About four years ago, I had the distinct honor of having one of my oldest and best friends visit me at my brand new school. It was such an exciting thing for me to have my friend meet all my new school friends. To celebrate his coming we all decided to go to pizza together. I for whatever reason had to run a few errands first so we decided for us to meet up with my new friends at the pizza place. To my delight, when we arrived, there were two seats already prepared for us. The only disappointing thing was that it was at an adjacent table to the one all my new friends were at. We were close enough for conversation, however as the night developed we found more and more that we were not only at our own table but in our own separate group. We ended up spending over an hour at the pizza place only to feel entirely ignored by my new friends. It was one of the most awkward and humiliating things I can imagine having happened.
What strikes me as strange in this is that I see this happen in the Church. We as Christians are called to invite people to a grand celebration, a feast, and too often seeing “sinners” or “those who've fallen from the fold” makes us uncomfortable so even though they are sitting in the seat next to us we don't give them the dignity to share a meal with them. Physically they're there, but we ignore their presence.
This happened to my oldest friend, as he began making bad decisions in his personal life, the church he attended and had invested so much of his life into had totally forsaken him. He was ignored and ostracized because of his life choices. He should've been the one we invited all the more eagerly to this amazing banquet. He knew the food was delicious, but the company was attrocious. How can we all be better dinner guests?
