. Like in Church, you would not always have had the best view of events. At times you would be stuck behind someone too tall, or someone too loud. Children would be crying, you would perhaps be distracted. Crowds are, after all, confusing things, in which it is often easy to feel alone though surrounded on all sides.
We are familiar with crowds. The way they move, they way they sound, and the way they feel.
Yet, in reality, there was no crowd. Jesus, at His passion, did not see a crowd. As the pharisees tried Him and found Him guilty, as the Roman soldiers dragged bits of metal through His back and liberated skin, muscle, and tendons from His body, as He stood before Pilate’s scorn (quid est veritas?), as He stood before the hatred of His people, as He was nailed to wood and raised up, there was no crowd.
What is a crowd? A crowd is a group of strangers. And for Jesus there are no strangers.
For Jesus, the passion is one of the most intimate events of His life. He deeply knew and deeply loved every member of that supposed crowd. He knew the names of all the women who were weeping over Him. He knew the deepest desires of every man who spit in His face. He knew the daydreams of the children who threw stones at Him. The crowd who demand His blood are His beloved ones.
Once you realize that there are no crowds in the Bible, the passion becomes that much more tragic, that much more beautiful. “God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8) Jesus died, not for the crowd, but for each individual who makes up the crowd.
In my own life, I try, at times to no longer see crowds. To enter a busy building and see the Body of Christ that, despite its diversity, is intimately a part of me. For I believe that this is also what Christ came to do. Our calls on Palm Sunday, the calls for His death, give us the very thing we cry for.
The crowd demands blood, and it is blood they receive, first on Calvary, and then in a sacramental re-presentation every day on the altar of the Mass.
The blood we receive in the Eucharist makes us members of the body of Christ. Jesus said in John 12, “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people[e] to myself.” His act of salvation is also an act of unification, ensuring that for us, there will also be no more crowds, only one bread, one body.
As Holy Week progresses, remember dear reader that there are no crowds. Only individuals who Jesus died for.
This is one of the messages I try to communicate to my young kids (while they're at the age to listen to Mom), that Jesus thought of /them/ while He died on the cross. Another mom got me started on a ritual at Mass: when the priest elevates Jesus, my husband and I whisper into their ears: that's Jesus and He loves you very much. I've been to Mass alone maybe 5 times since we started this ritual years ago and it still echoes in my ears when the priest elevates Him.
It’s easy to hide inside the word “crowd” and feel a bit removed from it, but what you wrote makes it feel much more personal and harder to distance yourself from. The way you described the Palm Sunday experience felt very real too, the distractions, the noise, not always seeing clearly. That detail about being stuck behind someone or hearing children crying actually made it easier to imagine being there. And then you flipped it, saying that even in all that confusion, every single person was still fully seen and known.