“Hosanna!” and “Crucify Him!” From the Same Crowd?

A bit earlier today on Threads, someone posed the following question:

The text doesn’t really give us much reason to think the “Hosanna!” crowd and the “Crucify him!” crowd were the same people, right?

It’s an interesting question. I’m not sure how much, if anything, is at stake here. But I’ve often heard the statement, “The same crowd that chanted ‘Hosanna!’ on Palm Sunday was chanting ‘Crucify him!’ on Good Friday.” It preaches well.

But is it true? To be honest, I can’t say for sure. But I seriously doubt it.

First, the Palm Sunday crowd seemed to be made up mostly of Passover pilgrims who had been traveling with Jesus from Galilee and from other places who joined along the way. Note the example of Bartimaeus, who after being healed, “followed him on the way” (Mk. 10:52). Also, notice how Matthew contrasts the Palm Sunday crowd with the inhabitants of Jerusalem:

When he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was in turmoil, asking, “Who is this?” (Mt. 21:10).

The city of Jerusalem, which normally maintained a population of around 20,000-30,000 people, during Passover season would swell up to about 2 million pilgrims from around the world. That’s a whole lot of people. So the multitudes who gathered in Jerusalem that week were not a monolith. And on that basis alone, it’s a significant leap to conflate the Palm Sunday crowd with the Good Friday crowd. It would be like me shopping at Target one afternoon, then returning a few days later, and assuming that the crowd of shoppers on both days was identical.

Secondly, all throughout the week, the Temple establishment had been plotting to arrest Jesus and kill him. But they realized that they had to do so by stealth. They were concerned a public arrest would cause a riot (Mt. 26:3-5). All the way up to Good Friday, Jesus remained a hugely popular figure with his followers.

This is the whole reason why the Temple hierarchy was willing to pay Judas. The arrest needed to take place in secret, under cover of darkness, away from the public eye. Judas knew Jesus’ movements. He knew he could find Jesus in the privacy of Gethsemane in the evening. From there, Jesus would be led straight across the Kidron Valley to the home of Caiaphas where he would undergo a sham, overnight trial.

Then very early in the morning, Jesus is handed over to Pilate, who at some point presents a gathered crowd with the choice of releasing either Jesus, or a violent revolutionary named Barabbas. Here’s how John describes it:

After he had said this, he went out to the Jews again and told them, “I find no case against him. ³⁹But you have a custom that I release someone for you at the Passover. Do you want me to release for you the King of the Jews?” ⁴⁰They shouted in reply, “Not this man but Barabbas!” Now Barabbas was a rebel. (Jn 18:38-40)

Numerous times throughout John’s account of Passion Week, he uses the phrase “the Jews.” This is a quite unfortunate reality that has been used to promote and support abhorrent antisemitism throughout history. Nevertheless, whenever we see this phrase in the Gospel of John, he’s using this phrase as shorthand to refer to the Jewish leadership in Jerusalem who stood in opposition to Jesus. Not to Jews in general. Again, John’s use of this phrase has had terrible ramifications throughout history. And I think translators need to come up with other options.

Regardless, it tells us something about the composition of this crowd. Keep in mind that the whole point of staging a secret arrest followed by an overnight “trial,” along with handing Jesus over to Pilate in the wee hours in the morning was to get him convicted and sentenced before the public could assemble and influence anything.

If everyone in Jerusalem (all 2+ million!) had turned on him by that point, then there would be no need for any of that nonsense. But that’s not the case.

So, I don’t think there’s any reason to think they were the same crowd, and plenty of reason to assume they weren’t. It doesn’t preach as well, but I think it’s probably the truth.

Nevertheless. Have a meaningful Holy Week. Don’t rush to Easter. Embrace the story.

(The painting is “Ecce Homo” by Antonio Ciseri)

Severance and the Gospel

Christian history, Culture, Kingdom of God

Without a doubt, the hottest streaming series this Spring is Apple TV’s psychological thriller Severance, created by Dan Erickson and directed by Ben Stiller. Severance currently boasts a 96% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and since its premiere on January 17, Season 2 alone has garnered a viewership of over 3 billion streaming minutes. In other words, Severance is a bonafide, all-time hit.

Hamony Cobel (Patricia Arquette) is the bizarre Supervisor of the severed floor in Season 1.

The story revolves around protagonist Mark Scout (played by Adam Scott) who is employed by a local branch of a mysterious global corporation, Lumon Industries. One particular floor of Lumon’s massive office complex is devoted to work so secretive that incoming employees are required to undergo a controversial surgical procedure. The surgery implants a chip into the brain that separates employees’ “work memories” from the rest of their memories.

The effect is that each severed employee (or “innie”) has a life that is carefully curated and dominated by Lumon, with no cognitive connection to one’s life in the outside world. Likewise, the same person outside of the office (or the “outie”) has no recollection of anything that happens at work.

For its severed workers, Lumon has created an entire world of peculiar nomenclature, imagery, customs, routines, and company history to tame its employees’ curiosity and satisfy their longing for meaning. By doing so, Lumon is able to manipulate and control their entire lives.

But as the story progresses, Mark and some of his co-workers intuitively suspect that something is amiss with Lumon and the existence that has been crafted for them. They become increasingly disenchanted with their experience and begin to imagine what life is like beyond their home on the windowless severed floor.

Creepy statue of Lumon CEO, Jame Eagan (Michael Siberry)

Something similar is happening right now inside the world of American Christianity. Many of us have been handed a severed gospel, largely stripped of what makes the Jesus story so rich, beautiful, and intoxicating.

The gospel is the story of God setting right a world gone wrong. It’s a story that begins with God choosing Abraham and forming his descendants into a great nation through whom God will bless the entire earth. The story continues with the promise that God will establish as king one of David’s descendants who will reign eternally and whose kingdom will encompass the entire earth.

Finally, the story culminates with Jesus of Nazareth, Israel’s messiah, winning an atoning victory on the cross, and being raised and ascended to the Father’s right hand, where he is now enthroned as king of the nations.

Therefore, in response to this good news, the invitation of the gospel is to come under the reign of King Jesus and join the community of believers who (by God’s grace) are together learning to embrace and embody his vision for life as God intends it to be lived. A life that continues on in the age to come.

It is the life Jesus taught and modeled for us. A life characterized by the Sermon on the Mount. A life marked by peace-making, enemy love, patience, and self-denial. And it is through these kinds of cross-shaped communities that God is mending, healing, and saving a lost and broken world.

Yet for many of us, the gospel we’ve inherited sounds quite different. Rather than a story that includes what God is up to in the world right now through the reign of King Jesus, the gospel has been presented to us as a formula for individual salvation regarding how to get to heaven when we die. It’s mechanical. Formulaic. Transactional.

It’s not that this gospel is wrong, per se. It’s just incomplete. It’s a severed gospel. This severance didn’t happen overnight but gradually morphed over several centuries.

It is difficult to locate a definitive starting point, but certainly the Protestant Reformers were instrumental in its development and circulation. John Calvin, in particular, was a trained lawyer who later became a prominent theologian. Calvin’s theological work on soteriology was significantly shaped by his legal background and would become hugely influential in affecting how future generations in the West would understand the gospel.

Consequently, people began to view salvation primarily through a legal framework—that guilty sinners can be “acquitted” because of Jesus’ atoning death on the cross and thereby receive forgiveness and salvation.

Indeed, this is true so far as it goes. And certainly the apostle Paul, in his writings, frequently employs legal metaphors. But it isn’t nearly enough to delineate the full scope and nature of salvation and the gospel as described in the story the Bible tells.

The severance process continued throughout the era of colonialism and the transatlantic slave trade. As Western empires sought to conquer and control foreign lands and peoples, the Christian enterprise was often a complicit partner.

As territories were being occupied and exploited, many Christian missionaries and pastors focused their work exclusively on “saving souls.” Colonizers and slaveowners sought to depict conquered and enslaved peoples as something less than human in order to excuse themselves from the ethical demands of Christ’s teaching, allowing them to perpetuate their oppression and exploitation.

Eventually, the American Protestant world would rupture with the Modernist-Fundamentalist controversy in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. A whole host of complicated issues was involved, but at the center of it was a fierce debate over the nature of the gospel.

During the Jim Crow era, many pastors and churches of all kinds were calling attention to the issues of poverty, inequality, and exploitation of workers. Drawing from the Bible, and in particular the teachings of Christ, they contended for a more just and equitable society.

However, some of these Christian leaders and institutions were also departing from orthodox Christian doctrines (such as the virgin birth and the bodily resurrection of Christ). It is also true that in some cases, the emphasis on Christ and the role of Christian worship were becoming deemphasized and displaced altogether.

This movement ignited a strong response from what would become the Fundamentalist movement, which aimed to counteract what was identified as a wholesale departure from normative, orthodox Christianity.

Along with reasserting the creedal foundational doctrines that some Modernists were rejecting, the Fundamentalists sought to declare once and for all a clear exposition of the gospel, centered upon a sin-forgiveness transaction based on Christ’s atoning death that results in the free gift of salvation. This is the gospel, the Fundamentalists would declare.

And thus, the fault lines were created. And they continue to rumble up to the present day.

This is the severed gospel we have inherited. And like Mark Scout and his co-workers on the severed floor, many Christians in America are longing for something more compelling. Dissatisfied with the simplistic script we’ve been handed, we crave to be part of a more beautiful story. A richer, grander metanarrative.

We yearn for a reintegration. Christ’s atoning death, his bodily resurrection, the experience of forgiveness for sin, and the promise of life in the age to come are indispensable components to this story. However, this is also a story that includes God’s longing for the world as it exists right now.

If we truly believe that Jesus is the reigning king of the nations today, then this gospel is not just something to be believed, but as the New Testament states repeatedly, it is to be obeyed.

Thus, the invitation of this good news is not simply to engage in a transaction to secure afterlife salvation, but to enter into and participate in Jesus’ saving, healing work in the world right now.

Six Stone Jars

Spiritual Growth, Theology

In the story of Jesus turning water to wine at the wedding of Cana (John 2:1-10), he tells the servants to fill six stone jars with water and bring them to the master of the feast.

When the person in charge tasted the water that had become wine and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), that person called the bridegroom ¹⁰and said to him, “Everyone serves the good wine first and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk. But you have kept the good wine until now.”

I’ve been meditating on this passage for the last few weeks. It’s a story that is especially near and dear to me, and I happen to be preaching on it this weekend. A thought came to me that won’t necessarily “fit” into my sermon. So I thought I’d share it here.

Denominations, churches, ministries, institutions, and programs (etc.) are like the stone water jars in this story. First of all, they are often necessary conduits for God’s work in the world. They symbolize our own human participation in the miracle that Jesus performs. These servants had to pour 120-180 gallons of water into these six jars (made by human hands) and carry each of them to the master of the feast. Without a dolly, I presume.

Much human effort went into the creation and usage of these stone jars. A lot like the ministries and institutions that we create and maintain. Again, these jars are necessary and crucial to God’s work in the world.

However, the miracle is not the jar itself but in what it contains. In this story there are six jars full of water turned to wine. Over the next few days, I would imagine as one jar is emptied it is simply set aside and another one is set in its place.

Institutions and ministries can have long seasons of peak capacity and usage. But eventually things become empty and hollow. This may not necessarily be a sign that something is wrong. It’s just that it’s time to move to the next jar of wine. Don’t mistake the jar for the wine. Celebrate what God has done, but look for what God is doing now.

Selah.