Jeremiah 23.1-6, Mark 6.30-34, 53-56
The Eighth Sunday of Trinity, 21 July 2024
Austwick, Clapham, Eldroth
"When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd."
We are made to gather, we are born to crowd. We have this inbuilt need to come together with others; it’s part of who we are as people. We missed it during those Covid lockdowns, because we look forward to being in friendly crowds - family gatherings, village occasions, coach trips, assembling with hundreds of others at our favourite sports grounds or in concert halls or theatres. Our school leavers this week have been reminiscing about the playtimes they’ve enjoyed over the years together with their school friends, crowding together around the schoolyard.
There’s an energy in a crowd which can lift you - think of Last Night of the Proms, for instance, or the speeches at a wedding, the smiles of recognition that spread around a packed parish church during a fondly-delivered eulogy.
But, let’s acknowledge, not everyone is comfortable in crowds. If you’ve lived in the country all your life, or chosen to escape the city to be here, you may be one of those for whom a crowd brings anxiety, even fear. And even those who do it every day: I’m guessing that many endure, rather than enjoy, having to squeeze onto overcrowded trains commuting to work.
It can be exhilarating, giving yourself over to the passion of a crowd which is celebrating - like when crushing together on a pavement on a royal occasion; but it can be frightening feeling out of control in a crowd whose mood has turned sour - aggression at a football match, anger at a protest march.
Crowds can get a bad press, and we who are distanced from them can all too easily condemn. I think there’s an unwritten rule we all follow which says that if it’s not our crowd, then we may be unsure about it: I know people who are very much at home in the middle of the crowd at an Auction Mart, but who say that a visit to a busy out-of-town shopping centre scares them terribly.
I don’t think Jesus was that keen on crowds. Being a country boy, from out in the sticks, there’s plenty of times in the gospels where we see him retreating from his vast audiences - away into the hills or across to the other side of the lake. There’s plenty of evidence that he was anxious to avoid creating a ‘Jesus Crowd’ - one which followed him to the exclusion of all others, one which elevated him to those messianic heights he always wanted to avoid.
But nevertheless, Jesus didn’t avoid crowds, and he let them gather to him when he preached, proclaimed and healed. Doubtless Jesus understood how crowds behave ‘as one’, and how that unified behaviour can exclude or scapegoat those from other crowds; [2] but he also knew that within each crowd there are individual people… with stories to tell and needs in their lives which have led them to crowd together with others with whom they share common ground, common goals.
"When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.”
In Jesus’ eyes the crowds needed caring for. He saw that their well-being, their physical and spiritual health, was not being tended to.
Jesus saw these crowds not as a seething noisy mass but as a collection of vulnerable individuals, each member of the crowd searching for help and healing.
Jesus knew that each individual there was looking for a model to follow, a vision to seek.
We know from history and from what we see in the world around us that some leaders in Jesus’ position exploit their popularity, embrace their messianic status, and use their crowd’s devotion to increase their personal wealth or political standing.
By contrast, Jesus acted with compassion when he saw the needful faces and heard the hungry voices in the crowds. He decided to go about tending the needs of these people by sending his friends and followers into the towns and villages, to work for him, giving them authority to heal diseases both physical and spiritual.
‘Proclaim the good news that the kingdom of heaven has come near,’ he told them. ‘Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons.’ And do all this for nothing: ‘You received without payment;’ he said. ‘So give without payment.’
This Jesus Crowd was a group of people who were to stick together and follow his mission - to tend the needs of the other crowds, to bring healing to them. Whatever this Jesus Crowd did would help the other crowds to see and feel and know the goodness of God at work among them. This Jesus Crowd was a good crowd, a collection of different individuals which embraced all people; a group formed to do generous acts of well-being, which people would appreciate having around.
At the heart of Christianity is a powerful ethic. It is what the first followers of Jesus called The Way - a way of living based on love and compassion, reconciliation and forgiveness, inclusion and acceptance, peace and nonviolence, generosity and justice. This ethic is what makes Christianity good. Without it, Christians can become rigid and intolerant, self-righteous and condemning, hate-filled and violent, selfish and unjust. [3]
This Way of Jesus mirrors Buddhism’s Four Embracing Ways: generosity, kind speech, benevolence toward all, and treating all equally. It is akin to the African idea of Ubuntu - ‘I am because you are’, In other words, we rise through lifting up each other. Alongside those of other faiths who aspire to live by such ethics, Christians can represent the best humanity has to offer. [4]
So let us keep the crowds in our prayers; all the crowds which combine to make up our social world: our own crowd; those who we notice but which we don’t and couldn’t belong to; even those crowds which trouble us. Keeping especially in mind those vulnerable crowds easily exploited by the leaders they follow for political or financial gain.
With our eyes open and ears alert, let us open our hearts in compassion for the people in all the crowds around us, as Jesus did for those around him.
Notes
[1] A rewrite of Compassion or condemnation: on crowds, preached online in 2020, and Matthew 9: On Crowds preached in Liverpool in 2008.
[2] For more on the ‘mimetic’ behaviour of crowds see Michael Hardin and Jeff Krantz, Preaching Peace, Proper 6A, as referenced in Paul Nuechterlein, Girardian Reflections on the Lectionary, Proper 6A.
[3] Kurt Struckmeyer, A Conspiracy of Love: Following Jesus in a Postmodern World. p.202.
[4] Roshi Joan Halifax, The Bodhisattva Ideal: Five Rare Powers. Upaya Zen Center, 4 July 2024. Thanks to Rebecca Solnit for the link.
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