A reading from the prophet Isaiah (48:17-19)
Thus says the Lord, your redeemer,
the Holy One of Israel,
‘I am the Lord your God
and teach you for your own good;
I lead you in the way you should go.
If only you had listened to my commandments!
Your prosperity would have been like a river
and your righteousness like the waves of the sea.
Your descendants would have been numbered like the sand,
your offspring as many as its grains.
Their name would never be cut off
or blotted out from my presence.
The Lord is presented as ‘redeemer’ (go’el), the one who buys back his people’s freedom, and, as so often throughout Isaiah, as ‘holy one’ (qadosh). The Lord presents himself as ‘your God’, as ‘one who teaches’ and as ‘one who leads’, who instructs people on the good way to be followed. The climax of the passage is God’s words of regret: ‘if only you had listened to my commandments (mitswot)’. A whole set of images then follows: your prosperity (shalom) would have been ‘like a river’, your righteousness (tsedaqah) ‘like the waves of the sea’, and, in a clear allusion to God’s words to Abraham (Genesis 22), your descendants would have been ‘like the sand’, and your offspring ‘like grain’. Instead of the misery of destruction and exile they have suffered, their name would never be ‘cut off’ or ‘blotted out’. This is the lesson they must learn.
Psalm 1 The psalm presents the choice announced in the reading: to delight in the law of the Lord, or to follow the ‘counsel of the wicked’.
A reading from the holy gospel according to Matthew (11:16-19)
Jesus spoke to the crowds: ‘With whom can I compare this generation? It is like children shouting to the others as they sit in the market place, “We played the pipes for you, and you wouldn’t dance; we sang dirges, and you wouldn’t beat your breasts.” For John came, neither eating nor drinking, and they say, “He is possessed.” The Son of man came, eating and drinking, and they say, “Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.” Yet wisdom is justified by her deeds.’
These verses follow immediately from yesterday’s gospel, and John the Baptist is once again mentioned. Jesus presents a parable about petulant children in the market place by which he describes ‘this generation’, the crowds who follow him. Whatever they do, whatever behavior they pursue, from playing pipes to singing dirges, they always complain. Similarly both the ascetic style of John and the convivial behavior of Jesus are rejected, both giving rise to criticism. This generation cannot be satisfied, for they are unwilling to ‘listen’, yet ‘wisdom is justified by her deeds’, and the work of God through John and Jesus will achieve its end.
Am I like the children in the parable, never satisfied?
We need a readiness to respond, however strange God’s ways may seem.