Jesus Evaded Excited Enthusiasts

What Did Jesus Do?

Perceiving that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king,
Jesus withdrew again to the mountain by himself.
John 6.15

A huge crowd had assembled. With mouths agape, they had grown more and more excited with each wondrous deed they witnessed. There wasn't anything the man couldn't do! He defied death itself. The applause and the shouting and the praises of the enthusiastic throng would have been deafening, if anyone could have heard it. But the roar of the falls drowned out all else.

The scene was New York state. The time was the middle of the 19th Century. And the crowd was enraptured by the feats of one Jean Francois Gravelet-Blondin, who was better known simply as “The Great Blondin.” The roar that masked the cheers of the crowd was the thunder of Niagara Falls. Blondin was a French tightrope walker whose greatest fame accrued as a result of daring-do performed above the churning, deadly cataract of perhaps the most famous waterfall in the world.

Blondin first walked across a rope with benefit of his balance pole. Then he did it blindfolded. Then he hopped across in a sack. Next he pushed a wheelbarrow across. The crowd was apoplectic by now! But Blondin wasn't done. Breaking out some stilts Blondin crossed the treacherous gorge yet again. All his traversing back and forth across the Niagara River caused Blondin to work up quite an appetite. So he proceeded to bring a stove out with him and sat on the rope and prepared and ate an omelet. Hardly able to believe their own eyes, the multitude affirmed that there was no balancing miracle that Blondin couldn't perform. So Blondin asked the crowd, “Who believes that I could carry a man across on my shoulders?” The crowd replied, “Yes! There's nothing the Great Blondin can't do!” “Hooray for Blondin!” Then Blondin asked, “Who will volunteer to be that man?” Silence. Were it not for the water's tumultuous plummet over the Falls one could have heard a pin drop. In a moment all the faith of Blondin's excited enthusiasts evaporated like the mist rising from the base of Niagara.

Some nineteen hundred years before the time of Blondin, a similar crowd of excited enthusiasts had gathered on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, to witness the miraculous works of a man named Jesus (John 6.1-2). So taken was the multitude by the signs and wonders that Jesus performed that they wanted to seize him and acclaim him as their king, and they might have done so had not Jesus evaded them.

Excited enthusiasm may be fine for a stuntman, though Blondin's challenge clearly exposed the limit and fickle nature of excited enthusiasm. The Savior came searching for something much more than excited enthusiasm, he was looking for faith. For faith abides long after excited enthusiasm has dissipated or moved on.

You see, the chasm across which Jesus carries the faithful is far more deadly and frightening than the Niagara gorge. And, while a stuntman might serve to transport us from one side of a river to the other, none but the Son of God can safely shepherd us over the span of sin and death which separates us from the Father. If all we possess is excited enthusiasm when we stare into the abyss, our trust in the Savior may vanish as quickly as the confidence of the crowd that would not put itself in the hands of Blondin. While Jesus evades excited enthusiasts, he never fails to find the faithful, and carry them safely home.

S.D.G.

Jim
www.jimwilkenministries.org
Marion, NC
PS 37.4