'We played the flute for you, but you did not dance,
we sang a dirge but you did not mourn.'
We might have expected God to be less flexible in his music selection. Given his own perfection, would he not simply insist on what was objectively superior regardless of how individuals would subjectively experience it? But it seemed that the music was not being played for the benefit of the one playing so much as for those who heard. It was as though the musician was trying to find something, anything, to elicit a response from the ones listening. To be sure, both the melody of the flute and the song of the dirge communicated something that would benefits the hearers, something that they in fact needed to hear. But in such drastically different arrangements we also see the creativity of a God who desired all to be saved and come to knowledge of the truth (see First Timothy 2:4).
For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they said,
'He is possessed by a demon.'
Some people found the asceticism of John too extreme. They might put up with some focused devotion and fasting in moderation but when people seemed to be taking things too far they were less accepting. Such lives as that of John the Baptist called others to account for their own lukewarm and halfhearted commitment to God. The easiest thing to do, then, was not to attack the pious practices themselves, but rather the person. If he was crazy or possessed he could be easily dismissed without any undue introspection necessary on the part of those who criticized him.
The Son of Man came eating and drinking and they said,
'Look, he is a glutton and a drunkard,
a friend of tax collectors and sinners.'
John was unpopular because he appeared to have a zero tolerance policy regarding sin. But one of the things that made Jesus unpopular was that he seemed to welcome sinners, to befriend them, and even to share table fellowship with them. He was unpopular precisely because he didn't reject those who were known to be sinners and defined as sinners by society. But both John and Jesus desired that sinners repent. This was the message that the preaching of both of them had in common. John, in a way, couldn't afford to do what Jesus did by his fellowship with sinners since only Jesus himself did not risk being contaminated by the company he kept. But the clarity of John about black and white, true and false, and good and evil, helped prepare his own audience to be desirous of one who could finally free them from their sins. The way in which Jesus welcomed sinners allowed them to believe that there could even be hope for them. Thus the very different music of the dirge and the flute were complementary, and meant to lead to salvation. It was only a sort of pernicious supernatural dissatisfaction that could find something objectionable in whatever way God chose to extend the invitation to the Gospel of salvation.
But wisdom is vindicated by her works.
Those who listened to John would eventually be led by him to Jesus whom he pointed out as the lamb of God. And those who came to Jesus would find that the way he accepted and welcomed them led to an inner transformation that they never could have achieved on their own. Zacchaeus heard Jesus say, "Today salvation has come to this house" (see Luke 19:9), and so would all others who welcomed him into their lives.
If you would hearken to my commandments,
your prosperity would be like a river,
and your vindication like the waves of the sea;
Your descendants would be like the sand,
and those born of your stock like its grains,
Their name never cut off
or blotted out from my presence.
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