Entering Holy Week with John
Today, as has been mentioned, is Palm Sunday. We’re going to take some time to explore and reflect on Palm Sunday, but also to look a little bit beyond Palm Sunday.
Who knows that the week we are in now, that starts today, is called Holy Week? Who’s heard that before? It’s called Holy Week. The word “holy” simply means “set apart,” and so this week is a week that is set apart.
It’s really interesting, in the Scriptures, to see what happens in Holy Week between the Sunday that is today—Palm Sunday—and the Friday that we’ll get to.
We’re going to spend some time in the book of John in the New Testament. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are the four Gospels, and we’ll be in the fourth Gospel, John, focusing largely around chapter 18 and into chapter 19 as well.
The Power of the Crowd in Holy Week
I want to talk this morning about the power of the crowd. The power of the crowd. Someone say, “The power of the crowd.” The crowd is powerful. The end.
It’s not the end.
The crowd is powerful. Many of you will have experienced, likely in your own lives, the power of the crowd. As I was thinking this week of an example from my own life that might show the power of the crowd in a slightly negative way, the only story I could think of was from when I was younger. I must have been about ten or eleven.
Me and my friends – I did have friends! – were building a den in our garden. Who’s ever built a den? So good. We built this den outside in the garden, and we decided that in our den we needed a doorbell, so that people could come into the den, but not unannounced. They would need to ring the bell first.
And so it was determined by the crowd. Now, you’re going to have to use your imagination a little bit, because there were three of us, so “the crowd” really is the other two. But can you go with me on this, church? These other two people – the crowd – decided that we needed a doorbell.
There was an old abandoned house in the village where we lived, and we knew from previous experience that in the garden of this abandoned house there was a door, and on the door was a doorbell. And we determined – the crowd determined – and I was just taken along by the crowd (that’s the point of the story) that no one was going to miss this doorbell, because it was an abandoned house. So we would go and get the doorbell.
So we took a hammer and went to the house. We trespassed into the garden, took the hammer, and attempted to get the doorbell off the doorframe to take back to the den. We didn’t actually outwork the fullness of the plan, because we got caught.
There was a snitch. This guy, honestly, he told my mum and dad, and then I was in a lot of trouble for a long time. But the point is this: it wasn’t my idea. It was the crowd’s idea, and I just went along with the crowd – these two people who, for the purposes of this analogy, are “the crowd.” I was taken up in crowd “wisdom,” which it’s fair to say wasn’t particularly wise. Would you agree?
It’s a pretty poor example, if we’re honest, but what can I say? I’m fairly resilient to peer pressure, so it’s the best I’ve got. I’m sure you can think in your life, in your experience, of times where you have gone along with a crowd in situations and circumstances to do things that you know perhaps aren’t really the right thing, where you’ve allowed the crowd to think on your behalf. Is that anyone in this room this morning?
We see an example of this in the Scriptures here in Holy Week, as the way is prepared for Jesus to enter into Jerusalem.
Conditional Faith and the Unexpected King
We see this on Palm Sunday, which we can read about a few chapters earlier in John chapter 12. In that passage, Jesus rides into Jerusalem on a donkey to fulfill a prophecy given all the way back in the book of Zechariah.
The crowd is there, recognizing Jesus as he rides in, and they are shouting, “Hosanna,” which literally means, “Save us now.” “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Blessed is the King of Israel.” This is the crowd’s perspective on that first Palm Sunday.
It’s called Palm Sunday because they are laying down branches of palm trees as he rides along. They’re laying down palms, even their garments, to make a way for Jesus to enter into Jerusalem like a king, shouting, “Hosanna! Blessed is the King!”
Let’s just pause here for a second. While this crowd is laying down branches and palms to honour Jesus, Ron came up earlier during worship with a word from the Lord about our preparation—about preparing the way for Jesus. As we prepare the way and lay the groundwork, so the Lord will also lay the groundwork for what is to come. Amen?
Do we believe that, as we are on this journey as Assemble Church, as we are preparing to take new ground in this new building, as we’re preparing to change our physical space to be ready and available for what God wants to do, we can trust that God is already at work, laying foundations for what we are about to see and be part of? Do we believe that? Amen.
So the people of Israel, the Jewish people, are laying down these palms and crying, “Hosanna! Save us now!” You can feel, even as you read the text, that there is a great sense of anticipation about what the crowd is expecting Jesus to do.
And this is where things already start to turn a bit sour, if we read ahead with some forethought. Because as they lay down their palms and garments and prepare the way, as they declare that Jesus Christ is the King of Israel, the expectations they place on him are huge. But as we will see, those expectations are not going to align with what Jesus actually does.
In John chapter 12, the people are expecting that Jesus is going to come into Jerusalem, raise an army, and become a military leader. You have to understand, at this time the Jewish people in Jerusalem are living under occupation by the Roman Empire. They are an oppressed people in their own land. So there’s an expectation that Jesus will come, raise a military force, and crush the Roman Empire. That is the expectation they place on him. That’s the reason for the palms. They’re welcoming a conquering king.
Then we see what happens in Holy Week. From this Palm Sunday in John chapter 12 through to what we know as Good Friday, we see the turn. We see that the expectations of the people are not met. Jesus does not meet these expectations. And it’s important to say: he never said he would. This was never what he came to do.
During that week between Sunday and Friday, a number of things do happen, and a number of things significantly do not happen. We see Jesus teaching. In another Gospel we read that, during this time, he goes into the temple and becomes righteously angry because the temple is being used as a den of thieves, a place for money changers and corruption. It’s the house of the Lord, and it’s being misused. So he overturns the tables. You’ve probably heard that story—Jesus flipping over tables. He exposes what is going on in the religious structures. He speaks truth. But he does not do what they expect him to do. Not at all.
By the time we get to John chapters 18 and 19, we see something really quite telling—and, if I can be honest, really challenging. I hope you are challenged by this, because I know I am. What we see is that the faith we saw in John 12, on Palm Sunday, is actually a conditional faith. It’s a faith that is dependent on Jesus meeting a set of expectations he never promised to meet.
Because their expectations are not met, that conditional faith melts away. When Jesus doesn’t align with the crowd’s perspective, the crowd turns against him.
So there is a challenge for us in this. Do you have a conditional faith? Are there elements of your faith that are conditional? Are there parts of your relationship with God that are actually based on things being your way, on things working out as you expect, on outcomes you have defined—things that Jesus never promised?
That’s a challenge. I know it’s a challenge for me. But as we continue, we’ll see even more clearly the power of the crowd.
Breaking Free From the Crowd
Even though it’s Palm Sunday today, we’re actually going to focus on some of what happens later on in the week. The conversation we see between Jesus and Pilate happens later in Holy Week.
Palm Sunday is the start of Holy Week, and in Holy Week we’ve got some things to think about. We’ve got some examination of our own hearts to do, because there’s a reality to Holy Week: the crowd that was ready to crown Him on Sunday was ready to crucify Him on Friday. We see this crowd turn in the space of a single week, and there’s no major event that explains it. There’s just a false expectation set.
Jesus did and taught what He actually came to do, what He actually came to teach—and the crowd flipped. That leads us to this conversation that happens on the Friday. This conversation is really key because it presents an opportunity to break free from crowd mentality. It offers an opportunity to go from being a crowd-pleaser to a truth-seeker. It offers an opportunity to go from crowd-shaped belief to truth-defined conviction.
And that’s where I want to be. That’s where I want us to be, church. That’s where we’re going this morning.
We’re going to be in John’s Gospel. As I say, it starts in chapter 18. I’m not going to read the whole thing. The guys at the back asked me earlier, “What’s the Scripture for today? What can we put on the slides?” I said, “I don’t know—somewhere in John. We’re going to be in John 18 and 19. Just get the whole thing ready and we’ll see where we go. Is that all right?”
So there’s a conversation where the crowd ultimately present and pull Jesus before this man called Pilate—Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor. They bring Jesus before Pilate, and we read… Shall I just read? Okay, all right.
Beholding Jesus Before Pilate
From chapter 18, verse 28:
“Then the Jewish leaders took Jesus from Caiaphas to the palace of the Roman governor. By now it was early morning, and to avoid ceremonial uncleanness, they did not enter the palace.”
We know what's about to happen, and it’s really horrific. I just want to highlight that in this moment, these people—the Jewish leaders—are concerned with ceremonial uncleanness. They’re concerned with appearing to do the right thing. They’re concerned with the religious externals, as it were, and they’re about to crucify God.
It’s not funny, but there is something to notice there, isn’t there? We can appear, on the outside, to be doing the right thing—“I don’t want to be seen doing that, I want to remain ceremonially clean”—but in the heart, be crucifying God.
“So Pilate came out to them and asked, ‘What charges are you bringing against this man?’
“‘If he were not a criminal,’ they replied, ‘we would not have handed him over to you.’
“Pilate said, ‘Take him yourselves and judge him by your own law.’
“‘But we have no right to execute anyone,’ they objected. This took place to fulfill what Jesus had said about the kind of death he was going to die.
“Pilate then went back inside the palace, summoned Jesus and asked him, ‘Are you the king of the Jews?’”
Stop there: “Are you the King of the Jews?”
Pilate begins this conversation with Jesus in what I think is a really good and healthy place—because Pilate asks. He’s trying to establish the facts. He’s seeking the truth in this moment. He begins by asking this question: “Are you the King of the Jews?” In other words, “Jesus, who are you?”
That question—or rather, the answer to that question—“Who are you, Jesus? Who is Jesus?”—is the most important thing about you. Did you know that? How you answer that question, “Who is Jesus Christ?” is the most important question you will ever answer, and your answer to it is the most important thing about you. Because it determines everything about your life here on earth and how you live it, and it also determines where we go after this life. Amen.
Pilate is asking this question: “Who are you? Are you the King of the Jews?” In this moment Pilate’s not being dismissive, he’s not being provocative; he’s being curious. Pilate is leaning in. He wants to know what is going on here.
And for many of us—in fact, for all of us, I would suggest—that’s why we’re here. We’re leaning in, aren’t we? We’re leaning in to find more, to know the truth, to discover more of the truth; constantly asking, “Who is Jesus? Who is Jesus?”
We know the headlines—hopefully we know the headlines: Jesus Christ, Son of God, born of a virgin, came to this world to teach and to preach, yes, but ultimately he came to the world to die. Amen. He came to die on our behalf so that we would not have to endure that death.
This is who Jesus is. He is the Saviour. He is my Saviour. He is your Saviour. But even so, as we acknowledge that, we’re still leaning in all the time, aren’t we? “Who is Jesus? How do I be more like Jesus? What is he like? What does he teach here? How is his heart aligned in this area?” We’re all leaning in. We’re all trying to understand what is true.
Pilate, the Crowd, and Compromised Truth
And then the conversation continues, and we get to this point where Jesus answers Pilate. I’ll read it, but we’ll come back to it. Jesus says to him, “Is that your own idea, or did others talk to you about me?”
The conversation goes back and forth a bit, and Pilate ultimately comes back to the crowd waiting outside and says, “I find no basis for a charge against him.” So there’s been this dialogue, there’s pressure on Pilate in this moment, but he can’t find anything to pin on Jesus. He finds Jesus to be innocent.
So we see Pilate not only seeking the truth, but actually landing on the truth that Jesus is innocent, contrary to what the crowd is saying. Pilate says, “No, this man—there’s nothing here. There is no basis for a charge against him.” In this moment, we see Pilate getting closer to the truth, perhaps the real truth, certainly declaring there is nothing against Jesus here. He is so close to the truth—closer than many at this moment. Pilate is closer to the truth than the crowd is. He’s holding it, even speaking it.
But acknowledging the truth is not the same as surrendering to the truth.
Then we see a timeline, a series of events unfold, and we watch Pilate wrestling with the truth. From John 18:28 into chapter 19, down to about verse 7, we see this tension. If you read this passage—and I’d encourage you to do that this week—you can feel the tension coming off the pages. Pilate is wrestling with the truth.
I counted: Pilate goes between Jesus inside, “on trial” if you like, and the crowd outside waiting for the verdict, four times. You can just see this tension. You can feel and hear a desperation in Pilate’s voice. He goes to Jesus, trying to find something that will allow him to say, “No, you’re a criminal, and I’m going to do what they say.” But he can’t. Then he goes back to the crowd and says, “Are you sure about this? I don’t find anything against him.” And they shout, “Crucify him!” So he goes back to Jesus and asks, “Where do you come from?” Jesus doesn’t answer. And Pilate is torn.
He’s torn because he’s wrestling with the truth. He’s torn between the crowd telling him one thing and the truth telling him another. Deep down he doesn’t want to believe the crowd; in fact, he knows he doesn’t believe what the crowd is saying. But he wants to please the crowd.
Being in a place where we want to please the crowd is a dangerous place to be. It’s very dangerous, because we can end up doing things that are to the detriment of ourselves and others in pursuit of pleasing the crowd.
All of us are guilty of this crowd-pleasing, aren’t we? In our pursuit of pleasing the crowd, you need to know this: a pursuit to please the crowd will never be enough. It will never satisfy.
Let me show you from the passage. Pilate is desperate to please this crowd, so he comes up with what he thinks is a clever strategy. The crowd isn’t happy with his verdict; they’re not satisfied with him saying there is no charge against Jesus. So this is what he does:
“Pilate took Jesus and had him flogged. The soldiers twisted together a crown of thorns and put it on his head. They clothed him in a purple robe”—that’s mockery—“and went up to him again and again, saying, ‘Hail, king of the Jews!’ And they slapped him in the face.”
At this point, Pilate thinks, “This must surely please the crowd. Even though I find no basis for a charge against him, I’ll still have him flogged. I’ll put a crown of thorns on him—that’ll hurt. We’ll mock him. Surely that will be enough. I can’t crucify him because he’s not a criminal. But if I do this, this must be enough to please the crowd.”
But it’s not. It’s not enough to please the crowd.
So he goes out and presents Jesus to them. You can almost feel a kind of pride in Pilate, as if to say, “Surely now you’re satisfied.” He says, “Look, I am bringing him out to you to let you know that I find no basis for a charge against him. But I’ve still done this, huh? Surely you are pleased. Here is the man.”
But as soon as the chief priests and their officials see him, it’s still not good enough. It will never be enough to please the crowd. They shout, “Crucify him! Crucify him!” That’s what the crowd is calling for.
You will never fully please the crowd. I don’t know if that’s an encouragement for you this morning, but I hope it’s at least a release. Because some of us are in situations where we are trying so hard to please the crowd.
That can show up in all kinds of ways, can’t it? Maybe you go along with things at work that you don’t fully agree with—maybe gossip, maybe decisions that don’t sit right with you—just to fit in. Maybe you keep your faith on the down low because you know you might get mocked by someone who doesn’t believe in Jesus, so you try to hide it to please the crowd.
You need to know: you will never please the crowd. There will always be another expectation, another demand, another compromise, until ultimately—and this sounds dramatic, but we see it here with Pilate—the crowd calls upon you to crucify the King.
Pilate, the Crowd, and the Truth
Pilate is on the edge of truth.
In verse 7 of chapter 19, Pilate goes back to Jesus once more. After the call to crucify, the Jewish leaders insisted, “We have a law, and according to that law he must die, because he claimed to be the Son of God.” When Pilate heard this, he was even more afraid.
So Pilate’s on the edge of truth at this point. What’s he afraid of? He’s afraid because these claims that are now being made are significant. This isn’t just, “Oh, Jesus has done some bad things, he’s a criminal, and he needs to be dealt with.” No. This is a man who is claiming to be the Son of God. Pilate is afraid because he’s now facing things that are far beyond him. Far, far beyond him. This is more than just criminal activity; this is the divine.
He’s moving towards the truth. There is an acknowledgement of truth, at least in part. I think we sometimes feel that Pilate is the bad guy of the Easter story, don’t we? I’m not absolving him of wrongdoing at all, but we kind of paint him as the villain. Yet as I read the Scripture, I can’t help but feel that Pilate is actually trying his best to acknowledge the truth and allow it to play out.
We even read Jesus saying, “Therefore the one who handed me over to you is guilty of a greater sin.” He’s saying that Judas, who betrayed Jesus for thirty pieces of silver, is actually more guilty than Pilate. And then we read, from verse 12, “From then on, Pilate tried to set Jesus free.” Again, I’m not absolving Pilate, but we see this tension. He knows there is something there. But the fear of being unpopular was too much. It was too much for him.
And this is something we face all the time. As we go into Holy Week, I feel like this should be a significant point of reflection for us, because we are constantly facing this choice between the crowd and the truth. The crowd and the truth.
Then we see the final part of this conversation play out, and history is defined in this moment. They shouted, “Take him away! Crucify him!” Pilate said, one more time, giving one more opportunity to step back from this, “Shall I crucify your king?” And the crowd responded, “We have no king but Caesar.”
They don’t mean that. These are Jewish people, under occupation by Rome. They don’t acknowledge Caesar as a true king. But at this point, they’re willing to denounce everything—their history, their God, the Old Testament, everything they stand on—and pledge allegiance even to Caesar: “We have no king but Caesar.”
Finally, Pilate handed him over to them to be crucified.
From Crowd Pleasing to Truth Seeking
This conversation that we’ve read is just one moment, and it forms part of a bigger rescue story.
Over Easter, this week and next, we’re going to look at two other conversations that are all part of Jesus’ rescue mission in this world. And this one is Pilate’s rescue story. This is Pilate’s rescue conversation. It’s the moment where Pilate is given the chance to be rescued from being a crowd pleaser and to become a truth seeker.
All the opportunity is right here. He stood before Jesus, looking Him in the eye, face to face, standing before Truth and talking to Truth. He even asks the question, “What is truth?” It’s possible to stand looking into the face of Jesus and still miss the truth.
When we talk about this conversation as Pilate’s “rescue conversation,” you might think, “Well, that’s an odd thing to say, Dom.” And it is odd, because we know how it plays out, don’t we? The opportunity is missed. Pilate does not receive his rescue. Pilate chooses the crowd. Pilate chooses to be a crowd pleaser instead of a truth seeker.
And this conversation serves as a warning to us, doesn’t it? That we too can stare into the face of truth and still deny it. That we too can acknowledge the truth of Christ—what He says and who He says He is—and still try to please the crowd. In this story of rescue, there is still the option for us to miss where we’re being guided.
So this Holy Week, as we consider the journey that the crowd took—ready to crown Him on Sunday and crucify Him on Friday—there’s an opportunity for us to reflect on that in our own lives. Because we cannot please the crowd while we are seeking truth. Sooner or later, truth and the crowd will diverge, and we will have to choose. We will have to choose.
The loudest voice in your life will determine the direction of your life. And if the loudest voice in your life is the crowd, it’s not going to end well. Because either you’ll end up “stealing doorbells”—the funny bit—or you’ll end up crucifying the King. That’s funny, but it’s also a warning to us, isn’t it?
We are a church, a people, a nation under God, called to go from being crowd pleasers to truth seekers. Amen?
So what are we going to do about that?
The first thing we need to do is stop outsourcing our truth. We need to stop outsourcing our truth.
Our culture, our upbringing, everything going on around us—it all tries to hand us a ready-made version of “truth.” It’s even more intense these days with social media. There is so much around us that is trying to present to us something we might perceive as true. Everyone is trying to throw in their ideas, their ideology, their thoughts, their “this, that and the other.” Everything is geared towards shaping what you accept and what you think.
So we have something to do. We have decisions to make. We must decide to actually find out for ourselves what the truth is—and who the Truth is.
Go back to the passage where Pilate asks, “Are you the king of the Jews? Are you the King? Are you Jesus? Who are you?” It’s an identity question. And Jesus replies, “Is that your own idea, or did others talk to you about me?”
“Is that your own idea?” In other words, has this been revealed to you personally? Is it something you’ve received for yourself, or is it just hearsay? Is it just inherited?
Because if your understanding of who Jesus is only comes from somebody else, can I tell you it is susceptible to corruption? Do we know that, church? If the only way you know Jesus is from what I say from a platform on a Sunday, then you’ve got some work to do—because I could get it wrong. If your understanding of Jesus comes from somebody on the internet who’s telling you about “Christian values” and this, that and the other, but you’re not reading the Scriptures, then you’re in a very precarious place.
Do you know it, or has someone else just told you it?
We need to stop outsourcing our truth. Most people don’t consciously reject truth; they simply inherit beliefs. We’ve got to be diligent about this, church. We need to create space for truth.
The world gives you permission to “have your truth.” Who’s heard that—“your truth, my truth”? But here’s the thing: when the world gives you permission to have “your truth,” it’s still being defined by them. It’s still shaped by the culture around you.
Jesus gives you permission to discover actual truth, and it is defined by Him. We need to choose where truth actually comes from. And we need to choose truth when it costs, because who knows—the truth costs. Pilate discovers this in John 18–19: truth costs.
The Costly Acceptance of Truth
For Pilate to have chosen truth would have cost him significantly. The crowd would have turned against him. He might have been able to control that, maybe—but he was also being threatened in another way. If there was an uprising or if anything like this happened, Caesar would have gotten involved, and that’s a whole other thing.
So for Pilate to have accepted the truth would have been costly. We shouldn’t be naive about that: to accept the truth comes with a cost. There is always a cost associated with acknowledging the truth.
If we only accept the truth when it’s easy and abandon it when it’s hard, we’re not really accepting the truth, are we? We’re still just going with the crowd.
From Crowd-Shaped Belief to Truth
I want to flip this around slightly.
We’ve talked about you and we’ve talked about me this morning—our status, our standing before the Lord, our acknowledgement of truth, our pursuit of truth, our call to move away from the crowd, from crowd-shaped belief and crowd-shaped conviction. But we need to know this, and this is the exciting bit: in your world, wherever you are, wherever you find yourself, you are surrounded by Pilates.
Did you know that? You are surrounded by people who are searching for the truth. You are surrounded by people who are asking the question, “What is truth?” You are surrounded by people who are asking, “Who is Jesus?” They may not be using those words yet, but you are surrounded by Pilates—people looking for the truth, people who are in a position where they themselves are making a decision between the truth and the crowd. Your world is full of these people.
The pursuit of truth is in the background of everyone’s life, and it comes to the foreground. It comes to the foreground around crisis. It comes to the foreground at times of year like Easter. It comes to the foreground in our workplaces.
Your job is to point to the truth kindly and to help people discover the truth—maybe to challenge as well. When we hear things that we know are antithetical to Scripture, that we know are antithetical to what the Lord teaches, we have an opportunity to ask some of the questions that Jesus asked: “Is that your idea, or did you get that from somewhere else? Where did you get that from? Let’s talk about it. Have you looked into Jesus for yourself, or are you just going off what you’ve heard somebody else say?”
Is that a fair challenge for us this week—to move from crowd-shaped belief to truth-shaped conviction?
Scripture shows us the danger of the crowd. I hope we’ve outlined that this morning. Pilate stood face to face with Truth, and still walked away. Don’t let that be your story—and, even more, don’t let that be the story of the people in your life.
Turning from the Crowd to Truth
Should we worship? But before we do that—or even as we do that—shall we stand together, if you’re able?
I want us to have an opportunity to reflect on some of the things we’ve talked about this morning, and some of what we’re presented with across Holy Week. We’ve been looking at this journey, this movement we don’t want to be our journey: moving from being ready to crown the King on Sunday to being ready to crucify Him on Friday. Being so malleable and crowd-led that we find ourselves ready to turn on Jesus, ready to turn from Jesus.
Sometimes that happens because we’ve set expectations on Him that He never promised. He never spoke those things, He never said that, but we still expected it of Him. Those expectations are unfounded.
So perhaps there’s an opportunity this morning for us to release some of that. To abandon our misplaced ideas of Jesus and instead turn to who Jesus actually is, and what Jesus actually says.
I also want to pray that the Holy Spirit would embolden each of us—that we would not be crowd-shaped, but truth-defined. That we would resist being swept along by the crowd, and instead look into the face of Jesus.
Church, let’s pray.
I don’t know if that’s you this morning, but I would dare say it is for many of us. From my experience in life so far, there are times when we are all susceptible to turning from truth and turning to the crowd.
So let’s pray. Perhaps you want to raise your hands if that’s you.
Staying With the Truth of the Cross
Lord, we thank you. We thank you for who you are and for what you’ve done. And we thank you that next week we turn not to the cross, but to the empty grave.
But for us here today, at the beginning of Holy Week, our counterparts in the Scriptures, if you like, are today laying down palms, are today laying down garments, are today making a way. But we know that on Friday the story changes—to “Crucify.”
And Holy Spirit, Lord God Almighty, would you guard our hearts? Would you help us to stay with truth, to stay with conviction, to be guarded from going along with the crowd, and to be guarded from, in our own way, shouting, “Crucify. Crucify.”
Would you help us, as we look into your face, as we look into the face of truth—would you help us to acknowledge it, to know it, to live it?
And as we go from this place today into Holy Week, into a week that is set apart, would you help us to be a people who point to you? Would you help us to be a people who help those in the crowd to break free from the crowd? Would you help us to help others go from being crowd-pleasers to truth-seekers?
Would you empower and embolden us in this that you’ve called us to?
Amen. Amen.
