Consider the Body
Notes
Transcript
Table Fellowship
Table Fellowship
Last week Ella tried to call my attention to something at the table, and she shouted out “Daddy Mack”… but this gigantic belch arose as she shouted and so the “Mack” part of that was a bassy roar. Got my attention!
Just this week Dylan tipped on the bench… like we’ve told him not to a thousand times, and the whole thing tilted him back, smacked his head against the wall and folded him up against the wall in a half-nelson.
With five kids it is barely controlled chaos. Someone loves the food, someone hates the food, please pass the food. People talking over one another, waiting for turns to speak. Side conversations break out and then everyone gathers back in for a good joke or story. We make everyone wait to be excused for the last person to be done eating… so sometimes everyone staring at that person waiting for them to be done!
This is where many family inside jokes are born.
Communion
Communion
You hear “community” in there. You hear “Union” in there.
Remember Jesus and the disciples in the Upper Room. There, over the Passover Feast, that is the context of Communion. Table fellowship.
There, where Jesus knelt and washed each of their feet. Awkward and gross… but that’s love.
In that same room, he gave them a “new commandment” “Love one another, as I have loved you.”
This thing that was meant to bring us together becomes such a point of division.
Throughout history, especially when a given church was the social scene and network… “excommunication” was the ultimate doom. It was a rejection from friends and family, from village, from country at times. You are “excommunicated” which literally means “you can’t do communion with us anymore.” You are out.
Brutal. Gross. Popes would excommunicate whole groups of people. Churches “excommunicate” other churches. Denominations, whole denominations are formed when a group of people decide they can’t be in “communion” with one another anymore.
And before we have too much fun laughing at them… we might want to read the story of the forming of the first Seventh Day Baptist church in Rhode Island in the 16th century.
There has been wars fought over the details of communion. Does the bread actually turn into the body of Christ physically (transubstantiation)… or is it a spiritual-yet-literal-at-the-same-time (consubstantiation), or is it a powerful metaphor or symbol, a picture, a “remembrance” as us Baptists believe.
That’s not how this is supposed to work! That’s not how any of this works!
Communion has often been a source of division in the church at worst… and a solo experience with God at best.
Isn’t that the way we usually take communion? A solemn moment… music playing… praying to God, remembering Jesus’ sacrifice.
That’s not wrong, mostly that’s super helpful. I have always experienced that as a profound moment of worship, of prayer, of thankfulness to Jesus, of remembrance. That is honest and good.
But it is largely me and God.... and we are quiet and respectful of one another’s vertical silo.
How crazy would it be if someone cracked a joke in the middle of “communion”? It would seem wrong and disrespectful. What if someone tipped their chair to far back and smacked their head against the wall? What if someone tried to call someone’s name and accidentally burped it out?
A church in disunity. Maybe a series in 1 Corinthians coming soon. But this is a church divided, separated… as it turns out so many of the churches in the first century were. People were people then too.
Paul writes to those he loves in Corinth, remember he pastored there for around 2 years...
But 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, in the first place, when you come together as a church, I hear that there are divisions among you. And I believe it in part,
I believe it! I’m not surprised! Disappointed… but not surprised!
for there must be factions among you in order that those who are genuine among you may be recognized.
Their factions may have been on different lines. Maybe it was Greek vs. Jew, maybe it was theological, eating food from idols was a big thing, the haves and have-nots was a divide… but there were divisions and separations.
When you come together, it is not the Lord’s supper that you eat.
For in eating, each one goes ahead with his own meal. One goes hungry, another gets drunk.
What! Do you not have houses to eat and drink in? Or do you despise the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing? What shall I say to you? Shall I commend you in this? No, I will not.
This is what it should look like. It should look like the table fellowship, the Communion of Jesus and his apostles. These familiar oft-read words:
For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread,
and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”
In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.”
For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.
What is the context? It is in answer to disunity.
Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord.
Note “body and blood”. Throughout the passage, this is a pair. Body and Blood.
And these are hard words. To be “guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord?” I’m not sure what it means… but it doesn’t sound good! How do we avoid that?
We talked about this back in November when we talked about “Reconciliation.”
Let a person examine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup.
What am I examining in myself? What am I looking for? What am I searching in my soul? Is it un-confessed sin, is it guilt… what is it?
For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself.
That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died.
Examine yourself. Judge yourself. As it will go on to say, failure to do so leads to sickness, weakness, even death. This is a life and death issue. In what light are you to examine yourself? Don’t eat or drink without “discerning the body...” I don’t think he is referring to the bread / the body of Christ. There he uses “body and blood” always in a pair.
I think he is reaching back into his letter to his analogy of the people of God, united together, as the “body of Christ.” That’s his phrase. This is about reconciliation.
The early church practiced it this way.
The Didache (late 1st century document describing early church practices) says this:
The Apostolic Fathers Chapter 14
1 And on the Lord’s Day, after you have come together, break bread and offer the Eucharist, having first confessed your offences, so that your sacrifice may be pure. 2 But let no one who has a quarrel with his neighbor join you until he is reconciled, lest your sacrifice be defiled.
Don’t even let people who haven’t done this work join you in communion! This isn’t Scripture, but it does capture the practice of the first century church. This is how serious this is!
But there is hope for...
But if we judged ourselves truly, we would not be judged.
But when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined so that we may not be condemned along with the world.
So then, my brothers, when you come together to eat, wait for one another—
This is a “communal” act. This is the communal act. This is all about unity in Christ and therefore unity with one another.
In communion.
Let’s consider the body… the body of Christ.
Even as we consider the sacrifice of Jesus - aka the body and the blood...
We stand in awe of the way that he loved us, forgave us, bore our sin unto death… that we may have life in his resurrection.
We remember his death until He comes...
But consider the body… the Body of Christ. One body, many members, each crucial to the abundant life.
Table Fellowship
Table Fellowship
You’ve got time. This isn’t going to take 1 minute. The Passover dinner, the “Last Supper” spread out over hours. There was laughing and chatter and teaching and all the things, before the bread, between the bread and the wine, and after. Take your time, not in solemn contemplation only before God… in communion with God and with one another.
So, at the communion table, you all set the pace with one another. You take some time to “consider one another”… consider the body. At that table, is there anyone you need to forgive…
Anyone you need to encourage...
Anyone you need to simply say “I love you...” (as awkward as that might feel.
Holding the broken body of our Lord in your hand… this is what you are saying to one another at the table. I will love you like Jesus loves me, like Jesus loves you…
I’ll give you a few minutes for variously awkward conversations.
What is Jesus teaching you? What does the cross mean to you? What does forgiveness mean to you today?
Consider the body of Jesus… broken for you. And consider the Body of Christ, the members of whom sit at your table. Take and eat together.
Holding the cup of the covenant… this is what you are saying to one another at the table. I will forgive you like Jesus forgave me. I will love you because Jesus loved me. I would die for you.