Reflecting…
“So then, my brothers and sisters, when you come together to eat, wait for one another.” (1 Corinthians 11:33 NRSV)
It was getting to be a problem. When the church at Corinth got together to celebrate the Lord’s Supper, they weren’t all that “together” about it. Some were digging in, eating voraciously, hungrily. (After all, it was a meal, wasn’t it? A banquet, a feast!) But the haves and the have-nots were not equally served.
So, Paul makes another note on his list of corrections and explanations to send them. They have misunderstood what the Supper is all about. They aren’t “discerning the body,” he writes. And that’s important, important enough to take set aside some time beforehand to review their own lives and to make amends. Important enough to warn them to take this seriously. Important enough to refocus their attention on the body of the Lord Jesus, given over to death on the cross for their forgiveness, and then, to challenge their limited assumptions about what that means in terms of community. In fact, not wanting to leave room for any excuses, Paul uses that word, “body,” to name Jesus Christ and, at the same time, to name the group of persons who eat the bread and share the cup at this table. The body of Christ is the church.
This is a personal meal, but not a private one. Relationship with Jesus is both deeply personal and, then, necessarily public. They cannot choose the first without receiving the second as well. It’s a package deal, we might say.
The well-to-do were accustomed to eating what they wanted when they wanted. Scholars note that the words Paul uses here imply that they are gorging themselves in front of those who have little by comparison.
Once Paul has their attention, when they are listening to this letter being read, Paul will make it absolutely clear: those with more personal power, who are able to do things their way, must make different choices. Eat before you get here, for example. So you can see past the food, so you can see past your own plate. “Wait for each other.” Remember you are here to eat together, so the rich need to be intentional about eating a simple, ‘poor’ meal. For good reason. In order to see Jesus. In order to be the church.
The letter still arrives today whenever we gather to take the bread and the cup. We hear the verses just before this: “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 broken for you.’” We hear, “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.’”
And, maybe we might listen more intently and ponder the importance of these next words for our own choices, “Wait for one another.”
“Much Grace,”
Pastor Shirley
