Daybreaks: Daily Reflections for Lent & Easter
by Ron Rolheiser, OMI

“The crowds preceding him and those following kept crying out and saying:
‘Hosanna to the Son of David;
blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord;
hosanna in the highest’.”

(MATTHEW 21:9)

In many churches today when the passion is read, the story is broken up in such a way that one narrator proclaims the overall text, another person takes the part of Jesus, several others take the parts of the various people who spoke during his arrest and trial, and the congregation as a whole is asked to proclaim aloud the parts that were spoken by the crowds.

This could not be more appropriate because a congregation in any Christian church today, and we, as individual members of those congregations, in our actions and in our words, in countless ways, mimic perfectly the actions and words of Jesus’ contemporaries in their weaknesses, betrayals, jealousies, religious blindness, and false faith. We also indict Jesus countless times by how we live. 

For example, in Matthew’s account of the trial of Jesus, at a certain moment in the trial, Pontius Pilate comes out to the people, the same people who just five days before had chanted for Jesus to be their king, and tells them that, according to custom at Passover time, he is willing to release one Jewish criminal being held in custody. 

Pontius Pilate had in custody a particularly infamous murderer named Barabbas. So Pilate asks the crowd: “Which one do you want me to release to you, …Barabbas, or Jesus called Messiah?” The crowd roars back, “Barabbas!” Pilate then asks, ” Then what shall I do with Jesus called Messiah?” The crowd replies in that verse, “Let him be crucified!” We can make this very obvious extrapolation: in every moral choice we make, big or small, ultimately the question we are standing in front of is the same question Pilate asked the crowd: Whom should I release for you, Jesus or Barabbas? Graciousness or violence? Selflessness or self-centeredness?
 

It is the same, of course, with our actions. Like Jesus’ disciples, we tend to stay with Jesus more when things are going well, when temptation is not too strong, and when we are not facing real, personal threat. But, like Jesus’ original followers, we tend to abandon and betray when things get hard and threatening.

Our spontaneous inclination is to judge very harshly those who surrounded Jesus at his arrest, trial, and sentencing. How could they not see what they were doing? How could they be so blind and jealous? How could they choose false security over God’s ultimate shelter? A murderer over the Messiah? How could his followers so easily abandon him?

The choices that those around Jesus made during his trial and sentencing are identical to the choices we make now. And most days we are not doing any better than they did because, still, far too often, given blindness and self-interest, we say, “Let him be crucified!” (46-47).