John Asked For His Own Funeral
The message John the Baptist proclaimed can be summed up in his one familiar exhortation, "REPENT"! The message Jesus proclaimed can be summed up in his most familiar word, "LOVE." The movement launched by John began with great momentum and promise; it endured for quite a period in history. But eventually it withered and died. On the other hand, the movement begun by Jesus, in spite of its more insignificant beginning, has endured through the centuries. Is there a connection between these facts: the movement that insists on REPENTance dies; the movement that insists on LOVE lives?
There is — and no firmer evidence can be adduced than the historical data already noted: namely, John's movement died, while Jesus' movement lived. John conducted his ministry (except for brief periods of solitude) where men could and did live. John's strategy required that men come to him; Jesus' strategy required that he go to men. Nobody would bother to make a pilgrimage into the deserts where John preached who did not feel a keen need of being guided toward the Kingdom of God which was soon to come; these were men already disposed to welcome the Messiah, who had hope, who would quickly volunteer in the sort of coming Kingdom they expected. But this left the common man untouched; the one who had no hope, who was too weighted down with life's burdens, in whose heart the light of God had well-nigh gone out — this man stayed where he already was. He did not go to the wilderness.
The multitude did not need to be told that God would reward righteousness with a place in the coming Kingdom; this was an old message. And it was a message that chilled them — for they knew within their own hearts that they were not righteous; that they would have no reservation in the coming Kingdom. This wilderness prophet brought them no new light; they already knew what he preached. He brought them no new hope; his utterances only reminded them afresh of their confusion and hopelessness. His was a message welcomed only by those few — the truly righteous in Israel — who could bring forth fruits worthy of repentance, who could arrive at legal and moral excellence, who could attain perfection in the keeping of God's will, who could boast that they had not broken ONE of the Divine commandments.
The multitudes did not need to be reminded of their SIN. They did not need a recital of God's orders with which they were require to comply. Cold commandments are frightening; condemnation is chafing; hope held out only on the basis of human perfection becomes only darker hopelessness. John the Baptist reaped what he sowed. He sowed harshness, bitterness, legalism. He reaped desertion, obscurity and death.
Jesus preached LOVE. Admittedly, he at times demanded repentance, as John before him had done — but this emphasis falls more and more into the background and becomes hardly more than an occasional theme always tempered with love. Whereas John put the initiative on MAN, Jesus put it on GOD. If salvation is contingent on human action, there will be no salvation. This Jesus saw; this John did not see. Man is the lost sheep — and it is God, NOT MAN, who seeks, finds, and saves him. Even when penitent man rises from the mire of his own degradation it is because he hears deep with his heart the voice of a Father's LOVE. He has no fear of his Father — for what hell can be worse than the one into which he has already sunk? Nor has he hope of reward — for what reward is there in becoming a bond-slave especially in a Father's household? What man gets when he comes home to the Father is NOT reward, but unmerited favor; not commendation for obedience, but mercy toward a total forgetting of all disobedience. Confidence in a Father's LOVE is the only power adequate to make any man rise and go home. This Jesus knew; this John did not know.
Need we wonder, then, why Jesus did not make it his business to remind men of God's commandments — indeed, why more often than not he encouraged men to put LOVE for their fellows above the LAW OF GOD? Or why Jesus never one time rebuked a man or woman for breaking a Divine Commandment IF THE HEART OF THE LAW-BREAKER WAS FILLED WITH LOVE? John declared the coming Kingdom; Jesus declared the ever-present GOSPEL — "good news." One frightens; the other warms and thrills. One would mean turmoil and peril; the other means security and peace. The Kingdom was for the prepared; the Gospel was for the unprepared. Few men needed John — for few were righteous. Many needed Jesus — for many were sick.
The spirit of John lives still — for some heralds of the Kingdom still shout the holy wrath of a jealous God, the demands of the Divine in exchange for which they are led to expect deliverance in the day of his visitation, the commandments which mankind is exhorted to obey to share the coming day of his bliss, the admonitions to perfect living — to a felicitude earned by human striving.
But the spirit of John will die, and the herald of this message will be deserted. For a time men respond in fear and selfish anticipation. BUT when the humble bearer of "good news" walks the countryside showing men what a divine LOVE can mean, stopping to feed, to clothe, to heal — to laugh, to cry — he, like his Master before him, will turn and see the disciples of the holy terror John following and asking, "Where abidest thou? We would follow thee now!" And Lo! John decreases unto death; Jesus increases unto Infinity.