The Big Table

Some times we learn the easy way. Some times the answers to life's mysteries just fall in our laps like little slips of wisdom in our fortune cookies. But other times life teaches us the big valuable lessons the hard way. We are dragged through the stinky mess like a dog thrust into his own doings.

When I first arrived at my last job there was a little group of people that sat together in the mornings and drank coffee and looked important. There was something about the group that I didn't understant but I wanted to join. Something inside made me want to me 'in'. In time I found out that this table was the self-imposed center of moral authority in this workplace.

Luckily, after five years I worked myself into a chair at that table and for the first time in my life I was popular. We sat at the big table and watched those that passed by and judged them. Every snip of gossip danced through our lips as we decided who was good and who was bad. And the sad thing is... it felt wonderful to be there. I felt so important. I was drunk from the feeling of being 'in'.... of being 'better' than those not in the little group.

But then tides change and sure enough I found myself on the outside looking in... and I knew just as we had talked about everyone else all those time, now they were in there talking about me. They were shaking their heads about what they were sure I was doing or not doing right... And in a bitter moment of realization I knew that I had been very, very wrong. I realized that that drunk feeling was sin. I had been stepping on others to feel better about myself and that is the very opposite of the Gospel. I was very ashamed.

Jesus Christ is about reaching out to others. He never separates himself. He's about being trod upon to save others. He's never about burying another under his boot heel. We are living the Gospel when we are outside... Never when we are inside with our noses raised and casting judgement on everyone who is ''out'.


Jesus said, "Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you."

Why is it that often times those who see themselves as the most religious are really only the most self-righteous? Why is it that some people boast their faith but are truly only overzealous? What if people spent as must time helping others as they did gossiping about them? What if people who profess to knowing Jesus actually started acting like him? What if all of the 'ins' knew what it felt like to be an 'out'?

Holy Father, forgive me for my sins against my neighbor. I now see the light. -Amen