|
Morning Reflection
March 3, 2026
Crowds
Saul Bellow on Broadway, NYC
“On Broadway it was still bright afternoon and the gassy air was motionless… And the great, great crowd, the inexhaustible current of millions of every race and kind pouring out, pressing round, of every age, of every genius, possessors of every human secret, antique and future, in every face the refinement of one particular motive or essence – I labor, I spend, I strive, I design, I love, I cling, I uphold, I give way, I envy, I long, I scorn, I die, I hide, I want. Faster, much faster than any man could make the tally… The street itself was immense, and it quaked and gleamed...”
Seize the Day
Reflection by Peter Vanderveen
I wish that Saul Bellow could have written one of the Gospels. I suspect that he’d have made the story far more engaging – and faith, thereby, might be a more dynamic enterprise.
Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John all seem to have been content referring to those who chased after Jesus as “the crowds.” What does this tell us? Not much about them. Whoever chose to be a part of the general excitement, joining with many others, they all remained nameless, faceless, and featureless. In the existing Gospels, the crowds serve predominantly as just a foil for the restless mass of human desire. As such, they highlight, in contrast, the individuality of Jesus and his difference from all others. Unlike the rest, Jesus wasn’t a joiner. He didn’t want to be a member of any team or any club or any special interest group. Nor did he want to be elevated to the head of any collective entity. He never even expressed the desire to be a leader. When he called the disciples to follow him, it wasn’t so that they could do what he did after him. They were called in order to be the chief subjects of his grace and witnesses to his uniqueness. Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John were all highly disciplined in making sure that our attention was never diverted away from the only interesting person: their Gospels are not about us. They are about God’s presence in Jesus.
But what if Saul Bellow had met Jesus along the way? What if Bellow had suddenly departed from the usual narrative and given real character to those in the crowd? What if Jesus had had to deal explicitly with the vast range of complexity of human beings that Bellow saw, for example, at a glance, on Broadway? For starters, we’d have a novel instead of a Gospel. And we’d have many fascinating and irresolvable tales about human longing. And Jesus wouldn’t be an easy answer to the many roiling problems we create. He might just get lost amid all the players fighting for position and recognition – which might then temper us from employing Jesus wrongly, for our good, or our own idiosyncratic sense of the good, instead of as God’s always mysterious promise of a redemption that only God can give.
This is why I long for Easter. It’s not a solution to anything; it’s rather God’s emphatic declaration that, in spite of all our restless entanglements, what will be given us is fulfillment. And there is a certain peace available to us in recognizing this.
| 
