The Goal of the Crowds

I am continuing to read Ellul’s Meaning of the City.  In chapter four, he is talking about how Jesus relates to crowds by referencing the feeding of 5000 in Mark 6.  As he discusses their relationship, he describes the crowd with a beautiful statement about how it and Jesus relate:

The crowd came to Jesus.  It was not going elsewhere.  And Jesus was not to lead it elsewhere.  Once it got to Jesus, it had reached its goal.  With no idea of what it was seeking, nonetheless, once it found Jesus, it had nowhere else to go. 

The thesis of Ellul’s book is that men build cities as substitutes for Christ, and nothing satisfies until they give up on the cities, leave their attempts at substitution, and find Christ.  For Ellul, when the crowd leaves the city to find Christ and be fed, they have taken the right approach.

I think he’s on the right track, but I’m not sure the city is the problem or that his reading of the passage is correct.  However, his larger point is correct.  That is, bigger and better cities are certainly one thing that men try to find as substitutes.  But I think that men substitute all sorts of things for Christ.  Ellul’s writing is a strong indictment of all those attempts.  Once we find Jesus, we have no place else to go.  We’ve found our goal.

Even for Christians, however, we continue to look after we find Jesus.  We are often unsatisfied with our newfound satisfaction, and we gaze back to where we were from.  As I read his book, Ellul’s words remind me that I have no place else to go – I’ve found my goal.