The Crowds That Followed Jesus
Listening to some folks, you’d get the idea that Jesus was always thinning the herd. They take a few isolated statements and incidents from his life and turn them into his standard stump speech.
But the truth is that Jesus did far more to attract huge crowds than he did to shoo them away. And let’s be honest. The crowds didn’t come because they were hungering and thirsting for God. They came for the same reason most of us would have come: because they’d heard rumors of a holy man who healed the sick, gave sight to the blind, cast out demons, cured lepers, and even raised the dead.
That will draw a crowd.
When those crowds came to see him, Jesus didn’t chew them out for their mixed motives. He didn’t chide them for selfishly seeking miracles. He didn’t sneak off to the desert to see if they were still committed enough to come out and find him.
It was just the opposite. He had compassion on them. He healed their sick. He told them about the kingdom. He called them to righteousness. Then he moved on to the next town to do it all over again.
And the crowds were fickle. Incredibly fickle. Most returned home right after the show was over. There is little evidence that many were profoundly changed or converted. When they thought he might deliver them from the Romans, they cried out, “Hosanna!” But when it became obvious that he wasn’t interested in overthrowing the Romans, they cried out, “Give us Barabbas!”
Yet Jesus continued to pursue the masses. He didn’t write them off, even though he knew their hearts and the inevitable endgame. He continued to give them undeserved chance after undeserved chance. Certainly, he thinned the herd a time or two, once to the point that so few were left that he asked the twelve disciples if the were going to leave too. But that was not his normal pattern. It was a onetime sermon.
Many people who long for a more radicalized church miss this. They place their emphasis on the difficulty and challenge of following Christ rather than on the good news of his burden-bearing grace. And when they do speak of his great love, it’s primarily as a motivation for us to do more—and a reason why those who do less aren’t worthy to be included. People who feel this way don’t realize it, but they want a church that looks a lot more like the ministry of John the Baptist than the ministry of Jesus Christ.