Palm Sunday to Good Friday: the Crowds

We hear it all the time. Here’s how the story goes:
The same crowd who welcomed Jesus into the city on Palm Sunday with palm fronds and expressions of worship, turned on him at his trial only five days later on Good Friday”. This shows how fickle human nature is.

We can be very fickle at times, but is that really what happened here? What do the scriptures say and imply, and what does history suggest? Was it the same crowd on each occasion, or were they two different crowds?

Jesus’ popularity

Jesus was extremely popular with the public, the common people, and some in the Jewish leadership. He spent three years of public ministry featuring miracles, healings, and deliverance of demonic spirits. He showed love and compassion to those who came to him. Jesus was famous, and almost everyone had heard about him. Many believed that he was the Messiah.

Jewish leadership

The Jewish leadership council, however, called the Sanhedrin, had a totally different perspective on Jesus. They had political power given to them by Rome, and were working with the Roman occupiers to keep peace. They felt threatened by Jesus. John 11:47-53 reveals their fear that the Romans would come and depose them and put even tighter screws on the Jewish nation. After this incident, they ramped up their efforts to kill him.

Their primary interest was keeping peace with Rome, and in doing so, preserving their power. I believe many of them were sincere in believing that their role was the salvation of Israel, in a political sense. In their view, they were the guardians of Israel, and they wouldn’t let anything upset that balance.

The gospel writers record many confrontations between Jesus and the religious leaders. He could see into their hearts and pointed out their hypocritical practices. Matthew records in chapter 23 a long diatribe against their behavior, calling them not only hypocrites but a brood of vipers, snakes, blind guides, and many other descriptive and derogatory terms.

However, at the end of the chapter, he expressed his compassion and disappointment that they would not receive and believe in him. Sometimes it seems that he was deliberately getting under their skin, out of his compassion for them. It could have been God’s plan to antagonize them so that they would sentence him to die for our sins.

Leaders take action

Fully aware of Jesus’ popularity among the people, they first tried to discredit him when Jesus taught in the temple, primarily early in the week. They asked questions like “is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar?” and others that they hoped would diminish his popularity with the people, and get him in trouble with Rome. However, Jesus confounded their questions each time with perfect answers that only God could provide. And his popularity with the people grew.

So the leaders decided they needed to take action themselves. Matthew records in 26:3-5. “Then the chief priests and the elders of the people assembled in the courtyard of the high priest, who was named Caiaphas, and they conspired to arrest Jesus in a treacherous way and kill him. ‘Not during the festival,‘ they said, ‘so there won’t be rioting among the people.‘”

They could have arrested Jesus in the temple that week, but they refrained because of his popularity. It would have caused a riot and drawn too much attention from the Romans. They were presented with a golden opportunity when an insider, Judas Iscariot approached them, described in Matthew 26:14-16. He arranged an opportunity for Jesus to be arrested late at night in a deserted place, the garden of Gethsemane.

The secret trial

From there they brought Jesus to an all-night trial before the Sanhedrin. Since they couldn’t legally convict Jesus at night, they officially condemned him at the break of day on Friday. The proceedings were not public, and only the Sanhedrin and their employees were present. Early Friday morning, they took him to the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, since they didn’t have the authority to put him to death.

The crowd before Pilate

Here is where the “fickle crowd” idea was born. Those who adopt this theory assume that the trial before Pilate had become known publicly. However, it is far more likely that the Sanhedrin wanted to keep this trial a secret as well, for the same reasons they arrested him at night. The temple police and other employees numbered in the hundreds, and it would have been easy for the leaders to require their employees to be there and even to tell them how to behave.

John mentions this specifically in John 19, when Pilate brought Jesus out after his flogging and said “behold the man” in verse 5, hoping to elicit sympathy. Verse 6 says “When the chief priests and temple servants (or police, or officers) saw him, they shouted ‘crucify! crucify!’”. We can imagine the scene, with some of the key leaders shouting “give us Barabbas”, “we have no king but Caesar”, and “crucify him”, and egging their employees on to do the same.

God’s purposes fulfilled

There may well have been others in the crowd who were sympathetic to Jesus, but the temple establishment would have been numerous enough to drown them out. It was still morning when the trial was taking place. Jesus was led through the streets to the place of execution, and the public started to become aware. He exchanged words with some women along the way, and some of his supporters began to gather there and at the cross.

By this time, it was too late for the “riot” that the Sanhedrin feared. They planned these quick, secret trials to keep Jesus’ supporters out of the picture. The Romans were brutally efficient in carrying out sentences for the condemned. In the end, it was the will of the Father that Jesus go to the cross. He uses events like this, even man’s sins and weaknesses, to accomplish His purposes.

We can have confidence that the crowds on Palm Sunday were predominantly those who loved Jesus. Many were convinced that he truly was the Messiah. No doubt, many were disappointed and confused, hoping for a conquering hero to overthrow the Romans. But in the days following these dramatic events, Jesus rose from the dead, appeared to more than 500 people, and his Holy Spirit-filled followers “turned the world upside down!” (Acts 17:6)

Christmas/Easter Good Friday Palm Sunday