'Another Crowd' : A Reflection for Passiontide

 

We’ve been here before.

Do you remember?

It was another crowd, in another place.

 

He fed us. He fed us all.

He did it, they say, with just a few loaves and a couple of fish.

But he fed us too with God’s Truth and the Mystery of Love,

And he did it with just a few words.

But what telling words they were

with what passion they were uttered

and what need we had of them.  

 

We’ve been here before.

Do you remember?

It was another crowd, in another place.

 

We stood at the roadside

Cheering and waving palms.

He entered the city as both servant and king

Glorious not in pomp but in humility.

And he rode on a donkey,

a simple beast of burden,

By no means the grandest of creatures;

And yet the Lord had need of it.

Might he then have need of us?

 

We’ve been here before.

Do you remember?

It was another crowd in another place.

 

Faith gave way to disappointment,

and it wasn’t only Pilate who washed his hands

of the servant king,

for we – not merely an audience but now judge and jury  

instead called for Barabbas.  

‘Give us a thief rather than a failure’.

We who had once cried ‘Hosanna’ now cried ‘Crucify!’

For what need might we have of one who had so failed to conquer?

 

We’ve been here before.

Do you remember?

It was another crowd in another place.

 

Then, as the sky turned dark

And mocking voices were stilled,

As silence fell

and he prepared to breathe his last,

his words of protest were to that God absent now to him

as so often, it seems, to us.

And other words that follow

are those of compassion and grace,

‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they are doing’.

And then we saw; and then we knew

that it was here on this bizarre, barbaric throne

that this our king truly conquered

and love overcame

our fickleness and sin,

and life our fear of death.   

 

We’ve been here before.

We come to remember

in this holy time and in this sacred space.

 

We come to be fed like the crowd on the hillside.

We bring palms of praise like the crowd at the roadside.

We come heavy-laden with the burden of failure -

the times we’ve betrayed and denied Him,

the times when we’ve howled for his death.

And we come once again to that cross on a hill

Where his brokenness heals ours

and all we can do is fall silent in wonder

at a love so amazing.

© Trevor Thurston-Smith 2021