Today's Gospel reading is about listening to what God is saying to us. God uses the people and the situations we encounter in our everyday life to say what He wants to say to us. And often, the agent and media through whom God speaks to us surprise us.

Jesus reprimands the people of His time for not listening to God's message. Not only that, they regard the message bearers' appearance, diet, social activities with disdain if these do not fit in their own pattern and perspective.

When John the Baptist, who, neither eating or drinking, came to prepare the way for the Messiah by preaching repentance, they say: "He has a demon!" When Jesus, the Son of Man, the Messiah, comes eating and drinking, they say: "Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!"

By rejecting the bearer of the message, we reject the message itself; by rejecting the message, we reject Jesus because the message is what He wants to say to us; by rejecting Jesus, we reject His vision of the Kingdom - we reject the Good News that God wants to tell us.