The Shouts of the Crowd

Matthew 27:15-25

15 Now it was the governor’s custom at the festival to release a prisonerchosen by the crowd. 16 At that time they had a well-known prisoner whose name was Jesus[a] Barabbas. 17 So when the crowd had gathered, Pilate asked them, “Which one do you want me to release to you: Jesus Barabbas, or Jesus who is called the Messiah?” 18 For he knew it was out of self-interest that they had handed Jesus over to him.

19 While Pilate was sitting on the judge’s seat, his wife sent him this message: “Don’t have anything to do with that innocent man, for I have suffered a great deal today in a dream because of him.”

20 But the chief priests and the elders persuaded the crowd to ask for Barabbas and to have Jesus executed.

21 “Which of the two do you want me to release to you?” asked the governor.

“Barabbas,” they answered.

22 “What shall I do, then, with Jesus who is called the Messiah?” Pilate asked.

They all answered, “Crucify him!”

23 “Why? What crime has he committed?” asked Pilate.

But they shouted all the louder, “Crucify him!”

24 When Pilate saw that he was getting nowhere, but that instead an uproar was starting, he took water and washed his hands in front of the crowd. “I am innocent of this man’s blood,” he said. “It is your responsibility!”

25 All the people answered, “His blood is on us and on our children!”

Dear Friends in Christ,

One thing that I think we could all agree on at the outset of this sermon is that crowds can be very noisy.  Whether it’s the 200+ kids on closing night of VBS screaming at the top of their lungs when I announce whether the boys or girls won the offering challenge for the week or the more than 72,000 football fans crammed into NRG Stadium in Houston, TX as happened a couple of months ago at this year’s Super Bowl game, there’s no getting around the fact that when you get a bunch of people together like that cheering about the same thing, there’s going to be a lot of noise.  I’ve often times wished we could get that kind of enthusiasm in our churches on Sun. morning, not necessarily the noise factor, but the excitement factor – people wanting to be here; people willing to offer big bucks to be here; people staying glued to their seats and getting even more excited when the worship service goes into overtime.

Well, this morning I want to examine with you one crowd of people that had perhaps the greatest impact that any crowd has ever had in the history of the world for it was the shouts of this mob that brought about the crucifixion of the only perfect person to ever walk the face of this earth, the Son of God, Jesus Christ.  And as we study the mob mentality of that day, we will learn some valuable lessons for ourselves, not the least of which is the fact that times have not changed since then, for we are still surrounded by the shouts of the crowd even today, a crowd not at all unlike the one in our text – people who would rather see Jesus dead than to see his influence felt in our society.

But first a little information about the crowd that Jesus faced on that fateful day that we know as Good Friday.  It was Passover week.  During that week Jerusalem’s population would swell from about 20,000 to 10 times that many, close to 200,000.  People camped in the streets, outside the city walls; anywhere they could find a spot.  During the week, the city was like a powder keg just waiting for the right match to set it off, which I’m sure is one reason why Matthew tells us in his Gospel that the Jewish leaders were plotting to kill Jesus in “some sly way.”  Then they added, “But not during the Feast or there may be a riot among the people.”  So you get the picture?  The whole situation in Jerusalem was already very volatile, very explosive.  But the Jewish leaders added fuel to the fire and ignited the match when the Roman governor Pontius Pilate brought Jesus before the multitude and those leaders used their power and influence to persuade the crowd to demand his crucifixion.

So let’s spend some time now examining the shouts of the crowd.  And the first point that I want to make is that the shouts of the crowd can be fickle.  We see that all the time in the world of sports, don’t we?  Now that the baseball season is underway, I think, for example, of Trevor Rosenthal, the ace relief pitcher for the Cardinals a few years ago.  When this flame throwing fast baller first appeared on the scene, he was lights out for most of the opponents he faced and the Cardinal fans loved it.  But then as players became more accustomed to his pitching style and began to hit him a lot better, he went from being the hero to being the goat far too many times and many of his biggest fans began to boo him and demand he be replaced with a different closer.  So there’s no doubt about it; crowds can be fickle.  We even have a name for them.  We call them fair weather fans.

Well, if Trevor Rosenthal ever felt bad about being booed, as I’m sure he did, I hope he talked to Jesus about it because Jesus could definitely relate.  Going back to that first Palm Sunday, he comes riding into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey.  Crowds of people line the streets of the city.  They wave palm branches in the air and spread their cloaks in the road for him to ride on, which would be the equivalent in our day and age of rolling out the red carpet for some famous dignitary.  And they cheer.  Oh, how they cheer!  “Hosanna to the Son of David!  Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!  Hosanna in the highest!”  In essence they were proclaiming Jesus to be their hero, their champion, their Messiah, their king.

But fast forward 5 days and some of those very same people were now calling for the crucifixion of Jesus.  They were fair weather fans of Christ.  When he didn’t do what they thought he was going to do, what they were hoping he would do, what they were expecting him to do, namely, lead the Jews in rebellion and victory over Rome, their cheers turned to boos and they revealed how fickle the human heart can really be.

But not only can the shouts of the crowd be fickle, they can also be very persuasive.  We see this especially with Pilate.  He was the one who held all the trump cards in his hand that day.  He was the one that possessed all the power of Rome.  And when you read the Gospel accounts, you cannot deny the fact that Pilate believed with all of his heart that Jesus was innocent, that he was not deserving of any kind of punishment, especially the death penalty.  Luke 23:4 says: Then Pilate announced to the chief priests and the crowd, “I find no basis for a charge against this man.”  Later on, as the crowd became more insistent in their demands that Jesus be crucified, Pilate said, “Why? What crime has this man committed? I have found in him no grounds for the death penalty.”  And at that point Pilate should have called an end to the proceedings and sent everyone home.  But he didn’t.  Instead Luke writes: “But with loud shouts they insistently demanded that he be crucified, and their shouts prevailed. So Pilate decided to grant their demand.”

Oh, how persuasive the shouts of the crowd can be.  Have you ever had to deal with them?  “What do you mean you go to church every Sunday?  Isn’t that a little old-fashioned, a little antiquated for our modern times?”  “You’re kidding!  You’re still a virgin?  Do you have any idea what you’ve been missing?”  “Come on, a couple of beers won’t hurt you.  You’ll be amazed at how good it will make you feel.”  I think we’ve all felt the pressure of the shouting mob, haven’t we?

And you know what’s the best way to handle that pressure?  Two things: first, be firmly grounded in your faith because the more grounded you are in your faith, the more you’re going to love your Savior.  And the more you love your Savior, the more you’re going to love what he loves and hate what he hates and want to avoid what he wants you to avoid.

Then secondly, decide beforehand what you will do in certain situations so that if or when they arise you’re not caught off guard.  I learned this lesson well during my 2nd year of college when I received word that my high school graduating class was going to have a 2-year reunion.  I thought it would be great to go back and see some of my buddies again whom I hadn’t seen for a while.  But when I went, I found out that this reunion idea was nothing but a good excuse to have a big party.  And the ones I called my best friends in high school told me earlier that day that there would be a lot of marijuana available that night and they would be among those smoking it.  Well, I had already made the decision long before that that I would never partake of any illegal drugs so it wasn’t difficult for me to say no when I was offered it several times that night.  And just in case you’re wondering, especially you teenagers, nobody criticized me, nobody made fun of me, nobody laughed at me for saying no.  So be firmly grounded in your faith and decide beforehand, and you’ll be much more prepared and much more able to handle the pressure and persuasiveness of the crowd.

Then the 3rd thing we want to note about the shouts of the crowd is that they can also be very perilous.  Our text for this morning ends with Pilate washing his hands and proclaiming that he is innocent of this man’s blood.  To which the shouting crowd responds, “Let his blood be on us and on our children!”  That was a perilous proclamation to make because in essence what they were doing was pronouncing a curse on themselves.  They were inviting God to punish them if they were wrong about Jesus.  And God, who has a very good memory, did just that in the year 70 AD when the Roman legions marched to the city of Jerusalem and laid siege to it.  That means they surrounded it and prevented anything from getting into the city, like food, and anyone from getting out of it.  Things got so bad inside of Jerusalem that a 1st century secular historian by the name of Josephus tells us that some women even killed, cooked, and ate their own children to keep from starving to death.  But that still wasn’t enough to keep them alive.  For eventually the Romans stormed the city and completely leveled and destroyed it, including all those inside of it, thus bringing to fulfillment the curse they had pronounced upon themselves some 40 years earlier.

Make no mistake about it.  The shouts of the crowd can be perilous.  And then one more thing, they can also be wrong.  The crowd was definitely wrong about Jesus.  Peter made sure the people understood that in his famous sermon that he preached on Pentecost, 10 days after Jesus had ascended into heaven.  He said, “Men of Israel, listen to this: Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders and signs, which God did among you through him, as you yourselves know. This man was handed over to you by God’s set purpose and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross.”

Nobody knew better how wrong the crowd was that day than Pontius Pilate.  There’s an old legend that somewhere in the Alps between Italy and Switzerland, there’s a pool of water.  It’s ringed by mountain peaks and inaccessible except by a narrow footpath.  The few who have stumbled across it over the centuries say there’s a man there, dressed in the toga of imperial Rome.  He kneels beside the water, repeatedly dipping his hands into the icy liquid bubbling up from underground springs.  And if you listen carefully, you can hear him mumbling “I am innocent.  I am innocent of the blood of this just man.”

Now again, let me emphasize that is a legend.  But it reminds us of what Pilate attempted to do to purge himself of the guilt he experienced over sentencing an innocent man to death.  He tried to remove that guilt himself, but to no avail.  There was a better way however.  It’s the way we need to follow for the times when we have listened to and followed the shouts of the crowd.  And that is to take all that guilt, all that shame, all that remorse, and lay it down at the foot of the cross.  For it is there and only there that the greatest cleansing agent of all time can do its work.  And that is the blood of Jesus which, according to John’s 1st epistle, can cleanse us not just of some sin or most sin, but of all sin.  That’s why Jesus came.  That’s what this season of the year that we call Lent is all about.  That’s what this week of the year that we call Holy Week is all about.  And while Lent is traditionally a solemn and sober time of the year for us Christians, it’s also a time to celebrate.  It’s a time to shout.  It’s a time to join our voices with those of our fellow believers so that the shouts of praise that we offer to our Savior for all that he did for us and all that he went through for us might prevail over the shouts of all those in our world today who would dare to oppose him and like nothing better than to silence him.

Amen.