NOTES for Luk 7:31-35
31 And the Lord said, Whereunto then shall I liken the men of this generation? and to what are they like? |
32 They are like unto children sitting in the marketplace, and calling one to another, and saying, We have piped unto you, and ye have not danced; we have mourned to you, and ye have not wept. |
33 For John the Baptist came neither eating bread nor drinking wine; and ye say, He hath a devil. |
34 The Son of man is come eating and drinking; and ye say, Behold a gluttonous man, and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners! |
35 But wisdom is justified of all her children. |
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Deep bitterness sounds in the Savior's words about our ability to reject any message from God if it does not suit us. He compares the human race to foolish children who do not know how truly to distinguish joy from sorrow and do not know how to empathize or take part in them. So John the Baptist came, striking everyone by his ascetic feat, undertaken for the sake of our salvation, and we say: no, that is not acceptable; he is possessed.
So today many things to which Christ's disciples bear witness, from the call to worship the one God to the prohibition against stealing, provoke rejection because they seem excessive. Such a God is too strict, we say. Then the Son of Man came, and He is called a man who loves to eat and drink wine. He is too close to us; He cannot be God's messenger. In the same way, witness to Christ's presence in the present-day life of real people creates the impression of something "unchurchly," something improper. No, such a God is too close!
How little we have changed over thousands of years. But Christ's word is priceless: and Wisdom is justified, literally recognized as right and righteous, by her children. The Lord says that the rightness of God's call to us can be known and acknowledged by us if we are children of Wisdom. And the beginning of this, as it is said, is the fear of the Lord, a reverent love for God.
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