{"id":546,"date":"2026-06-25T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-06-25T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.spendayearwithjesus.com\/djp\/?p=546"},"modified":"2025-04-23T05:54:17","modified_gmt":"2025-04-23T10:54:17","slug":"return-of-the-crowds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wjes.us\/b\/?p=546","title":{"rendered":"Return of the Crowds"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_830\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.spendayearwithjesus.com\/djp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/00.159.109_PS1_cropped.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-830\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-830 \" title=\"Send in the crowds\" alt=\"00.159.109_PS1_cropped\" src=\"http:\/\/www.spendayearwithjesus.com\/djp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/00.159.109_PS1_cropped-300x163.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"163\" srcset=\"https:\/\/wjes.us\/b\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/00.159.109_PS1_cropped-300x163.jpg 300w, https:\/\/wjes.us\/b\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/00.159.109_PS1_cropped.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-830\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">James Tissot (French, 1836-1902). &#8220;Jesus Sits by the Seashore and Preaches,&#8221; 1886-1894. Oil on board. Brooklyn Museum.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>It feels natural to imagine Jesus sitting on a large, elevated\u00a0rock speaking to\u00a0 quiet, riveted crowds.<\/p>\n<p>This elevated image makes sense given the typical church experience like a wedding or a funeral. You sit quietly.\u00a0An eloquent speaker\u00a0stands on\u00a0an elevated\u00a0platform. (In what time was the average church experience outside; if it ever was?)<\/p>\n<p>Many people have pointed out that the first-century experience is remote from our own. While some of the experiences are very different, we do not want to miss the similarities. The core of human experience persists.<\/p>\n<p>For example, Jesus observed the hunger of\u00a0the members of more than one listening crowd. How attentive are people in your crowd when the speaker continues into the lunch or dinner hour?<\/p>\n<p>Among\u00a0a crowd of thousands, a man\u00a0yelled at Jesus to settle his inheritance dispute. Jesus responded\u00a0with a general\u00a0rebuke of greed. I can&#8217;t imagine that man or his party were very attentive after that response. And surely the man&#8217;s comment\u00a0was one of many outdoor interruptions.<\/p>\n<p>At\u00a0the temple,\u00a0Jesus joined in\u00a0alongside other Rabbis offering commentary on the Law. While Jesus spoke with authority,\u00a0he was\u00a0competing with\u00a0other\u00a0lecturers among the alcoves, perhaps more eloquent orators.<\/p>\n<p>In addition, the noise of the temple courts\u00a0and the surrounding city reduced earshot, limiting the crowd size even if there were ready listeners.<\/p>\n<p>In making the leap from our experience to Jesus&#8217; experience, we need to introduce\u00a0appropriate amounts of\u00a0friction. Perpetually-attentive crowds are just not realistic, even for Jesus. (That&#8217;s why I love the looks on the people&#8217;s faces in the Tissot painting above.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It feels natural to imagine Jesus sitting on a large, elevated\u00a0rock speaking to\u00a0 quiet, riveted crowds. This elevated image makes sense given the typical church experience like a wedding or a funeral. You sit quietly.\u00a0An eloquent speaker\u00a0stands on\u00a0an elevated\u00a0platform. (In what time was the average church experience outside; if it ever was?) Many people have [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-546","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-telling-the-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wjes.us\/b\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wjes.us\/b\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wjes.us\/b\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wjes.us\/b\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wjes.us\/b\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=546"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wjes.us\/b\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wjes.us\/b\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wjes.us\/b\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wjes.us\/b\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}