Yeses and noes

A key question in counseling and professional coaching (and really, the rest of life) is, “If you’re saying Yes to this, what are you saying No to?” It’s key because it reflects a simple reality: saying Yes to certain things necessarily means saying No to others.

We all know this from our own time and finances, two things that for most of us are limited.

Yes here necessarily means No here…and conversely, No here is the only way to say Yes here.

In this week’s Gospel reading, Jesus tells a graphic parable about a harsh and final kind of rejection, and its meaning seems pretty straightforward. In fact, because of its obviousness, we might read through it quickly and think it doesn’t really implicate us.

But it does…all of us.