Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, order your disciples to stop.” He answered, “I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.”
Luke 19:39-40
There is a crowd following Jesus, but Jesus is suspicious about crowds. They are notoriously fickle in their affiliations. They are more predictable, however, in what they want. They want to be together, to feel the rush of excitement as they surge together. Once you have experienced a winning season, you just want more.
Or so I have been told. I grew up following the Vanderbilt Commodores, so what do I know? You’d be better off asking one of the hard-hatted Giants fans who watched Payton’s kid brother take out the GOAT on multiple occasions what it is like to be a champion. Even for that crowd, success has been a fleeting thing. Hard times come and hard times go, just to come again.
And there is always someone looking to cash in. They want to build a bigger stadium to charge more for smaller seats and take the money to pay off the investors rather than build up the team. Or, in another arena, somebody comes along touting better living through equities, only to send the markets on a roller coaster because they can make it pay for themselves. Maybe in either case, the edifice we had come to believe represented the best of us gets blown down like so many trees in a hurricane.
Jesus sees it coming. He is the venerated edifice and the wrecking ball has reached the apex of its backswing. There’s about to be a reckoning, and he’s going to take the brunt of it. But there is a defiance in the way he sits on top of that donkey, like “what are you going to do to me that will ultimately make any change in what I intend to do here?” Come on and bring your best shot, let me see what you’ve got. Bring on your wrecking ball.