Living in Jerusalem, I’ve encountered crowds before. But today, for just a few moments in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, I understood very clearly just how crazy it must have sounded when Jesus was surrounded with a desperately pushing crowd, and yet could confidently ask: “Who touched me?” He knew the lightest touch of faith, even if it was just a tug on a corner of His cloak.
With Passover, Palm Sunday (for Eastern churches) and Easter (for Western churches) all falling on one day, this city is packed! No wonder I’ve been thinking about “the multitudes” that figure so prominently in the gospels. They appear almost as if they were a single, amorphous character in the story: an ever-changing, unpredictable, exhausting part of Jesus’ everyday. And yet He was constantly addressing individuals.
It’s stunning to think about the Resurrection story from this standpoint. You have an overcrowded city. Just one Savior. And yet He addresses Mary by name.
I’ve written before about the sheer historicity of the Resurrection, about the care Jesus took to convince each disciple — in a way that individual needed in order to understand — that He really is alive.
It makes sense that the One who names the stars sees each face in the multitude. And if He sees my face and knows my name, then surely He hears and values my stumbling cries of praise.
This I know: He is good. He is utterly worthy of following. And I have no question that He is alive!
Elisabeth Adams 