The Ecstasy Before The Agony

“The large crowd that had come to the feast heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem. So they took branches of palm trees and went out to meet him, crying out, ‘Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, even the King of Israel!’ And Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it, just as it is written,

‘Fear not, daughter of Zion;

behold, your king is coming,

sitting on a donkey’s colt!’

His disciples did not understand these things at first, but when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these things had been written about him and had been done to him. The crowd that had been with him when he called Lazarus out of the tomb and raised him from the dead continued to bear witness. The reason why the crowd went to meet him was that they heard he had done this sign. So the Pharisees said to one another, ‘You see that you are gaining nothing. Look, the world has gone after him.’”

“The thrill of victory, and the agony of defeat…” This phrase became iconic during the days of my youth. The phrase was heard weekly during the introduction of the weekly television production, The Wide World of Sports throughout the time period of 1961 to 1998. The phrase might well be used to describe the attitude of those who followed Jesus of Nazareth on that exciting day when He entered Jerusalem for the final time shortly before His crucifixion.

Jesus was haled by the crowds as He entered the city while seated on the back of a little donkey. However, His entrance stirred the religious leaders to a murderous fury cementing their determination to do something to rid themselves of this persistent irritant. I propose to review these events, focusing first on the excitement of the populace before reminding us of what His entrance presaged and how the same populace would react to His crucifixion, engineered by the religious leaders.

Even though we might be inclined to deny it, our tendency is to be emotional, reactionary creatures. We witness some particular action, and as if we actually understand what we are seeing, we react. Our reactions are not always wrong; but that doesn’t mean that we understand what we are doing. In fact, we seldom fully comprehend what we have witnessed. We see, but we don’t really understand. We always filter what we witness through the lens of our background experiences, through our ability to grasp what we are witnessing, and through the influences of those about us.

In that moment when we witness a given event, we may be astonished, but our astonishment is often little more than entertainment. Like audience members watching a magic show, we see the amazing stunts, but we can’t explain what we just saw. Nevertheless, we felt a thrill at that moment. Caught up in the excitement generated by a great crowd, we may imagine this is the way things always will be.

On one occasion, I listened to a popular evangelist verbally pummel the sitting President of the United States before delivering a brief emotional story designed to do little more than stir the emotions of his listeners. He quickly followed this with an appeal for his audience to dedicate themselves to serve Jesus. The altar was almost immediately filled as men and women left their seats to stream to the front of the auditorium. Many of the men kneeling at the altar that evening were students who sat under my tutelage.

As I exited the auditorium that evening, a prominent businesswoman spoke to me, saying, “Doctor Stark, wasn’t that a powerful message?” I stopped walking before responding, “Mary, what did you see and hear tonight? I saw a Baptist bully who verbally bashed the leader of our nation before tugging at the heart strings of those who were present tonight.” My soul was disturbed and my heart was heavy. I had witnessed a dreadful act of manipulation from the pulpit of the church I dearly loved.

The following day, my heart still in turmoil at what I had observed the evening before, I asked in one of the classes I was teaching how many of my students had gone forward at the time of the altar call the previous evening. At least two-thirds of the men present raised their hand. “Tell me,” I asked of those indicating they had gone forward to the altar, “what decision you made and how it will shape your life.” Though several attempted to answer, not a single scholar was able to clearly state what decision had been made or how that decision would shape his life going forward. Caught up in the excitement of the moment, they simply wanted to experience what was happening, but they didn’t have a clear understanding of what they were doing. It was an example of the emotional, reactionary nature of otherwise good men.