There are all sorts of villains in the story of Jesus’ crucifixion: Judas, who pretended to be his friend but ultimately betrayed him; the religious authorities, who kept pushing trumped-up charges; Pilate, who, despite his equivocation, finally gave the order; the Roman soldiers, who actually did the killing. At various moments in our lives, we may behave like one or another of these villains: acting against the interests of our dearest friends; placing the blame where it does not really belong; implicating ourselves despite our best efforts; carrying out unjust orders as tools of an unjust system.
Most of the time, however, we are not the primary characters in the spotlight of the story. Instead, we are the extras: the crowd. Though the crowd blends into the background of the action, the crowd is still essential to the narrative. Judas, the religious authorities, Pilate, and the soldiers all played a part in Jesus’ death, but, without the participation of the crowd, Jesus—in all likelihood—would not have been killed. It is the crowd’s fervor at a critical point in the plot that keeps the drama going.
As much as the story of Jesus’ crucifixion serves as a warning of the horrors of betrayal, the dangers of a sanctimonious religious class, the problems with spineless political leadership, and the dreadful consequences of systemic injustice, Jesus’ passion also shows us how bad it can get when we simply go along with the crowd. Populism does not lead us anywhere good in the Gospels. The will of the people puts an innocent man on a cross.
On Sunday, we will shout together with the people of two millennia ago, “Let him be crucified! Let him be crucified!” Those exclamations may be painful for us to utter, but they remind us that evil is not always the result of blind obedience, tortured ambivalence, or malicious conniving. Evil may take the form of a passionate crowd insisting on what it wants. A lot of people thinking something is right does not make it so.
Perhaps this Palm Sunday you might find it valuable to consider the ways in which you are just going along with the crowd. What wrongs might you be enabling or endorsing through your silence or your fervor? How could you think for yourself and thus starve evil of what it needs to keep going?
