One crowd - or two?

 

During Night Prayer, on Monday, Hazel led us in a reflection about The Palm Sunday Crowd.  Actually, she made the interesting and perceptive point that scripture talks of two crowds: the one that went before the procession and the one that followed. 

During Holy Week we often talk of the crowd ‘turning’, presuming that those who shouted ‘hosanna’ were the same people who ended up screaming ‘crucify’.  Hazel made the point that maybe they were two different crowds, with different opinions in the first place. If that’s the case it would be very representative of most societies, which are usually divided.

What we do know, is that scripture makes no secret of the fact thatJesus divided his society.  He was never universally acclaimed, and what’s more he doesn’t pretend he was.

For the ‘harmonisers’ amongst us this is a somewhat uncomfortable picture of our Lord.  It teaches us that although we strive for unity, consensus and cohesion, there will be some contexts in which a difference of opinion means the ‘parting of the ways’.  Jesus did not compromise his message before the civic and religious authorities and went to the cross as a result.

I suspect the key to all this is knowing when to speak out and when not to! 

And, maybe, even within ourselves we detect that we too are capable of crying both ‘hosanna’ and ‘crucify’.