Romans 5.1-8, Matthew 9.35-10.8
The First Sunday after Trinity, 14th June 2020 - churches closed
"When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd."
We’ve done without crowds for a season - but it couldn’t last too long. For we’re made to gather, we are born to crowd. We can exist in tiny bubbles for a while but we have this inbuilt need to also come together in larger groups; it’s part of who we are as people. Many of us have missed being in friendly crowds - family gatherings, village occasions, big shopping trips, coming together with hundreds of fellow-followers of sports teams or concert hall and theatre audiences. Our children are aching and longing now for playtime with their school friends.
There’s an energy in a crowd which can lift you - we sense that, when we consider how odd it will feel to those footballers playing out their remaining matches in empty stadiums. But sometimes, that can feel like a negative energy. 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, fear even. I’m guessing that not many have missed having to squeeze onto overcrowded trains commuting to work these past weeks.
There’s nothing more exhilarating than giving yourself over to the passion of a crowd which is celebrating - like when crushing together on a pavement on a royal occasion; but there’s nothing more 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, particularly in this time of the coronavirus: the behaviour of people on bank holiday beaches; the fear of contagion spreading through Black Lives Matter rallies; the madness of massive Ikea queues. There’s no Appleby Horse Fair this year but if there had been those crowds would be widely criticised too; it’s part of the annual ritual, and it illustrates the observation that if it’s not our crowd, then we probably won’t like it.
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. Perhaps he was anxious to avoid creating a ‘Jesus Crowd’ - one which followed him to the exclusion of all others, like a devoted Yorkshire Cricket Club crowd follows their team to the exclusion of all Lancastrians.
But nevertheless, Jesus didn’t avoid crowds, and he let them gather to him when he preached, proclaimed and healed. Maybe Jesus understood how crowds behave ‘as one’, and how that unified behaviour can exclude or scapegoat those from other crowds [2]; but also that within each crowd there are individual people… with stories to tell… stories about things in their lives which led them to crowd together with others with whom they share common ground, common purpose.
"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. Vulnerable individuals, each member of the crowd was searching for help; and a model to follow, a vision to seek.
It’s easy to condemn a Black Lives Matter protest if we distance ourselves from the stories. But compassion might come if we listen - to stories like that of Anthony Bryan, the 62-year-old who left Jamaica as an eight-year-old to join his mother who was working as a seamstress in London, and stayed: attending school, working as a painter and decorator and a taxpayer, helping to bring up his children and seven grandchildren: who was suddenly confronted by the government’s ‘hostile environment’ policy in 2015 when the Home Office tried to remove him from the country, a humiliating, painful process which lost him his job, his home and came at great emotional cost. [3]
Compassion might come if we listen: maybe also a sense of injustice which we feel compelled to act on.
Jesus decided to go about tending the needs of the crowds 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. He told them to proclaim the good news that the kingdom of heaven has come near. And he said that they'd be doing it for nothing: ‘Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons. You received without payment; 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, one which embraced all people, which people would appreciate having around.
We all take part in crowds. We all belong to them: families or church or social groups; from time to time we all take part in crowds who flock to town to shop or be entertained. Maybe even to protest, seeking change. For all crowds are driven to seek better. Like sheep without a shepherd we are all looking for safety, security and comfort. We all want stability, good health and food on the table. We seek belonging together. We are the crowds.
So today and every day let's keep the crowds in our prayers; all of them, particularly those crowds which trouble us. And as members of the Jesus Crowd let's open our eyes and ears and hearts to these others, seeking the same compassion that Jesus had for the people in the crowds he saw.
Notes
[1] A rewrite of 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] Amelia Gentleman, ‘My mum said, “Why are the police arresting you? You must have done something”: the scandal behind TV's new Windrush drama. Guardian, 27 May 2020.
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