Amen, I say to you,
among those born of women
there has been none greater than John the Baptist;
What made John the Baptist so great? On the surface he seemed less impressive than previous prophets. We have no record of miracles he performed. His preaching seemed simple and straightforward but much of what he said was the fairly standard prophetic call to repentance. What made him great was that he was able to see and directly point out that for which the entire prophetic tradition had longed and waited but only saw, as it were, from a distance, through faith. The importance of being the one to say, "Behold the lamb of God" was so substantial that it more than made up for his lack of miracles. And it was this role that made miracles not only unnecessary but a potential hinderance. He was to reveal the coming messiah and then step aside and let Jesus himself take center stage. Knowing this, he said "He must increase, but I must decrease" (see John 3:30).
yet the least in the Kingdom of heaven is greater than he.
If the greatness of John the Baptist consisted in his role as the forerunner it makes sense that those who were able to receive the fulfillment which he showed them had attained something greater still. John was still separate from the Kingdom so that he could testify to it. But those who believed him entered the Kingdom. They received the promise of which he spoke but did not himself attain, the baptism of the Holy Spirit.
From the days of John the Baptist until now,
the Kingdom of heaven suffers violence,
and the violent are taking it by force.
If John's ministry was a lesser thing than the life of a Christian in the Kingdom it seems that his death where he finally had a direct participation that Kingdom. He gave his life in order to stand up for the truth of his convictions. But it seems that he was also absorbing the animosity and hatred of the world for the Kingdom. In being faithful to his prophetic role as forerunner he earned the blessing spoken of by Jesus in the sermon on the mount, "Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account" (see Matthew 5:11). Any lapse in integrity would have been a strike against his message of the credibility of the Messiah. And so his fidelity to the truth was also and at once a fidelity to he who is Truth itself. It was in this that he crossed over from being a persecuted prophet to one who bore violence for the sake of the Kingdom.
All the prophets and the law prophesied up to the time of John.
And if you are willing to accept it,
he is Elijah, the one who is to come.
Elijah was known to be the greatest of the prophets. Hence he was to come again to mark the beginning of the age of the messiah. How wonderfully strange, then, to look at both the similarities and the differences with John. Much of the greatness the defined Elijah was not evident in John. But his simplicity, his zeal, his integrity, and his single-minded purpose were on full display. All that would have been a distraction to the mission of pointing to the lamb was left in the past, to ensure there was nothing to compete with the message of the voice crying out in the desert.
Whoever has ears ought to hear.
When we listen to the voice in the desert we are led to a Kingdom which transforms desert into marshland, and dry ground into springs of water. In the desert we thirst. But we are meant to be led from the desert to Jesus, the source of living water.
That all may see and know,
observe and understand,
That the hand of the LORD has done this,
the Holy One of Israel has created it.
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