Blending in
Crowds. Living in a small country like Singapore, I am familiar with swarms of people around me, especially in Orchard road on weekends. As I read the gospel of Luke, I was struck this time by the frequent mention of crowds that surrounded Jesus wherever He went.
Regardless whether he was teaching, healing or just passing through towns, people from all walks of life ranging from tax collectors to women, Gentile and Jew, and even Pharisees and teachers of the law were attracted to Him – some, of course, for the most wrong and dubious reasons of trapping Him.
I followed this motif of crowds through the gospel and found it extended to his triumphal entry into Jerusalem where masses of His disciples cried out, “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord!” (Luke 19:38a) Later on, another crowd came into the garden of Gethsemane to arrest Him and bring Him to the house of the High Priest where yet another crowd tried Him and brought Him before Pilate. Perhaps the most poignant moment for me was the point when the crowd shouted, “Crucify Him, crucify Him.” Luke mentions that their voices prevailed. (Luke 23:23) There was a crowd who witnessed His crucifixion and death, which included soldiers, Pharisees and His disciples. (Luke 23:33-49)
While herd instinct and crowd sentiment can be swayed from warmth to hatred within a short span of time, as we have seen in the gospel as well as in our modern times where support for a political personality or celebrity can swing from extreme to extreme, I wonder if my own reaction to the Lord sometimes is dependent on crowd sentiment at that time – Christian crowd sentiment.
How is my faith dependent on or independent of the crowd sentiment – both within and outside the Christian community? While my beliefs and creeds stem from the Christian hermeneutical community from which I come, and I join in this community in corporate worship and service to the Lord in church, how much of my motivations are derived from an inward reality and true relationship with the Savior ? And how much of my motivations are influenced by the expectations and “herd direction” of the “Christian crowd”?
Take me out of the crowd and what will my faith be? Remove me from the “security” and “comfort” of my Christian community, and will I become like Peter who said, “I do not know Him.”? (Luke 22:57) What will it take for me to stand out alone against the crowd?
It will take an undeniable faith in an undeniable God. I remember the story of Polycarp where, in front of a heathen crowd who had gathered to watch his trial and when asked to revile Christ, he replied to the magistrate, “'Fourscore and six years have I been His servant, and He hath done me no wrong. How then can I blaspheme my King who saved me?'”
I pray I do not just blend into the crowd.
