1 Corinthians 11:17-29
17 Now in the following
instructions I do not commend you, because when you come together it is not for
the better but for the worse. 18 For, to begin with, when you come together
as a church, I hear that there are divisions among you; and to some extent I believe
it. 19
Indeed, there have to be factions among you, for only so will it become clear
who among you are genuine. 20 When
you come together, it is not really to eat the Lord's supper. 21 For when the time comes to eat,
each of you goes ahead with your own supper, and one goes hungry and another
becomes drunk. 22
What! Do you not have homes to eat and drink in? Or do you show contempt for
the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing? What should I say to
you? Should I commend you? In this matter I do not commend you! 23 For I received from the Lord
what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was
betrayed took a loaf of bread, 24 and when he had given thanks, he broke it
and said, "This is my body that is for you. Do this in
remembrance of me." 25 In
the same way he took the cup also, after supper, saying, "This cup is the
new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of
me." 26 For
as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death
until he comes. 27
Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy
manner will be answerable for the body and blood of the Lord. 28 Examine yourselves, and only
then eat of the bread and drink of the cup. 29 For all who eat and drink without
discerning the body, eat and drink judgment against themselves.
When I was in seminary, one of my
church history/theology professors told us all a story about a church’s first
communion and the “interesting” events that transpired. He didn’t tell us the
name or location of the church (presumably to protect the innocent), but it was
a new church that had decided it was “non-denominational”—whatever that means
these days. They had been holding services for several weeks when they decided
to have their first Lord’s Supper service, but there were a few things to work
out. Since they were “non-denominational” they had no direct tradition to
follow when it came to celebrating communion, so the leaders of the church met
together to decide on the logistics and specifics of the church’s own
understanding of the Lord’s Supper.
The first issue was “how”—how were
they going to do the actual Supper itself? Well, most of the members were from
churches much like ours, so they were used to being served tiny bits of bread
and small cups of juice from highly polished trays. So the leaders of the
church decided that would be the most efficient way to do communion, especially the first time. The second issue was one
of much deeper consequence: they had to decide what the Supper meant for their
congregation. After much prayer, deliberation, discussion, and reflection, the
leaders of the church decided that their church would practice a sacramental understanding of the Supper.
In other words, for them the bits of bread and cups of juice would be the actual body and blood of Jesus. It’s not
foreign belief, but it is one that would present a very real “problem” for the
church, especially the first time they held communion.
That first Sunday came, and the
table was set. The pastor said his own words of institution, and everyone was
aware that now the bread and juice had become the body and blood of Jesus. The
pastor and deacons uncovered the trays, and the pastor handed each deacon a tray
of small, crunchy communion crackers, and then—disaster. As one of the deacons
turned to serve the congregation (with a full tray of bread), he tripped over
his own feet. The full tray of the freshly consecrated bread flew into the air,
and tiny bits of the body of Christ rained down on the floor and the front
seats of the sanctuary. The people gasped; the deacon’s face turned the darkest
shade of red and tears began to form in the corners of his eyes. The rest of
the deacons served the congregation, while the crumbs lay in the carpet.
There was an emergency meeting
after the service to decide how to handle this situation. After all, this was the body of Jesus in the church’s
carpet; it couldn’t simply be picked up and discarded. So the leaders of the church
came up with a solution that they thought would be most reverent and
appropriate and they called a special service that afternoon. The pastors,
elders, deacons, and other ordained members of the church gathered in a circle
that afternoon and laid hands on…a brand new vacuum cleaner! They had decided
to ordain a vacuum cleaner for the sole purpose of handling just such incidents
(there was even a rumor that they had anointed it with oil!). With the newly
ordained appliance, the bits of the broken body of Christ were removed from the
path of irreverent loafers and the occasionally church ant.
While this is a comical incident
involving a sacramental way of understanding the Lord’s Supper, many churches
still gather around the Lord’s table with the very same understanding—and
that’s alright! Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox Churches, Anglicans,
Lutherans and a host of other Christian churches have held this understanding
for centuries. But we as Baptists find our meaning of the Lord’s Supper in a
different way. We don’t believe that these small crackers are the actual body of Jesus, nor do we believe
that these small cups of juice are the actual
blood of our savior. We find our meaning in the Lord’s Supper as an act of
reflective obedience (“Do this in remembrance of me”) and as a unifying act
that ties us to all of our brothers and sisters, of all denominations, around
the world and down through the history of Christ’s Church. It ties us to our brothers and sisters down
the street, our brothers and sisters across America, our brothers and sisters
in Europe and Asia, our brothers and sisters in the devastation in Haiti; it
ties us to our brothers and sisters back through centuries past. Yes, as we are
served from the table of the Lord this morning, we are being connected even
back to those who were served from the tables of first century Corinth, our
brothers and sisters we read about in the text before us this morning in the
words of the apostle Paul.
At first reading, it is obvious
these are not joyous words the apostle writes; these are not words written in a
mood of complement or congratulations. Paul says in verse 17, “Now
in the following instructions I do not commend you, because when you come
together it is not for the better but for the worse.” For the first ten chapters of this epistle Paul outlines all
the problems with the church at Corinth: their divisions, their absence of
discipline, their misunderstanding of dietary laws and idol worship. Paul seems
to have nothing nice to say about the church at all. But if you were one of
those first century Corinthian Christians who gathered around the Lord’s table,
by now you would hope Paul had at least a small particle of positivity to
bestow upon your church—but he doesn’t. “I do not commend you…” he says. This
church is made up of rich folks, poor folks, Gentile folks, Jewish folks. It’s
a “melting pot” of a church in the midst of an ancient metropolis situated
between two port cities. It had the potential to be the shining example of what
a church ought to be—but it wasn’t!
Now, Paul
isn’t as tough on the Corinthians as he was on the Galatians, but he definitely
isn’t as sweet to them as he was to the Philippians either. Paul has caught
wind (presumably by the testimony of Chloe’s people) that when the church at
Corinth gathered together for worship some were left out, particularly from the
Lord’s Supper and simply because of their socio-economic status. He says in verses 20-21: “When
you come together, it is not really to eat the Lord's supper. For when the time
comes to eat, each of you goes ahead with your own supper, and one goes hungry
and another becomes drunk.”
Part of what Paul is
referring to here is the “Agape feast” that was a common practice in many of
the early churches. At Corinth, the Agape feast would have looked an awful lot
like a pagan dinner party, with the guests eating their own, brought-from-home
meals first (not sharing with anyone mind you), followed by a religious ritual
or philosophical discourse (in this case, the Lord’s Supper), which then would
have been followed by what you and I might refer to as “fellowship.”[1]
It was during this Agape feast that the church was being anything but
Christ-like. See, what was happening was that the rich, the socially affluent,
were gathering together first. They would meet in the nicest room in the house,
eat their opulent meals, drink the finest wine, and then the others would
arrive. These “others” were the working class folks, the poor, the slaves, the
merchants, etcetera. When they had punched the time clock for the final time
that day, they would rush to meet with their brothers and sisters only to find
that the wealthy had crammed into the triclinium (the “formal dining room”) and
they were left to eat their measly meals in the atrium (the “overflow room”) or
the courtyard, and on top of that they had to drink the poorest wine or nothing
at all. Now, that may seem like a small matter to some of you, but the reality
of it is that most of those latecomers were working poor people, and their
meals were mostly non-existent. So when they arrived to meet with their
brothers and sisters in the faith, they were treated like second-class
citizens: forced to eat outside, and only eat what they were able to scrounge
up, while the rich folks ate too much and got drunk. Remember, this was also
taking place during a time that was meant to be worship. No wonder Paul is a
wee bit upset!
This particular situation is so
important to the apostle, that for the first and only time in all of his
letters, he actually quotes Jesus’ words from the gospels: (vv.23-25) “For I received from
the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he
was betrayed took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it
and said, "This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of
me." In the same way he took the cup also, after supper, saying,
"This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink
it, in remembrance of me." I have a feeling he wrote that last
phrase with a heavier hand and may have even underlined it, “in remembrance of me.”
You see, here Paul isn’t concerned with outlining a doctrinally correct
understanding of what the elements of the Supper represent. No. Here Paul is
primarily concerned with the reality that the church is not living up to the
message of Christ inherent in the observance of the Lord’s Supper. He puts it
this way in verse 26: “For as often as you eat this bread and drink
the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.” In other words,
as they gathered—as we gather—to observe the Lord’s Supper it is to proclaim
the good news of Christ’s atoning sacrifice. But when the people of God gather
together with self-seeking attitudes the message of the gospel is tarnished, if
not completely dissolved, and the observance of the Lord’s Supper is empty. It
becomes nothing more than the consumption of a few bits of bread and small cups
of grape juice. But here in this passage of Scripture, the apostle calls the
Corinthian Christians to examine themselves and their inconsistent actions when
it comes to taking the Lord’s Supper, for in their selfish behavior, in their
forgetting of the poor, the hungry, those without, the church was doing
anything but “proclaiming the Lord’s death until he comes.” They were, as Paul
says in verse 27, “eat[ing]
the bread and drink[ing] the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner…”
and therefore they were going to be “answerable for the body and blood of the
Lord.” They were going to be answerable not because of their
theological understanding of the communion meal, but because of the way they
lived their lives as Christians; their collective lives did not reflect the
gospel, most especially when they came together for the Lord’s Supper.
So what about us? We’re here this morning, gathered as Christ’s church
around the communion table. We’re not much unlike our brothers and sisters in
ancient Corinth: some of us are (relatively) rich, poor, retired, working,
single, married, divorced, hurting, or happy: we come from all walks of life,
but hopefully our similarities end there. Hopefully, as we have gathered
together in this room this morning, each one of us has examined our own lives,
sought ways to “proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes” in our lives. So
often we hear those words and think that the apostle is condemning us
individually, but Paul is warning the congregation of the danger of practicing
communion without practicing the rest of Christ’s commands.
Have we gathered together today only to go through the motions of
worship, or have we gathered here today in a collected expression of lives
lived for the proclamation of Christ’s gospel? When you are served from the Lord’s
Table this morning, will you take the bread and the cup out of habit? Out of
some sort of theological obligation? The Corinthians took the bread and the cup
to solidify their theological opinions, but in doing so, they overlooked those
around them; they overlooked the very meaning of the gospel. So as we come to
this time where we are served from the Lord’s Table, may we examine ourselves
as individuals and as a congregation. May we search our hearts for the reason
we take the bread and the cup. As you are served this morning, ask yourself, “Does
my life reflect Christ and his gospel as I take these elements that reflect him
and his gospel?” Amen.
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