Word to the Wise
Wednesday, September 20, 2023 - Wednesday in the 24th Week in Ordinary Time
[1 Tim 3:14-16 and Luke 7:31-35]"For John the Baptist came neither eating food or drinking wine and you said, 'He is possessed by a demon.' The Son of Man came eating and drinking and you said, 'Look, he is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinner.' But wisdom is vindicated by all her children." [Luke]
I was once asked at a parish mission why I didn't preach more "fire and brimstone" of the kind that some mission preachers of the past had done. The questioner said he was a bit disappointed! I replied that l felt it better to proclaim God's mercy than preach God's punishment.
The words of Jesus from today's gospel scripture follow an encounter with disciples of John the Baptist who came with the question, "Are you the one who is to come or should we look for another?" Jesus tells them just to look and see what he is doing and go tell that to John. He then comments on John's greatness by saying: "I tell you, among those born of women, no one is greater than John; yet the least in the kingdom of God is greater than he." [7:28] Jesus was not the kind of messiah that John had predicted and this was a problem for John's disciples. On the other hand, the scribes and Pharisees rejected John and Jesus because they were blinded by their own self righteousness. Jesus points to the sinners and tax collectors who believed in him as the children of Wisdom. The evangelist comments that "the Pharisees and scholars of the law, who were not baptized by him [John], rejected the plan of God for themselves."
Jesus did not meet the expectations of the disciples of John but at least they came to inquire. The scribes (scholars of the law) and Pharisees were entirely closed off. Jesus compares all of them to the children in the marketplace with their little song: "We played the flute for you, but you did not dance. We sang a dirge, but you did not weep." The early missionaries for whom Luke composed his gospel portrait of Jesus had to understand that some folks, for whatever reason, were going to "reject the plan of God for themselves." [7:30] As a mission preacher, I knew that some folks were beyond my ability to reach and I had to leave them to the very mercy of God they were reluctant to accept. AMEN
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