(Photo by davide ragusa on Unsplash)
This past Sunday, countless churches around the world celebrated Palm Sunday by placing palms in the aisles of their church. In the more extravagant churches, they may have even had a simulacrum of Jesus riding a live donkey.
(No fake beards please.)
And why not? Palm Sunday is one of the more extravagant scenes out of the Bible that has already happened (i.e. not prophesied), so why not dramatize it a little bit? And if you think I’m joking about the live donkeys, I can assure you I’m not. I know for a fact that some churches do this.
However, we have to stop and consider something when we talk about Palm Sunday, and that’s the fact that you don’t actually want to be like the people who were bowing with palms on Palm Sunday.
Let me ask you this. Have you ever heard the phrase “following the crowd” used in a positive context? Most likely not. Nobody ever really wants to be accused of just “following the crowd.”
Is that because crowds are inherently bad? Not really. You can be in a crowd at a football game or a concert. You’re not doing anything bad there, necessarily. You can even be in a crowd at church.
Shoot. Look at the crowd on Palm Sunday. They were a crowd that was honoring Jesus! Am I about to tell you that honoring Jesus is a bad thing?
…
No. Of course not. Honoring Jesus is a great thing to do. And just a couple weeks ago I wrote a piece talking about what the people in the crowd were saying on Palm Sunday. They were shouting praises at Jesus and ready to claim Him as their King and Messiah! That’s not a bad thing!
But evil intent isn’t the main reason that “following the crowd” is a bad thing to be known for. Have you ever heard the phrase “mob mentality?” That’s when people in a crowd get riled up and start doing things just because everyone else is doing it.
I remember seeing a video a while back that illustrated this concept really well. There were a bunch of people in a doctor’s office waiting room who would stand up whenever a beep went off. Most of them were actors, but one woman was not in on the experiment. After a few minutes, she started standing up to join the rest of the crowd.
“I’m just happy to be included.” (Photo by Jakub Kapusnak on Unsplash)
As the actors were filtered out over time, she became the only one left in the room who hadn’t been initially instructed in what to do. Then, when new people would come in who also weren’t in on the gag, they would watch her standing up every few minutes with the sound of the beep and then they would join in for the same reason that she had initially started standing up.
This is the danger of following the crowd. You start to do things without any idea why you’re doing them and you just follow along. Nobody wants to be the dead fish floating upstream when they’re on their own, but then we get into a crowd and we just do it.
The crowd that surrounded Jesus on Palm Sunday didn’t really know what they were doing. They just started doing stuff without fully understanding why.
But despite all the miraculous signs Jesus had done, most of the people still did not believe in him.
John 12:37 (NLT)
Yes, they were shouting praises up at Jesus. They were quoting Scripture that directly related to Him, as I pointed out a couple weeks ago, but they didn’t truly believe in Him. See, they wanted Jesus to be their political savior. They wanted Him to march on the Temple and claim an end to Roman rule.
Instead, Jesus stood up and started talking about dying and abandoning yourself and what you want.
Jesus replied, “Now the time has come for the Son of Man to enter into his glory. I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat is planted in the soil and dies, it remains alone. But its death will produce many new kernels—a plentiful harvest of new lives. Those who love their life in this world will lose it. Those who care nothing for their life in this world will keep it for eternity. Anyone who wants to serve me must follow me, because my servants must be where I am. And the Father will honor anyone who serves me.
“Now my soul is deeply troubled. Should I pray, ‘Father, save me from this hour’? But this is the very reason I came! Father, bring glory to your name.”
Then a voice spoke from heaven, saying, “I have already brought glory to my name, and I will do so again.” When the crowd heard the voice, some thought it was thunder, while others declared an angel had spoken to him.
John 12:23-29 (NLT)
This was not a very crowd-friendly message, was it? I imagine that most people, if they were given the attention of all of Jerusalem, would stand up and say something happy and pleasant. Something that would curry the favor of the crowd.
Instead, Jesus starts saying things that might intentionally push the crowd away because they weren’t ready to follow the real Jesus.
I also find it quite interesting that this passage features the literal voice of God calling down from Heaven and speaking to the crowd. And did they hear it? No.
Most of us have probably said something to the effect of, “If the voice of God called down and told me to do something, I’d do it no doubt!” Usually we say that as a way of putting off something we don’t actually want to do, don’t we? I know I’ve said it. Most of us have.
The fact is, these people heard the voice of God and said, “Hey, was that thunder?” Some of them got a little closer and thought they heard an angel. But still, none of them heard the voice of God. None of them obeyed the voice of God.
Dead Poet’s Society - Property of Touchstone Pictures (1989)
There are precious few times in the Bible where God’s literal, audible voice is said to have called down from the sky, and there are even fewer in the New Testament. That tells me that this scene, and the crowd’s total non-reaction to it, is quite important.
The odds are pretty slim that God is going to pick up the phone and call you collect with some new instructions. If He does, maybe don’t accept those charges. The odds are also pretty slim that God will call down from on-high with some new word for you.
He did, however, give us pretty clear instructions in His Word as to how we should live and, most importantly, who we should follow.
Jesus shouted to the crowds, “If you trust me, you are trusting not only me, but also God who sent me. For when you see me, you are seeing the one who sent me. I have come as a light to shine in this dark world, so that all who put their trust in me will no longer remain in the dark. I will not judge those who hear me but don’t obey me, for I have come to save the world and not to judge it. But all who reject me and my message will be judged on the day of judgment by the truth I have spoken. I don’t speak on my own authority. The Father who sent me has commanded me what to say and how to say it. And I know his commands lead to eternal life; so I say whatever the Father tells me to say.”
John 12:44-50 (NLT)
When Truett Cathy died, there was a mild sadness across the state of Georgia. After all, the man did bless us with the greatest culinary invention of all time: The Christian Chicken. But even more than that, he was an icon in the state. He was a good man, a noted believer, and the kind of person we should all aspire to be like.
I remember reading one of his books, Eat Mor Chikin, Inspire More People, a while back and loving it. I grew to respect the man even more after reading that book. So when he died, I understood the gravity of the situation. Here was a great man who was no longer with us. It was sad.
However, I worked with a girl at the time who had been literally raised by Truett Cathy. You may know that his family has raised and supported hundreds of foster kids. These foster kids knew him as “Papa Truett.” When he died, she was in tears. She missed work that week to go to his funeral.
I don’t care how much you love Chick-Fil-A. Weren’t none of you crying the day Truett Cathy died just because of chicken sandwiches. I wasn’t crying, even though I’d read his book. I shook his hand once. I’d met Truett Cathy.
I didn’t know Truett Cathy.
But seriously. Bless this man. (Photo property of Chick-Fil-A.com.)
My colleague, on the other hand, knew Truett Cathy. She loved Treutt Cathy. He was a part of her life.
The crowd on Palm Sunday didn’t know Jesus. They had heard about Him. They were seeing Him. They had even witnessed His miracles. But they didn’t know Him.
There are two truths that I’ve said before and I will continue to say, and I want to emphasize them here. First, there is no such thing as a lukewarm response to the real person of Jesus Christ. When you really meet Jesus and you are confronted with the truth about Him, you only have two choices: accept Him and follow Him or reject Him fervently. The crowd was excited about Jesus, but they weren’t seeing the Truth. Their response was to a false idea of Jesus.
Which brings me to my second truth. Jesus will only ever be who Jesus is. He won’t conform to your idea of who He is or should be. He won’t change to suit us. He asks us to change to better conform to Him.
The reason the crowd had trouble with Jesus was because He wasn’t who they thought He was going to be. They wanted a warrior king, someone to free them from Rome. Instead they got a man who planned to die to free them from something far worse than the Caesars.
I’m not sitting here criticizing churches that want to dramatize Palm Sunday. The church I attend had kids walking the aisles with little plastic palms this Sunday, and it was rather adorable.
All I’m saying is that if you’re going to celebrate Palm Sunday and re-enact Palm Sunday, just make sure that you understand why you’re doing it unlike the people who were actually there the first time around.