The Pharisees refused to recognize either John the Baptist or the Lord Jesus Himself as messengers of God. Each of them, despite all their differences, displeased the Pharisees in some way. John the Baptist displeased them with his asceticism and his call to renew faith. The Lord... The Lord pleased them in nothing, in particular because He did not reject the repentance of sinful people whom the Pharisees considered doomed to perdition.

In reality, of course, behind this stood an unwillingness to accept the Good News, first of all because the Pharisees most wanted to look better than everyone else in their own eyes. The Gospel gives neither them nor anyone else such an opportunity. The Lord applies to them the image of children who do not weep at sad songs and do not rejoice at joyful ones. God, the Lord is saying by this, tries to communicate His word, His will, the Good News to the Pharisees in this way and that, by many different paths. But they react to nothing, and this reveals precisely their unwillingness to respond to God's call.

The point is not what John the Baptist is like or what Jesus Himself is like. Those who seek the Word of God will in one way or another be able to find and accept it, the Lord concludes with His words, "wisdom is justified by her children": some came to Christ through the Baptist's preaching, others recognized the Savior in Him for themselves... Whoever has ears and wants to hear will hear.

In our time this Gospel fragment remains exceptionally relevant. People often say: "I would believe, but..." Something is always unsatisfactory to the person who does not want to believe. Either there is too much bad in the Bible, since the truth about history is written there, or Christians are bad, or the commandments are strange... Christ's words apply precisely to such a position.

Today's reading tells us much about wisdom in the sense in which Jesus understands it. It begins with an episode describing John the Baptist's strange, at first glance, perplexity over the Savior's ministry (vv. 2-6). Indeed, the question was asked by the very man who first pointed to Jesus as the Messiah-Christ (Matt 3:13-17). And for Jesus Himself this episode became the occasion for bitter words about human wisdom. The issue is not the limitation of human reason: there is nothing terrible in such limitation in itself, for from the beginning God did not intend man to be omniscient. The issue is how and for what purpose a person uses the reason given to him by God. And fallen man, it turns out, most often uses it for self-justification and self-assertion.

The Old Testament authors look at wisdom as the art of building relationships with God and with people, as the science of righteous life. But it often happened that it degenerated into something like intellectual games serving only for entertainment and, in this sense, little different from children's games (vv. 16-17). Worst of all was that these games, taken with complete seriousness, at a critically important moment blocked the "wise men" from the living Truth that had come into the world, and blocked them from the Kingdom.

What kind of Messiah did believing Jews expect in those days? There were many messianic theological concepts, but it happened that the real Messiah did not fully fit into any of them. Even John the Baptist himself may have expected something different from the Messiah-Christ whom he had recognized.

In any case, it is impossible to please those for whom their theories are dearer than the truth: if He fasts, then He is possessed; if He does not fast, then He is a glutton, a drunkard, a sinner (vv. 18-19). Here only one thing matters: does the person being evaluated meet the criteria of "one of us," does he fit within the framework of the concept or not? If not, then one can always find reasons to declare such a person "wrong," a sinner, a violator of the Torah, and a servant of Satan. And supporters of the "right" theory will always be able to justify its "rightness" (v. 19). Only at the Judgment such "theorists" will have a harder time than those who simply sinned without any theories (vv. 20-24). This is, in general, not surprising: the wise person who has used his wisdom for evil bears greater responsibility than the one who makes no claim to any wisdom.

Traditionally, it is held that John did not doubt Jesus' messianic calling and sent his doubting disciples to Him so that they could see for themselves. Other interpreters allow that John himself may have doubted it. Be that as it may, it is hardly accidental that he sent two of his disciples to Jesus: they were to become witnesses to Christ's words, and under Jewish law there had to be at least two witnesses. And then they heard an answer that still puzzles some readers of the Gospel: why did Christ say neither yes nor no? Why instead did He need to speak a long phrase listing His works?

Apparently, He answered this way so as not to confuse ahead of time those who were not yet ready to hear a direct confirmation. But the verbal message that Jesus asks them to convey to John contained a list of the signs of the Messiah's coming that had been foretold in the Old Testament, and this means that Jesus was quite definitely confirming that He is the very One who was to come.

Christ gives John a high evaluation. But next to it stands the indication that the least in the Kingdom of Heaven will be greater than John. Such a definition may sound like belittlement. But anyone who, confident of his own salvation, decides on that basis to exalt himself above John will be deeply mistaken. Those who enter the Kingdom of Heaven transformed will surpass John as he was on earth. But he himself in the Kingdom of Heaven will surpass himself as he was in the earthly world.