The crowd

March 31st, 2026
by Mike O'Shea

Dustin Schmidt addressed the topic of “the crowd” while preaching at our church a few days ago on Palm Sunday. He pointed out that the same people who praised Jesus when he rode into Jerusalem hurled insults at him as he carried his cross out.

“The crowd” plays a prominent role in Jesus’ crucifixion. They don’t “pull the trigger,” so to speak, but neither do they stay his execution. One minute they hail Jesus as their Messiah, and the next minute they’re trading him for a convicted murderer.

And therein probably lies why they did what they did. They wanted Jesus to mount an insurrection like Barabbas had. They wanted him to kill Romans like Barabbas had. If Jesus wasn’t going to do that, best to send him to his death and get Barrabas back.

But you get the sense when reading the Gospels “the crowd” isn’t acting as an individual might. “They” ARE acting as one, but not as one rational soul under the influence of God’s spirit.

“They” are being moved by a collective force that exists between them.

One of God’s first words to Jeremiah the prophet was a word of protection from the very people he would be sent to speak to.

8 And don’t be afraid of the people, for I will be with you and will protect you. I, the Lord, have spoken!” 9 Then the Lord reached out and touched my mouth and said,

“Look, I have put my words in your mouth!

10 Today I appoint you to stand up

against nations and kingdoms.

Some you must uproot and tear down,

destroy and overthrow.

Others you must build up

and plant.”[1]

There’s a reason God had to encourage Jeremiah. “The crowd” can be fierce, especially when it feels threatened.

But “the crowd” isn’t under its own control. The truth is “the crowd” is made and then “the crowd” is moved.

By whom? By the political, economic, and religious elites. By the culture makers.

In Jesus’ day, people like King Herod, Caiaphas the High Priest, and Pilate the Roman Governor shaped and structured society. It was their fame, power, and wealth that everyone was supposed to want. They decided how life “worked” for everyone else, and it always worked to keep them in positions of privilege.

But then Jesus came along, disrupting their social vision with his miracles and teachings about the first being last and the last being first. The elites had to do something about Jesus lest he undermine their privileged status.

So, they manipulated the very crowd they created. Having shaped a “deep culture” built on certain values and assumptions (values and assumptions that were wrong), the religious, economic, and political elites leveraged those convictions to serve their own purposes.

“The crowd” was a pawn in their game. As Jesus said from the cross, they didn’t know what they were doing.

But this was a delicate manipulation. Jesus was persuasive and crowds can be easily moved. The Gospel writers make it clear that they considered taking action against Jesus several times but chose not to because they were afraid of the crowd. They were afraid of the very crowd they created, suggesting their hold on culture was fragile and they knew it.

Having shaped culture through fear, however, they knew at just the right time they could leverage it as a powerful resource. And they did.

Cultural elites are still shaping and structuring society, deciding for the rest of us how life “works.” It is their fame, power, and wealth that we still covet and seek. Without our knowledge of conscious consent, they have shaped how we see and understand reality. What we care about? What we would fight to protect?

And like the crowd that participated in Jesus’ crucifixion, we still allow ourselves to be moved. Motivated by fear (mainly fear of loss), we take action against those we perceive as threats. And despite 2,000 years of theological clarity on this topic, it still does not occur to us that what we do to one another we do to God.

Prophets like Jeremiah were right to fear the crowd. Crowds think they know more than they do and they are willing to fight to the death to protect themselves, even from God. But they don’t know what they’re doing.

Thank God Jesus was not afraid of the crowd. Thank God he received the same encouragement from the Father Jeremiah did and listened to it. Thank God he spoke even when it was hard and he knew the crowds would not listen or understand.

Because of Jesus, we don’t have to operate as “the crowd.”

[1] Jer 1:8-10 NLT