15th Sunday Year B

15th Sunday Year B – Positive or Negative

Good morning/evening to you all. How is everyone feeling? Are we still enjoying summer or are we moaning a bit about it being still too cold or too wet for our usual time of the year?

Where are we at mentally, emotionally and maybe even spiritually? Are we feeling positive or negative?

I ask this very deliberately, because how we are feeling will and does affect how we listen and what we take from what we hear. If we are feeling positive then we hear the positive in what others say; in how they act. Or at the very least, we ignore and maybe don’t even hear any of the negatives that they may be displaying in body or voice.

We will take grunts and sniffs as acknowledgements of our greeting or presence and respond with smiles and nods of heads. We walk on still feeling positive and maybe, just maybe, we leave behind a feeling of positivity and maybe joy or happiness or at least a jolt to that person’s current state of mind!

And similarly, if we are feeling down and despondent and we are the person who grunts and sniffs at everyone we meet; if we are the person who is feeling negative, then we seek out only the negative in other people. We look to capture the downside of how they look at us or what they might say to us or even what they don’t say to us! We look for offence whether it is intended or not. Or at the very least, we look to ignore and distance ourselves from those around us, if they do not display the emotion that we want them to.

But why, I hear you ask, am I going on so much about people, us, you, being positive or negative? Well, I would ask you what message you took from today’s gospel? And was it a positive one or a negative one?

What did you hear Jesus say to his apostles that has stayed with you after the reading was finished? Hopefully it wasn’t just, “the Gospel of the Lord” at the end!

Jesus is giving his apostles instructions on how they should go out and spread the Word of God. He is telling them how they should act and behave with the people, the towns and villages that they encounter. And he is being clear on how they should deal with the positive and negative reactions that they may meet and I wonder which of these instructions have stayed with us  the most?

Did we hear the positive? The instruction that, “If you enter a house anywhere, stay there until you leave.” This positive note about respecting the welcome you may receive and showing regard to your hosts by and through your actions and behaviours and possibly your blessings too; by and through being a good guest to your good hosts.

Or did you hear the negative and concentrate on that? Did you hear Jesus say, and only say, “And if any place does not welcome you and people refuse to listen to you, as you walk away, shake off the dust from under your feet as a sign to them.” Was this the central and maybe only message that you took?

That if the people you meet do not welcome you; do not listen to you; do not embrace you and take you into their own, then you should show your disdain of and for them by refusing to take even the dust from their town with you. By this very public and clear illustration of your disdain for them: a clear insult and rebuke.

Jesus was telling his apostles that they should be reaching out to any and to all and to be doing this in such a way as to invite and welcome people whatever their station or position. He was telling them that they had to be humble and to seek hospitality from wherever they could find it and then having found it, to respect and reward this hospitality with the grace and blessings that they could and should offer.

Theirs should be a positive approach, initiated at all times and in all circumstances to all peoples. They should be reaching out with open arms, open hearts and open spirits to welcome in anyone who would listen and who would be open to and for them.

Theirs should be a positive approach that is exemplified with a smile that is full of the knowledge of God and of Jesus Christ His Son. And of the joy of the message with which he has given them to take: that God loves them for who they are and that they should show this love in their everyday lives by how they love one another and in how they love and treat the stranger in their midst and their everyday neighbour.

Theirs should be a message of love: positive and active love.

Ours should be a message of love: positive and active love.

We need to take the positive message that this gospel offers to us: that we should go about our lives living the love of God in how we meet and greet our neighbours, full of joy and wonder and full of the wish and the will to reach out and to share this love with others, with those we meet.

Are we positive or negative? Are we looking to promote or to cast down and shake off?

Our response and our actions all depend on and start with us; with me. Am I a positive person or a negative person? Am I looking to live a life filled with the love of God or one that refuses to acknowledge the gifts that I have been freely and abundantly given?