A FACE IN THE CROWD

Matthew 21:1-11

[Since spoken communication differs from written, some of the grammar and syntax of this transcript may seem awkward in written form. To keep integrity with the spirit of the original delivery, the transcript stays close to the exact words spoken.]

I was a face in the crowd at Cameron Indoor Stadium my freshman year at Duke University. It was, I think, my favorite place to be throughout my undergraduate years, and I often joke that the reason I went to Duke is because you can get in for free to all the basketball games. And it wasn't that hard to get in my freshman year, 1980--Coach Mike Krzyzewski's first year. You just show your student ID, and they gave the students all the best seats, the ones closest to the floor. And even by that time, Duke students had gained a national reputation for their creative brand of basketball fanaticism. They had honed it into a fine art. I remember that there were times when we used to take tennis balls, and we would--we would sail them across the floor. We would sail them across the floor, you know, from student section to student section. I remember one time there was a young woman in a lime green skirt--it was the height of the whole "preppie" thing--and she was walking in front of the opposing team's bench, and the entire crowd started chanting, "Green!" and then the other side of the stadium would say, "Skirt!" "Green!" "Skirt!" "Green!" And you could see this woman's red face, set off by her lime green skirt.

And Duke University was not the best team in the county, to be sure, that year. But whenever Carolina would come to town, it would seem like the battle of the titans. It was always a close score at the end of the game, and I remember the noise, the sound--being part of that sixth man. The river of sound that carried you along with it, as if you were part of some organism that was yelling through you. Jumping up and down in that throng of bodies. Being a face in the crowd, becoming indistinguishable from the face of that yelling, throbbing mass.

Then Maryland came to town that year, my freshman year. Herman Veal played for Maryland. Right around that time Herman Veal had been accused of assaulting a young female. It was then, I guess, that things got a little bit out of hand. Things went beyond PG that day. As people taunted and jeered at Herman Veal, they crossed a line that people only knew they had crossed after the whole thing was over. I can't tell you exactly what happened that day, from the pulpit. And you know the funny thing is, I remember Herman Veal down there on the floor, and I remember all that happening, but I don't remember what I was doing. I don't remember whether I took part in all that funny business....

It made national news. The Washington Post and the New York Times wrote editorials about the fan behavior at Duke University. Terry Sanford, the president, wrote a letter to every member of the student body, encouraging us to keep it G, or at least PG, for the kids.

A postscript on this story: the next week was when Carolina came to town, to Cameron Indoor Stadium. And the entire student body had made halos for themselves [like this]. And so, you looked out on a sea of faces with halos on their heads. And some, some creative individuals made a cheer sheet that said, for example...instead of the usual thing when the official made a bad call, we'd say, "We beg to differ!" "We beg to differ!" And we had placards that said, "Welcome honored guests."

Well of course I tell that story because that gives us a sense of what it was like to be a face in that crowd when Jesus came riding into town, into Jerusalem that year. And it may be a bit of an inane comparison, but if you're a true sports fan, maybe not...but it would have been like, it's your year, you know? It's your team, going to the final four. As you watched Jesus of Nazareth coming into town, thinking, "This is going to be the year when it happens for us, for my team. For the Jewish people! This is the guy who is going to make it happen!" And so they, they shout a cheer that's not too unlike what it would sound like to cheer at a basketball game. "Ho-san-na!" "Ho-san-na!" There's the crowd, getting whipped up, as he comes. As all this hope is constellated by that crowd. You're a face in the crowd. Can you imagine what they would be like?

We preachers are, of course, in the habit on this particular Sunday of pointing out that it's the same crowd, these same faces, who are shouting a different cheer--a different slogan--a few days later.

"Crucify him!"

There's something dangerous about being in a crowd, as transcendent as it might be for individual human beings. There's something dangerous about the possibility of losing ourselves to such a thing.

What do I mean by being part of a crowd? In a certain sense, it's impossible for us to avoid being part of a crowd. Isn't it true as Aristotle said that we are, as human beings, social animals. And we might agree with him when he says that human beings cannot attain happiness outside of our dependence upon other human beings. Martin Buber, who wrote the book I and Thou, says we cannot know ourselves as an "I" unless we are in relationship to a "thou." I cannot know myself outside of a relationship with other people. So it's inherent to human life, isn't it, to find ourselves, if we are to be human, in a crowd? And yet the story that happens after that moment that Jesus enters the city gates of Jerusalem, if we are to hear it this week, is a kind of parable for what we have known through our social sciences for many years: that there is something about being part of a crowd that is dangerous. It can carry a kind of contagion that has the potential for stealing our selfhood, and sickening our individual ability to make moral choices.

The great social ethicist and theologian Reinhold Neibuhr observed that, "A crowd can never be moral." And, if we define "crowd" broadly--a nation, a society, a government--by nature can't be moral. It cannot see the child that has been killed by the bomb it has manufactured. Only an individual can see that and have a moral, compassionate response to it. It was Reinhold Neibuhr who observed how people, who normally look and act moral, revert to immoral behavior in the face of a crowd.

Maybe you remember one of the most popular images of this sort of crowd phenomenon, back in 1992, when the Rodney King riots were happening. I remember it because it was the weekend of my bachelor party. And perhaps you remember the image of Reginald Denny, who was a white truck driver driving through the Watts district of Los Angeles, who was pulled--the police had abandoned the crowd to their anger--and he was pulled from his 18-wheeler and beaten with pipes and bricks. A mob cannot be moral.

But this phenomenon isn't limited--we should be sure to note--to mobs that are formed because of the passion of the moment. Mobs can consist of democratic majorities as well. Soren Kierkegaard, the Christian existentialist philosopher--if you read the quote I shared with you in the front of the bulletin...basically he says that the truth can never be with the majority. The truth is always with the minority. And that's the paradox of Christian community. By nature, we are a minority, arrayed against a majority. And as soon as the majority domesticates that truth, it ceases to be truth. There's a paradox for you to contemplate this week. It is another paradox about the Christian faith.

But the story this week, again if you are to be part of the minority that hears it, is also about how a crowd can be manipulated. Politicians have known this phenomenon for a long time, perhaps since the beginning of social organization. Because it's the leaders that get the crowd to shout, "Barabbas!" instead of, "Jesus!" Here's an interesting quote that has been making the rounds of late. Hermann Goering, the second in command during the Third Reich, the second in command to Hitler, is famous for having said the following:

"Why, of course the people don't want war....But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for their lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."

Hermann Goering in the '30s. And you see, that may seem remote, like Nazi Germany way back then, but the truth is it's a mechanism, that's indigenous to each one of us who is part of whatever crowd we might find ourselves in. It's happening today. That same social contagion that created Nazism in the '30s and '40s...let's be honest, it's the same kind that is also there around the water cooler at work. Or the staff room of this church. The basket weaving society of Lawrenceville. The guys at poker night. The New Jersey state legislature.

So what do we do about that? What is there for us to do, as a society gathered around this story today, on this Palm Sunday? This is my suggestion--it's a simple one. Look at the cross. You don't even have to understand the cross--just look at it. And for my money, it should be right up there, above me. It's down here, you can't really see it very well....But look at the cross. Hear the story of...the cross.

My challenge to the congregation is to come on Maundy Thursday to hear that part of the story. So many people come for the pageant of today, and Easter. But people--be part of the minority that hears the story on Maundy Thursday. You don't even have to understand the mystery of the cross, but if you look at the cross long enough, you begin to realize that it is God's great, "NO!" to this funny business of the crowd. It's as if God were saying, "No longer can you do this kind of thing and not know." It's basically saying, "We did the worst thing, as a crowd, we possibly could do. We killed the ultimate innocent victim, the son of God." And if you believe that--that in part we, ourselves, are guilty for that crime--then no longer can we keep doing that. We, in a sense, inoculate ourselves from the social contagion by looking at the cross. Once we've seen that, you can't look on with the crowd as they drag the man through the streets. No longer can you feel good about victimizing anyone, whether it's Reginald Denny, or gossip over some guy who was an idiot at work.

So...Reginald Denny. Let's just go back to that story as we end today. You may recall the real heroes that day, the day of the Rodney King riots: some residents of that neighborhood. They saw the crowd beating Reginald Denny, and instead of becoming a face in that crowd, they faced the crowd. They gathered around the victim--a white guy, to be sure, someone who elicited their rage as well--but they saw the crowd wielding sticks and pipes and concrete, and they faced that crowd, and they risked their own lives to save Reginald Denny's. And I have a feeling that those are people who had looked upon the cross, and somehow knew the power of the cross, and the mystery of the cross. And it was in that power that they rescued Reginald Denny from those angry people.

So this week, if you're a face in the crowd, may it be a face looking upon the cross. And may you know the mystery of that cross, which leads us to an empty tomb, and another reality, a week from today.

Amen.

April 1, 2007

Jeff Vamos

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