GOSPEL REFLECTION, WEDNESDAY, 24TH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME, 17 SEPTEMBER 2025

Luke 7:31-35.  After recording Jesus’ Sermon on the Plain, Luke’s gospel turns to miracles performed by Jesus.  In Jesus’ time there were wonderworkers who performed apparent miracles, but some of them were fake; there were prophets, claiming to speak on behalf of God, but also some of them were fake too.  A big issue of the times (today too) was to be able to determine which were authentic and which were not.  That is one of the issues which caused the Scribes’ and Pharisees’ to be so concerned about John the Baptist and Jesus.  They judged both of them not to be the real thing.  In fact they dismissed John as a madman possessed by a demon, and they sought to dismiss Jesus as one who consorted with unsavoury people and also demonically possessed.  In Jesus’ case as THE prophet of God this was a hugely important matter, because his being a real prophet was an essential sign that he was Messiah.  Others in this chapter have concerns about Jesus’ real identity too.  That was the great issue about Jesus – just who was he?  All of this points onward to Peter’s confession that Jesus was indeed the Christ, the Anointed one, the Messiah (Lk 9:20). 

In a brief but vivid parable Jesus dismissed ‘this generation,’ the greatest number of people, as unserious, frittering their lives away ‘like children playing in the marketplace.’  They seemed incapable of sufficient focus and seriousness to place trusting faith in him, capable of knowing who he was as Messiah.  There were others who DID recognise Jesus for who he was; they were people of trust and faith, unlike ‘those of this generation who frittered their lives away playing in the marketplace’ – sounds familiar to our own generation?