This past Sunday, as we explored our Gospel text in which Jesus tells a parable about how guests chose thier seats at a wedding banquet, I invited you all to think about your experience of elementary, junior high, or high school cafeterias. As I was preparing to preach, my mind went back to my elementary school: Riverside Elementary in Ringle, WI.
During elementary school, I was a part of a program that kept me with the same kids in my class from year to year. Needless to say, we were pretty tight. Especially in early elementary (1st and 2nd grade), I can remember the girls and I scheming throughout the morning to determine who was going to sit next to each other at the lunch table. “Can I sit next to you at lunch?” started the conversation. “Sure, but I’m already sitting next to Andrea, too.” By the time we got to lunch, between the 8 of us girls, we had created a long line that went along one row of the lunch room table, each of us with two special people flanking us.
The fact that we did this as young girls is laughable now. It would’ve made so much more sense to sit 4 girls on one side of the table and 4 girls on the other. But wanting to make sure we sat by who we wanted to sit by, we created this long row in which we could really only talk to 2 people at lunch, rather than all 8.
Truth is, even outside of lunchrooms, we still do this as adults. We tend to surround ourselves on both sides with people we “like” and with people we “want” to hang out with. For sure, there is a time and a place to have good friends around us to encourage, support, and care for us. But if we do this in every situation, we’re missing out on talking to the other 6 people who might be around us, but whom we really don’t even know.
So as you go about your week, consider how you might be called to create a more wholesome table rather than singling one or two people out. Perhaps that’s in a group at work, or perhaps that’s in a group you’re in at church. And, as you consider those in your group, consider those who haven’t even been invited to the table yet. ‘Cause though I was close friends with 7 girls in elementary school, I had a whole school full of girls who could’ve been just as tight of friends.