Visitors at Communion and 1 Corinthians 11

 

1 Corinthians 11 and Visitors at communion

The Context (Context is king!)

The letters to the Corinthians are occasional letters dealing with pastoral issues in the church. Some of "Chloe's people” have reported to Paul on troubles in Corinth, and Paul has received at least one other letter from Corinth. Perhaps another delegation has come seeking advice. 

Don Carson writes,

When students of the Bible speak of Paul’s letters as “occasional,” they do not mean that they are infrequent or sporadic. They mean, instead, that in most cases, they were written on specific “occasions,” perhaps to combat a particular error (as in Galatians), or to ask someone for something specific (as in Philemon), or to respond to a church’s questions (as in large parts of 1 Corinthians).

However, reading Paul’s occasional letters is often like listening to one side of a phone conversation. We need to reconstruct the issues at hand.

The first Corinthian letter opens up with Paul admonishing the members about division in the church. (Chapter) 1 Who is to lead? This theme about division in the church goes on to dominate this letter. Chapter 2 Is about Human wisdom vs godly wisdom. In Chapter 3. Paul consider ”Who to follow?” Chapter 4 describes how Human pride causes division. Chapter 5. Describes how Immorality causes division. In Chapter 6, The apostle declares that Lawsuits are evidence of division. He goes on in Chapter 7 to discuss how there are divisions in marriage. Then in Chapter 8 he shows the way forward when food sacrificed to idols has become reason for division. In Chapter 9 the Apostle Paul defends his Apostleship against detractors who are sowing seeds of division in the church. In Chapter 10, he begins his discussion on worship. And in Chapter 11-- (the final part of this chapter has our attention) -- in Chapter 11, he continues with prayer. And we will see how the matter of division in the church returns. This division has become evident in the worship of the church—not just division among leaders and followers; not just among members and leaders in the church; or between husbands and wives in marriages; not just in lawsuits among brothers; not just against Paul. But division has appeared in the worship of God, and even more seriously, division in the church has appeared at communion services.

The civic context is this: In Corinth, there were many pagan temples that celebrated temple prostitution, debauchery and drunkenness. There were many trade guilds in Corinth, and the business owners would sponsor feasts at the temples, to which the working-class members of the guilds were invited. However, there would be no socializing between rich and poor in the pagan temples. Often, the sponsors of the festival would engage in gluttony, and many would have too much wine while the working class would get the scraps and the dregs. The Corinthian temple orgies were well-known in the Roman Empire of the day. To live a completely sensuous life of immorality was commonly known as “to Corinthianize!” Some of these practices seems to have infiltrated the church.

In the church, at communion, the rich are getting drunk, and the poor get nothing. This is an outright denial of the hospitality of God.

The early churches met in the homes of the rich. These homes had open-walled courtyards that often could easily accommodate 50 or 60 members of the church for worship. The dining room, the triclinium, would only accommodate 10 or 12. It seems that the rich would sponsor the festive meal, but they would not wait for the lower class to finish work for the day (Christians didn’t get Lord’s Day rest till Constantine!). By the time the day laborers and slaves showed up for worship, the rich had eaten all the food, and some had had to much wine! In Corinth, the rich are not waiting for the poor to arrive and are getting drunk and overindulging while some people are going hungry.

As we said, “This is an outright denial of the hospitality of the Lord,” who welcomes all who come to him. Now we are not getting drunk on a sip of communion wine or being gluttonous when we take a morsel of bread. But we are denying the hospitality of God if we make a division in the church between “the haves” and “the have-nots.”

We must see the whole OT narrative as telling the story of the creator God restoring he fellowship he had with mankind in the Garden of Eden on Adam’s first full day, the Day of Rest; when Adam enjoyed the hospitality of his creator.. The Tabernacle was a picture of a Garden where the priests would eat the sacrifices in the holy presence of God, enjoying his hospitality. So also, the temple. The Land of Promise was a land flowing with Milk and Honey and under Solomon’s reign, the prince of Peace (His name means Peace) the land had Rest, and everyone could enjoy the hospitality of God.

But the old covenant in the blood of bulls and goats was insufficient to take away sin, so Jesus instituted a New Covenant in his own blood.

And that the New Covenant has restored our fractured relationship with God.

And at the communion table, we share in the peace, and the rest and the hospitality of God.

Jesus Christ has restored fellowship between God and mankind. That was the purpose of his life and death. The communion service is meant to be a celebration of the restored relationship, where all people are invited into the love relationship that the persons of the trinity enjoy. (John 15:9ff 17:13ff). At the communion table we are all invited into and share in the hospitality of the Lord. Moreover, Lord Jesus, after the Passover supper, took the cup and said, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you. We see the disciples in the upper room (were there 120 people present?) enjoying the hospitality of the Son of God, who was presiding over this Exodus meal.

This parallels Exodus 24:8-11, where immediately after the Lord confirms his covenant with the sprinkling of blood of the covenant, Moses & Aaron, Nadab & Abihu, and 70 Elders eat and drink in the presence of God. They were invited into the hospitality of God.

In Exodus 24, we read that Moses then took the blood, sprinkled it on the people and said, “This is the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you in accordance with all these words"  Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and the seventy elders of Israel went up and saw the God of Israel. Under his feet was something like a pavement made of lapis lazuli, as bright blue as the sky. But God did not raise his hand against these leaders of the Israelites; they saw God, and they ate and drank.

In his grief over division in the church, the Apostle enjoins the Corinthian ‘saints’ (see1:2) to self-examination (11:28-34). However, We should note that this passage, when quoted in Eucharistic liturgies, is often lifted out of its context. The context is Paul’s insistence on the unity of the body of Christ.

5 times in 11:17-22 and 33-34, the Apostle uses the same word: “come together.” This is a technical term designating the gathering for worship. It implies unity—the unity of the gathered ones. But in Corinth, the “coming together” has become a fiasco. There are divisions among them. The Apostle uses a word --Schismata-- that directly underlies our word Schism, which describes an ungodly division in the church. In chapter 10:17, Paul points this out when he sees the unity of the church in one loaf of bread and one body of believers. The elements of the Lord’s Supper not only symbolize the sacrifice of our Saviour, but the bread accents the unity and ecumenicity of the church.

The Lord’s Supper, given as a memorial meal of the deliverance that all believers have in Christ and of the hospitality of God, has become a function of division. There is a schism in the church. There is a division between rich and poor and between upper classes and lower classes. We are reminded of Paul’s denunciation of racial and class divisions in Colossians 2:11 where he writes ”...but Christ is all and is in all. Self-examination does not mean individual introspective contemplation on one’s personal worthiness to participate in communion. Rather, Paul’s injunction to self-examination is a command to the Corinthians to reflect on whether or not they are the cause of division in the body of believers. They are to discern the body. The body of the church.

Are the members of the church shaming others by denying them participation in LS?

Paul’s instruction is not, “Examine yourself. are you worthy to participate? Did you have a fight with your wife? Have lustful thoughts about another woman? been greedy or a gossip?

But “examine yourself! have your been participating in an unworthy manner?” Are you, in the manner by which you participate, causing a division, a schism among the believers? Discern the body..

Some in Corinth did not “discern the body,” and thus, they became guilty of “The body and blood of the Lord.” (In other words, as the apostle to the Hebrews writes in 6:6 and 10:29, they became guilty of trampling the Son of God underfoot (10:29) and crucifying him all over again (6:6).)

We, however, do not dispute the command for self-examination in the Form because the Form acknowledges that self-examination will lead to the conclusion that we need to be accounted worthy to partake by the Lord himself. However, we believe that Paul’s injunction to self-examination in 1 Corinthians 11 points directly to division among believers in worship.

True self-examination consists of:

1. Consider your sins and sinfulness (also the sins of division among believers) and how God has punished them in his Son?

2. Do you believe the promise of God that the righteousness of Christ is yours by faith?

3. Do you desire to show love for God in your walk of life and live with your neighbour in love and UNITY!

The third part of self-examination that it be “our sincere desire…. to live with our neighbour in true love and unity,” has our attention!

How can we possibly be doing this when we deny communion to guests who, as members of Bible-believing churches, desire to have their faith generated by the preaching of the gospel and strengthened by the use of the sacraments?

We are convinced that Paul’s instruction about the division between the rich and the poor should be applied in the case of visitors. We make long announcements about how we only allow members of our churches and sister churches to the table. And then we say, “We are not judging you.” But why would we say that? “Because our guests feel judged.” That is not “living in love and unity” with our neighbours.

We say, “We don’t doubt that you love the Lord, but we want to make sure that we keep the table holy.” And that is quite a judgment!

In my 25 years of ministry, I can tell you of hardened sinners, adulterers, and child abusers who, as members of the church, continued to come to the table lest they be found out. They were the hypocrites. But they did not defile the table, even as Judas the betrayer did not, nor Peter the denier, nor the other 10 who fled into the dark later on the night the Lord Jesus instituted this covenant meal. They did not defile that which is holy, even as the lepers and the unclean, nor the demoniacs nor the dead, made the Lord Jesus unclean! 

The table is profaned when the church does not warn the unbelieving and unrepentant to withhold themselves and abstain!

Confronted with this understanding of 1 Corinthians 11, we ask ourselves, “Will we live in love and unity welcome guests at the communion table, or will we approach them with a hermeneutic of suspicion?