On October 13, a woman was attacked in a Philadelphia subway in broad daylight, in front of several other passengers. [It was widely reported] that the assault lasted several minutes before anyone intervened - although some commuters turned their phones to record the incident. People saw and did nothing.
This is not the first time something like this has happened and it won't be the last. But it garnered national news because people fretted that this type of incident may be the way we are now, after months of self isolation and self protection and the breakdown of social mores. Have we forgotten how to be together in a public place? Who we are in a crowd?
There is a well-documented psychological phenomenon called the bystander effect. Its basic assertion is that people are more reluctant to intervene in an emergency when others are present. In fact, the more people there are, the less likely any individual is to help any other person in trouble.
There are so many barriers to speaking up and stepping in, even when the events unfolding in front of us are clearly cruel and wrong. Perhaps we are concerned for our safety, or we are doubting our assessment of the situation, or we assume that someone else must be better suited to the task. A crowd magnifies all these barriers. A crowd makes it harder, not easier to act.
As Jesus leaves Jericho, he is accompanied by a large crowd. Jesus’ entourage pass a blind beggar sitting on the side of the road as they journey out of the city. When the man begins to call out to Jesus, the crowd attempts to silence him. Jesus halts in his tracks. Watch what Jesus does next. He does not go straight to the individual man, but turns instead to the crowd. Jesus recruits the crowd to assist in what he’s about to do next. At his command, the crowd shifts from sternly ordering the beggar to be quiet to speaking words of encouragement and joy. “Take heart; get up, he is calling you.” Jesus then goes on to heal the man called Bartimaeus.
In a literary sense, the crowd is an important character to track throughout the Gospels. In some stories, the crowd is amazed by Jesus’ words, in others, the crowd is enraged by his pronouncements. It is the crowd who will welcome Jesus into the city on Palm Sunday; and it is the crowd, of course, who will demand his death on Good Friday. Each of these scenes reinforces the point that Jesus does not just relate to individuals. He challenges, implores, and empowers collections of people throughout his ministry.
And so, very deliberately, there are two transformations that occur in this Gospel. The most obvious is the healing of Bartimaeus. But that transformation is inextricably tied to this first transformation: the crowd’s conversion from callousness to compassion. It did not have to be so - Jesus could have strode directly to the beggar himself. But he chose to invite the crowd into the moment of healing - thereby healing all those gathered, too.
Jesus does not allow for bystanders.
This scene from Mark’s Gospel is my go to passage for the practice of sacred imagination. When I guide this meditation, I help the practitioners bring themselves into story. Together we imagine the smell of the dust of the road, the murmur of the crowd around us, the press of body to body on a busy street. Sometimes, people find themselves in the story as Bartimaeus. They hear Jesus ask them, “What do you want me to do for you?” Sometimes, an answer even bubbles up from inside them. Often, without my prompting, people imagine themselves as an unnamed person in the crowd. In this story, they still have an important role to play. They even have a line, a beautiful one: “Take heart, get up, he is calling you.”
As I go about living my own story, I'm probably usually thinking of myself as the named protagonist of my life, figuring out my own personal relationship to Jesus. But perhaps it's just as important to recognize who God might be calling me to be even when I am an unnamed member of the crowd. It could be that those moments when I think I'm hiding in the inaction of a group or it's none of my business, those may actually be times when I'm meant to play an anonymous role in Jesus' life-changing transformation of another person.
In a world filled with poverty and neglect, what kind of person does Jesus ask us to be in a crowd?
In a world defined by bullying and cruelty, what kind of person do we want to raise our children to be in a group?
Take a moment now to consider the parts of your life where you have situated yourself as a bystander. How might Jesus be inviting you to turn to another saying, "Take heart, get up, he is calling you?'
Today, we here, we are a crowd. We are called here both in our individual relationship with Christ and in our collective relationship to God as a community gathered.
Even now Jesus is shaking us from our bystander stupor and asking us to participate in his healing of the world.
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