Characters of Passion Week: The Crowd

This artwork is one of many from my friend Grace Tung, from InterHigh.

When I was younger, I didn’t understand that this crowd crying out for Jesus to be crucified probably had many of the same people who gave Jesus a king’s welcome into Jerusalem earlier in the week on Palm Sunday.

I was challenged by this past Sunday’s Element MS message where I was asked to consider why I am following Jesus, and what my expectations of him are.

In John 19:15, from today’s DT chapters, the crowd cries out, “Away with him, away with him, crucify him!…We have no king but Caesar.”

I thought about how Caesar hasn’t been a great king to them. In fact he is the one oppressing their people and the source of their suffering, the very thing they wanted Jesus to save them from when they cried “Hosanna!”

I wondered if any of the people in the crowd actually thought about what they were shouting. Did they really mean it?

But then I saw how when it came down to it, the king they could see before them was less threatening than Jesus, the suffering, servant king they just could not understand. No matter how cruel a master chasing money, popularity, romance, or achievements is, it is something I can see, something I can understand, because it follows the ways of this world.

Reflecting upon the crowd’s response to Jesus, I was able to repent and reaffirm that Jesus is my one and only King, no matter what it might cost me now or in the future, because He paid the greatest price for my sin with his perfect, sinless life.