Category: The Table
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A Banquet of Nobodies
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…
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The Main Thing
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.
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Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner
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?”
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Why This Matters Now
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…
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When Jesus Got Angry—and When He Didn’t
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…
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There’s a Seat at the Table (Even for You)
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…
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The Pharisee
We didn’t go in. Of course we didn’t. There are lines you don’t cross. Places you don’t sit. People you don’t eat with. Everyone knows that. So we stood outside where guests were spilling out onto the porch. Close enough to see through the doorway. Far enough to remain… clean.
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The Sinner
We heard about Him before we ever met Him. Hard not to. Everywhere He went, something happened. People got healed. Storms stopped. Demons left like they’d just been fired. And then one day… Matthew left. Just got up from his booth. No warning. No explanation. One minute collecting taxes, the next—gone.
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When Truth Matters, Community Matters
From the beginning, the heart of the Catch has been simple: We are all about Jesus. Not a political version of Jesus. Not a cultural version of Jesus. Not a version shaped by public opinion—even public “Christian” opinion. Just Jesus—the Jesus of the gospels, as told by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
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Come to the Table
It had all been arranged. The first ones there had found everything just as he had said, so they prepared the table with the Passover meal, but with an undercurrent of unrest. It was the beginning of the end. But it was not the end of the status quo that they feared. They had known…
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Eating with the Enemy
You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. Psalm 23:5 What a strange place to prepare a table for a warrior. This could be interpreted in so many ways. I think probably the basic idea is provision. God provides us with what we need in the face of our enemies. But I…