GOSPEL REFLECTION, FRIDAY, 23RD WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME, 11 SEPTEMBER 2026

Luke 6:39:42.  Mathhew locates the Sermon on the Mount on a hillside with Jesus teaching the people; Luke locates essentially the same teaching on a level place, so in his case it is known as the Sermon on the Plain.  Both versions are quite long, and today’s reading is just four verses in a lengthy teaching coming after the Beatitudes.

The first two verses (vv. 39-40) are about discipleship, and the relationship between teacher and disciple.  It has extra meaning in the context of Jesus’ continual debates with the Scribes and Pharisees.  Although the text does not say this explicitly, it could certainly apply to them.  But there were many would-be teachers and prophets in Israel of Jesus’ time, so the text has a broader meaning too.  In our own society too there are many would-be teachers and prophets.  Jesus asks, ‘can the blind lead the blind,’ meaning can spiritually blind teachers have anything to offer?  Spiritually blind teachers lead to spiritually blind disciples.  It poses, yet again, the question for us as to whom we choose to become our true teacher, and who will remain blind for following a blind teacher.  The answer is clear for us as convinced Christians; Jesus is the teacher and prophet, and it is his teaching we follow.  Fundamentally, we are asked, ‘whom do we truly trust?’

The second two verses (vv. 41-42) concerns what it means to be critical of others.  Now in our daily lives at times we certainly make routine judgements about whom we are dealing with.  This is not the kind of perpetually critical attitude that seeks to collect (real or imagined) slights or offenses to use against those we disagree with, or whom we are in conflict.  The latter can readily apply to the Scribes and Pharisees of Jesus’ time, but it readily applies to those who are critical of others so as to use it as a weapon against them.  Once more, we have a question to ponder in relation to our own conduct.