Tag: the lord’s supper

No Class (1 Corinthians 11:17-22)

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality Blog, Daily Bible Reading Blog, Exploring Church Ministry Blog, Year BLeave a comment

In the following directives I have no praise for you, for your meetings do more harm than good. 

In the first place, I hear that when you come together as a church, there are divisions among you, and to some extent I believe it. No doubt there have to be differences among you to show which of you have God’s approval. 

So then, when you come together, it is not the Lord’s Supper you eat, for when you are eating, some of you go ahead with your own private suppers. As a result, one person remains hungry and another gets drunk. 

Don’t you have homes to eat and drink in? Or do you despise the church of God by humiliating those who have nothing? What shall I say to you? Shall I praise you? Certainly not in this matter! (New International Version)

The memory of the Last Supper with Jesus and his disciples is one that has significantly shaped church history. In the earliest church, we see from the Apostle Paul how impactful table fellowship was for the believers.

Paul received the words of faith, and passed them on to the churches he established, including the church at Corinth. The Apostle faithfully engaged in handing down a tradition which Christians practice all over the world, even today.

The Corinthian Church had devolved into a bunch of divided special interest groups. They were in great need of unity in order to reflect being the one Body of Christ. The divisions fractured their worship, especially their communion with one another.

The Christians in Corinth were gathering for a shared meal, but not really for communion with each other and their Lord. There was no true interaction and fellowship that was happening.

The church’s divisions were such that the groups had no intention of meaningfully interacting with one another. In other words, the church culture was so fragmented and polarized that the Apostle Paul had enough of their disunity, and addressed it head on in his letter.

One of the significant situations was the class differences amongst the believers. The wealthy members of the congregation were given to a lot of leisure time with a good deal of discretionary money. They would often come together, well before the working class and the day laborers could show up to eat.

The richer parishioners feasted amongst themselves. By the time others arrived, many of them either had very little, or went without altogether. For Paul, this was a travesty of the communion meal, which was supposed to signify the unity of believers and the sacrifice of Christ for all.

The Apostle clearly understood that the poor were being humiliated and treated as second class citizens in the church. So, Paul condemned this situation of division, and the inequitable treatment of the less privileged.

The rich people were therefore instructed to eat and drink privately in their own homes, so that the wealthy would not come and scarf all the food, making a mockery of the sacrament.

The shared meal was to remind them of Christ, and was not a time for petty and ostentatious selfishness. Jesus gave his life for all. All believers – whether rich or poor – are to remember both the corporeal body of Jesus, and the corporate body of believers, so that every Christian may overcome ungodly divisions and live into the unity provided through the cross of Christ.

What the Corinthians were doing was not the Lord’s Supper. The believers’ conduct and character eviscerated it’s true purpose and meaning, and made it something else altogether.

Celebration, by John August Swanson (1938-2021)

If the church was to celebrate at the Table, then they needed to listen to what the Lord told Paul about it. Christians coming together for fellowship, eating, and remembering the Lord is not a collection of individual believers doing their own thing. It is a collective meal, meant to emphasize their unity with Christ and one another.

Unlike a contemporary church potluck, the Corinthians brought their own food to eat without sharing. Thus, the rich were eating caviar and crème brûlée, whereas the poor chewed on a peanut butter sandwich with no jelly, and stale potato chips.

On one side of the room there was a group of well-to-do people gorging themselves on a feast, while on the other side of the room the less fortunate folks just tried to eat their meager rations.

The have’s and the have-not’s were splitting the church in ways that made it no different from the wider pagan culture. And Paul would have none of it. The Apostle’s train of thought and Christian convictions on this were clearly spelled out just a few verses earlier in his letter:

So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God. Do not cause anyone to stumble, whether Jews, Greeks or the church of God—even as I try to please everyone in every way. For I am not seeking my own good but the good of many, so that they may be saved. (1 Corinthians 10:31-33, NIV)

We are all to ensure that our meetings together are helpful, life-giving, and promote the common good of everyone. Anything less than this is simply unchristian.

Almighty God our heavenly Father, you declare your glory and show forth your handiwork in the heavens and in the earth: Deliver us in our various occupations from the service of self alone, that we may do the work you give us to do in truth and beauty and for the common good; for the sake of him who came among us as one who serves, your Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

1 Corinthians 11:23-26

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year CLeave a comment
            NPR gave a report a few years ago about the relationship between our minds and our stomachs.  Scholars at UCLA conducted some experiments that give us some insight on what we know as a ‘gut feeling.’  Their studies indicate that microbes in our stomachs affect the neural activity of the brain.  They concluded:  “Your brain is not just another organ.  It is affected by what goes on in the rest of your body.”  Scientists are discovering that there is a vast network of neurons lining our guts that is so extensive that some researchers have nicknamed it our “second brain.”
 
            When Jesus instituted the Lord’s Supper and invited his disciples to eat and drink with him as a way of following him, he was reaching us as holistic people.  We do not simply follow Jesus by affirming right doctrine in the head (as important as that is); we walk in the way of Jesus on a very visceral level, literally!  Perhaps Jesus knew that the way to our hearts is through our stomachs.
 
            We observe the Lord’s Supper as part of our full-orbed Christian discipleship.  This is also why practices like hospitality and even church potlucks have the incredible power to form us as the people of God.  As often as we break bread together and drink together, we proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.  We preach Christ not only with mouths, but with our stomachs.  How cool is that!
 

 

            Look down O Lord, I pray, on all of us, your family for whom the Lord Jesus was betrayed and delivered into the hands of wicked men, and to suffer torment on the cross.  In the Holy Supper which you have instituted, let us remember this great love which you have bestowed on us.  May I eat and drink knowing the wondrous unity I have with you, in Christ.  Amen.

The Lord’s Table

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Exploring Church Ministry BlogLeave a comment
The Lord’s Table proclaims the gospel to us, and the good news of Jesus Christ is what we need to be molded and shaped into disciples.  Just as the simple routines of eating breakfast and getting ready in the morning shape our daily lives, so the ritual of the Lord’s Table is to set the tone for our lives by orienting us around healthy routines of learning to follow Jesus.  We need the Lord’s Table because our hearts are often thorny with cares and worries which leads to a weakening of faith.  A sermon is words; the Table is tangible.  Preaching may say the words “I love you!” but the Table seals those words and makes them real, like a kiss.
 
 
 
            The purpose of the Lord’s Table is to participate in the blessings of Christ by visually re-creating the story of Jesus.  There are three different terms for the Table in the New Testament, and each term is meant to convey a different aspect of the Table’s significance.  One of those terms is The Lord’s Supper.  The focus of The Lord’s Supper is remembrance, a memorial of Christ’s death that is deeply reflective and contemplative.  Paul said to the Corinthians:  A man ought to examine himself before he eats of the bread and drinks of the cup.  For anyone who eats and drinks without recognizing the body of the Lord eats and drinks judgment on himself.  Paul said this because at the Table whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes (1 Corinthians 11:26).
 
            A second term for the Lord’s Table is called The Eucharist.  Eucharist literally means “thanksgiving.”  The focus of seeing the Lord’s Table as The Eucharist means that we are celebrating our victory over sin, death, and hell through Christ’s death.  At the Last Supper, the Gospel writer Mark said that Jesus took bread, gave thanks (Eucharist), and broke it, and gave it to his disciples, saying, “Take it; this is my body.”  Then he took the cup, gave thanks (Eucharist) and offered it to them, and they all drank from it (Mark 14:22-23).  We might say that observing the Table as both The Lord’s Supper and The Eucharist means that we will engage in a sober celebration.
 
            The third term describing the Lord’s Table is the term “communion.”  Communion means to participate in Christ and with other Christians.  Is not the cup of thanksgiving for which we give thanks a participation in the blood of Christ?  And is not the bread that we break a participation in the body of Christ?  Because there is one loaf, we, who are many, are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf (1 Corinthians 10:16-17).  This emphasizes that when we partake of the Lord’s Table, we ought to do so with unity and fellowship; we do not just participate as individuals, but together as the community of the redeemed.
 
            As we allow the Table to be a remembrance, a celebration, and participation with each other, we engage in a ritual that helps us to know Christ better and we are better able to realize his grace to us.
 
 
 
            One of the wonderful realities about communion is that believers all over the planet share in Christ together.  Communion and participation is important because we can easily be fragmented and not fellowship with one another, both in the local church, and the world-wide church.  Paul wrote his first letter to the Corinthians because they were divided among themselves.  He emphasized the work of Jesus on the cross as bringing reconciliation between God and people.  Christ’s work of reconciliation has restored a broken relationship between us and God, and also between one another.  The relations between the Corinthians were not good; they existed as a network of special interest groups, instead of being aware of each other and intentionally participating with each other.  They did not necessarily fight among each other, but simply ignored other people in the church.  Each group wanted their own way, and they had not yet learned how to talk to one another and work together in a unity and fellowship that reflects the gospel.
 
            One of the things we need to be aware of as we think of sharing in communion together is that we are not to approach the Table to be with people who are like us in the way we want them to be. We come because we have staked our souls on the fact that Christ is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and the church is the best place, the only place, to be while we all struggle to figure out what that means. We come because we’d be hard pressed to say which is the bigger of the two scandals of God: that he loves me—or that he loves everyone else.  The Lord’s Table is the great leveler, where we all have equal footing and accept one another according to a common confession of Christ.
 
            So when we talk about the Lord’s Table as being communion, we are emphasizing that it is not just a remembrance, but a participation in the body and blood of Christ.  And since that is true, communion is participation with all Christians everywhere.  The Lord’s Table is not just to be an individual experience in isolation from others.  There is solidarity not only between the individual and God, but between all believers.
 
            Therefore, we are not alone.  Communion lets us know that God is with us, and that he has so closely identified with us that he took our place on the cross.  As a result, every believer in Jesus is linked to all the others so that, when one suffers or rejoices, all suffer or rejoice, whether it is an African pastor rejoicing over newly saved persons out of animism, or a suffering Syrian Christian trying to survive in a refugee camp.
 
            We must live up to what we profess.  Our participation in Christ results in participation and unity with each other.  Since we are God’s forgiven people, we are to work at living the Christian life together.  This unity is symbolized by partaking together of the same loaf of bread, and drinking from a common cup.
 
            On one Sunday, a group of missionaries and believers in Papua New Guinea were gathered to observe communion together.  After one young man sat down, one of the missionaries recognized that he seemed to be quite upset.  But, then, in a while, the young man seemed to be fine.  The missionary leaned over and whispered to him, “What was it that troubled you?”  The young man replied, “The man who just came in happens to be the man who killed and ate the body of my father.  And now he has come in to observe communion with us.  At first I didn’t think I could do that.  But it is all right now.  He is washed in the same precious blood as I am.”  And so together they had Communion.
 

 

            We have peace because of Jesus.  His death has brought reconciliation not only between us and God, but between each other.  As we approach the Lord’s Table, let us be aware not only of our personal relationship with God, but our relationships with one another in the local church, and our unity with the world-wide church.  May our lives be shaped and formed around the cross of Jesus Christ, as we remember, celebrate, and participate together.