24. After John’s messengers were gone, Jesus spoke to the crowds about John. "What did you go out into the wilderness to see? A stalk blowing in the wind?
25. What did you go out to see? A man dressed up in refined clothes? Look, those who dress in fashionable clothes and live in luxury are in royal palaces.
26. What did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet.
27. He is the one of whom it’s written: Look, I’m sending my messenger before you, who will prepare your way before you.
28. I tell you that no greater human being has ever been born than John. Yet whoever is least in God’s kingdom is greater than he."
29. Everyone who heard this, including the tax collectors, acknowledged God’s justice because they had been baptized by John.
30. But the Pharisees and legal experts rejected God’s will for themselves because they hadn’t been baptized by John.
31. "To what will I compare the people of this generation?" Jesus asked. "What are they like?
32. They are like children sitting in the marketplace calling out to each other, ‘We played the flute for you and you didn’t dance. We sang a funeral song and you didn’t cry.’
33. John the Baptist came neither eating bread nor drinking wine, and you say, ‘He has a demon.’
34. Yet the Human One came eating and drinking, and you say, ‘Look, a glutton and a drunk, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.’
35. But wisdom is proved to be right by all her descendants."
36. One of the Pharisees invited Jesus to eat with him. After he entered the Pharisee’s home, he took his place at the table.
37. Meanwhile, a woman from the city, a sinner, discovered that Jesus was dining in the Pharisee’s house. She brought perfumed oil in a vase made of alabaster.
38. Standing behind him at his feet and crying, she began to wet his feet with her tears. She wiped them with her hair, kissed them, and poured the oil on them.
39. When the Pharisee who had invited Jesus saw what was happening, he said to himself, If this man were a prophet, he would know what kind of woman is touching him. He would know that she is a sinner.
40. Jesus replied, "Simon, I have something to say to you." "Teacher, speak," he said.