Today (May 14, 2026) is a Christian holiday in some European countries. I bet many of you didn’t know that. I can say that without any arrogance because I didn’t know it either. And I clearly wouldn’t have known it had I not read an article today by a pastor friend of mine from Missouri, Brian Zahnd, about how it is the least known holy day in the Christian calendar. Give up? It’s Ascension Day, the fortieth day after the resurrection—the day the church remembers Christ’s ascension into heaven.
At the center of nearly every human system is the same basic idea:
You get what you deserve.
Call it Karma.
Call it justice.
Call it consequence.
Call it cause and effect.
What you put out comes back to you.
Grace.
That strange, beautiful word that sounds too soft for the world we live in. Too naïve. Too easy. Too impractical for a culture built on performance, outrage, and keeping score.
And yet grace keeps showing up.
A man sitting at the table with Jesus exclaimed, “What a blessing it will be to attend a banquet in the Kingdom of God!”
Jesus replied with this story… (Luke 14:15-16)
The context of this story is important. Jesus was attending dinner at the home of a Pharisee. Most likely the man who made the statement was a Pharisee too. Jesus’ story appears a rather indirect answer to the man’s statement until you put all this together. We will look at this again at the end of this writing.
The Apostle Paul’s message in First Corinthians 11 is surprisingly direct.
The greatest danger facing the church was not persecution from outside. It was selfishness growing inside. It’s amazing how all the issues that trip Christians up all these years later are the same basic issues that showed up immediately in the early church.
Two guys are walking down a road. One says to the other, “Can you believe what’s been going on in town this weekend?
“I can’t make anything out of it,” says the other. “I was sure he was the Messiah.”
“Me too,” says the first traveler. “But what use is a dead Messiah?”
All the believers devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, and to fellowship, and to sharing in meals (including the Lord’s Supper), and to prayer. (Acts 2:42)
What we’re finding out so far:
Throughout Scripture, the table is where God makes room for people who didn’t expect to belong. And when people try to control that table—He overturns it and sets it again.
But when Peter came to Antioch, I had to oppose him to his face, for what he did was very wrong. When he first arrived, he ate with the Gentile believers, who were not circumcised. But afterward, when some friends of James came, Peter wouldn’t eat with the Gentiles anymore. He was afraid of criticism from these people who insisted on the necessity of circumcision. As a result, other Jewish believers followed Peter’s hypocrisy, and even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy. (Galatians 2:11-13)
Not all tables are welcoming. This incident in the life of the early church shows how a table can be exclusive or even be shunning to some in an act of judgment. It also shows how quickly our human tendency towards legalism can make ugly what grace has made beautiful.
Jesus got angry.
Not often—but when He did, it mattered.
He walked into the temple once, saw what was happening, and started turning over tables. Money went everywhere. People scrambled. And in the middle of it all, He says: “My house will be a house of prayer, but you have turned it into a den of thieves.”
Some passages of Scripture don’t yield easily to careful analysis.
We’re used to treating every word as serious, precise, and direct. And that’s good—to a point. But sometimes Jesus speaks with irony. Sometimes He exaggerates. Sometimes He sets something up just to see what we’ll do with it.
He was often more indirect than we expect. And sometimes, He was even playful.
