Taking Notice of the Crowd
Mark 2:1-12
Last week at this time, there was a group of us heading back to Orange Grove from West Virginia. If you heard moaning and groaning last Sunday morning, it may have been the sound of people overwhelmed by the Spirit of God as Alan preached…or it could have been the sound of sore skiers whining for ibuprofen. Our trip was great except for one thing – the crowd. There were people everywhere! There was little room – on the slopes, in the cafeteria, in the bathrooms, on the ski lifts – the crowd was overwhelming! Toward the end of the day, everyone was waiting for the crowd to thin out. Then you could do some real skiing!
Battling the crowd is not just a skiing thing. If the roads are crowded, it’s hard to get somewhere and it can be more dangerous. If you have ever let your kids sleep with you, you know that kids can crowd up a bed in a hurry! We go to the grocery story an ungodly hours so we can avoid the crowds. Some people prefer smaller churches simply because they don’t want to get lost in the crowd of a larger church. While extroverted people crave a crowd, introverted people like to avoid the crowd.
The story we have today from Mark’s Gospel is not really about a crowd, but the presence of the crowd makes this one of the most well-loved stories in the Gospels. Without the crowd, the paralytic goes through the front door. Without the crowd, maybe the four who help the paralytic don’t stretch their faith. The focus of this story is normally on Jesus who does the healing (and rightfully so), or the paralytic who gets healed, or even the four guys who help the paralytic to Jesus. Rarely is much attention given to the crowd.
I want us to think for a few moments about this crowd though. We’re a crowd here this morning. We may not be big by some standards but we’re a crowd nonetheless. Most of us spend a lot of times in crowds. And we do some things as crowds…and have some things done to us by crowds …that maybe we haven’t thought much about before.
Jesus had just returned to Capernaum. Word was spreading about his work. And not surprisingly, a crowd had gathered. In Mark’s Gospel, crowds are often seen as both a validation of the power of Jesus’ message, and as an indicator that Jesus is misunderstood.[1] When you see a crowd in Mark, the people are desperately trying to get close to Jesus because of what he’s done or said, or they are scratching their heads in confusion at him. We have both of those in our text today.
Notice a couple of things about this crowd.
First, it was a tight crowd. People were jockeying for position and nudging themselves closer to Jesus all the time. Some of the people were probably genuinely interested. Many were probably rubberneckers only looking for a bit of entertainment or they were curious about this carpenter turned preacher. The picture in my mind is similar to how people today crowd outside the door of Walmart on the day after Thanksgiving ready for the store to open. Some are shopping. Some are merely looking. The way Mark tells the story, these people had heard about this great teacher and healer and they wanted to check him out.
Second, notice that there were some Scribes in the crowd. These Scribes were the religious professionals of the day. They spent their time pouring over the Scriptures. They studied and memorized and shared their wisdom with those in the synagogue. They were the church people of Jesus’ day…the insiders…the protectors of the faith. At this point, they may have had their suspicions about Jesus but they also wanted to hear what this teacher had to say. The scribes weren’t necessarily bad people. Their caution though deemed them almost unreachable.
Since we are a crowd this morning, I wonder if either of these two characteristics fit us…fit you?
Many in the crowd in Capernaum were pushing and shoving trying to get closer to Jesus. Do we have that kind of urgency to get close to Jesus? Church growth experts say that when 80% of your sanctuary is filled, that you better think about building a new meeting place because people don’t like to have to get too close to one another. That wasn’t the case in Capernaum. These folks were elbow-to-elbow, pushing and shoving, filling up all the space because they wanted to get closer to Jesus. The yard outside the home where Jesus was at was probably 120% full.
This was the kind of crowd preachers dream about for their churches on Sunday morning. Yet, most of the churches around the world today will have ample room. Now, I know that I’m not Jesus…nor is any other preacher for that matter. But the Jesus that I talk about…and the Jesus we worship each week…is the same one who healed the paralytic in Capernaum. Why aren’t we jockeying for position and straining to hear what Jesus has to say to us today? Why aren’t people up on the roof digging through the shingles to hear what God has to say to us today? If we believe the Spirit of God is still active in the Church today, then Jesus is still healing, and still has a word for us. That should set all of us on edge!
Yet, too often, we have another characteristic of the crowd in Capernaum – we keep people from getting to Jesus. Do you ever keep someone from getting to Jesus? I mentioned to you a couple of weeks ago that the greatest advertisement / marketing / witness for and against Jesus is Christians. How do you fit into that? Most of us probably don’t intentionally stand in the way of someone getting to Jesus, yet it happens all the time.
Last week, I got a call from a UNC journalism student. She was working on an assignment where she was supposed to do a story on a current event. She chose to write about the role of icons in religious life in area churches. She chose this topic because of the current uproar in Islamic circles over cartoons depicting Muhammad in degrading ways. When this student called, she told me she had contacted church after church…pastor after pastor…and no one had time for her project. Well, quite honestly, I didn’t really want to do it either but I said I’d meet with her and answer her questions.
You can call it guilt. You can call it whatever you like but I wasn’t about to be another person who potentially stood in the way of this person encountering Jesus. I didn’t want to simply be in the crowd who was taking up space. This student said she wasn’t really a “church person,” but who knows what might come of this encounter.
I believe it’s often in the simplest of ways that we usher someone into the presence of Jesus…or take up space in keeping them from getting to Jesus.
So do either of these characteristics of the crowd fit you? Are you nurturing a sense of urgency to get closer to Jesus these days? I hope so. He’s still healing. He’s still speaking to us. Are you standing in the way of someone else getting to Jesus? I hope not. Like it or not, we’re all part of the crowd.
Amen.