John 19: 12-16
From then on Pilate tried to release him, but the Jews cried out, 'If you release this man, you are no friend of the emperor. Everyone who claims to be a king sets himself against the emperor.' When Pilate heard these words, he brought Jesus outside and sat on the judge's bench at a place called The Stone Pavement, or in Hebrew Gabbatha. Now it was the day of Preparation for the Passover; and it was about noon. He said to the Jews, 'Here is your King!' They cried out, 'Away with him! Away with him! Crucify him!' Pilate asked them, 'Shall I crucify your king' The chief priests answered, 'We have no king but the emperor.' Then Pilate handed Jesus over to them to be crucified.
This week, as I have thought about crowds and what it means to be part of a crowd, two experiences have continued to come to mind. The first is from when I was in 2nd or 3rd grade and the teachers in the Stockton Public School district went on strike. My dad was a high school teacher at the time and I got to picket with him and his colleagues. The second memory is from when I was in high school and on the youth council in the Diocese of Chicago. The council, a group of teenagers, wrote and presented a resolution at our diocesan convention that a group of older, more educated clergy and laity would vote on. I don’t really know what exactly the teachers were protesting when they went on strike, but we did end up back in school after 2 weeks so at the very least some kind of an agreement was made. My senior year of high school, youth were granted voice at convention and the following year they were given vote. To this day, a large delegation of youth attend and participate in diocesan convention in Chicago.
From an early age I learned that crowds can be used for good. I understood the potential power and influence groups can have and how important they are for giving voice to the voiceless, causing change, fostering community. However, groups can be abused and used for ill. Certainly the crowd calling for Christ’s crucifixion was not acting out of love or grace or compassion. When I think of crowds like that I think of Nazi Germany or the Ku Klux Klan here in the United States. There are endless examples of how individuals have been corrupted by groups, how crowds have done evil instead of good, caused harm instead of healing.
I had a hard time this week coming up with a literal example of when I was actively, vocally a part of the crowd shouting for Christ’s crucifixion. I could think of numerous times when I was silent and passive, melting into the background instead of speaking up against cruelty, and perhaps that’s not entirely different from being one with the crowd. The more I sat with the Israelites shouting “Crucify him! Crucify him!” the more I was reminded of something from a book I love by Martin Smith. Every Lent for the past 5 years I have read “A Season for the Spirit”. Martin Smith has been one of the most influential people in my personal spiritual formation and “A Season for the Spirit” has been central to my Lenten experience. Smith writes about the “selves of the self”, arguing that we are each of us a “tiny universe” containing the entire world. It’s a mind bender of an idea but it has had a profound effect on me since the first time I read it. It thrilled me to think of the atoms of my body having been the atoms of stars as Origen preached and Martin Smith quoted: “You yourself are even another little world and have within you the sun and the moon and even the stars.” What a beautiful image!
But beyond the sheer poetry of it all two things struck me this past week. The first is that there is a crowd inside me, inside each of us. This is what Smith means when he refers to the selves of the self. I have my very own crowd clamoring and raging inside of me. I am wracked with self-doubt and self-loathing. I constantly berate and internally flog myself for all of my mistakes and failures – real and imagined. I analyze and re-analyze things that I say and do, pointing out with excruciating detail and unforgiving criticism what I should have said or done, what I should not have said or done. Sometimes I can quiet the crowd, or at least ignore it, I am certainly good at faking confidence. But sometimes my angry, disappointed selves get the better of the whole and I stumble into the hiding places of depression and anxiety, sure that they (I) must be right about me, that I am worthless. If I am a little world, a little Christ even, if Christ truly lives inside of me and loves me then the internal victories of my crowd are certainly little crucifixions, denials of the reality of good and rejections of grace.
The second piece that has stayed with me as I read and re-read Martin Smith’s book is that if we are each a tiny universe then we also contain all sin. Again, an overwhelming idea. If I am the universe then so too is all the sin in the universe in me. There is no room for the self-righteous posture that my sin is not as bad as their sin. This is what is so powerful about shouting “Crucify him! Crucify him!” during the Passion on Palm Sunday. I was born in 1982 so it is clearly true that I was not literally part of the crowd that day. And yet, in a mysterious and paradoxical way it is also true that I was literally part of the crowd that day. Their atoms are my atoms, their sin is my sin. Smith quotes one of my favorite literary characters, Father Zossima, from The Brothers Karamazov who says “Take hold of yourself and make yourself responsible for all men’s sins. My friend, believe me, that really is so, for the moment you make yourself responsible in all sincerity for everyone and everything, you will see that it really is so and that you are in fact responsible for everyone and everything.”
As daunting and heavy as this burden is I also find it beautiful. If we contain all sin do we not also contain all grace? Isn’t that what makes Good Friday so good? I can accept ownership of all sin if I can also receive the outpouring of all grace in response. And I do believe in radical grace, uncomfortable, unfathomable, scandalous grace. Christ came and took on human form. He knows what it is to be the crowd, to have a crowd in him. And still he loves us. Still he dies for us. I do not pretend to understand his dying, but I try to live into the hope of his resurrection. And because of that, if there is grace for the crowd that called for Pilot to crucify Jesus there must be grace for the crowd within me and hope that I can be healed and am forgiven.
