Sermon

1 Corinthians 11:17-34 — The Proper Observance of the Lord’s Supper

March 23, 2003

If you were like me this week, you’ve been watching a lot of the war coverage on television. One thing I noted was that the analysts and experts were talking about how much things have changed in the last 10 plus years, since the first Gulf War. Then, only 10% of the munitions were “smart bombs” with computer guided instruments. Now, 90% are. Then, the Patriot missiles were mildly accurate. Now, they are highly accurate. In the years since the first war, the weapons were tweaked, improved, and developed.

Jesus commanded or ordered the church to do two things to keep a living link with himself: the first is baptizing disciples in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and the second is the celebration of the Lord’s Supper. We call these “ordinances.” Baptism is the way of initiation into the faith and the family of believers. The Lord’s Supper is God’s means of “quality control.” In observing it we are tweaked, improved, and developed. We take stock of our faithfulness. Baptism initiates; the Lord’s Supper maintains. It is the self-regulating mechanism and instrument for the improvement of the church. It is a time for evaluation and improvement.

Paul continues in 11:17-34 to address problems in worship in the church at Corinth. Last we week (in 11:1-16) he addressed the issue of men and women participating in worship. Now Paul moves on to problems that had been reported to him concerning the proper observance of the Lord’s Supper.

There is no place in scripture where we are told how often the church is to celebrate the Lord’s Supper. Some think it should be done at each gathering of the church for Lord’s Day worship. Others think its meaning and mystery should be guarded and, thus, only celebrated once a quarter. Some, like, the Quakers spiritualize the meaning of the Supper so completely that they see no need to celebrate it at all.

In our church, it is our custom (again frequency is not a Biblical mandate) to celebrate the Supper on the first Sunday of the month. It might have been nice, had things timed out just right, if this passage had landed on one of those first Sundays, but it didn’t and maybe that is O.K. too. Maybe today we just need to come and reason together about this Supper, removed from our actual engagement in it. Maybe today will prepare us for the next time we celebrate that meal together.

Paul’s teaching falls into three segments:

The problem (vv. 17-22)
The memory (vv. 23-26)
The solution (vv. 27-34)

1. The problem (vv. 17-22). To begin with I think we must recall that the first Christians were not encumbered with buildings to own and operate and buy heating and cooling systems with. When they said, “Let’s go to church,” they meant “Let’s get together in a body,” not “Let’s get together in a building.” Not surprisingly their gatherings often included sharing a fellowship meal or agape meal (love feast) together. And apparently it was customary to take some bread and wine and to celebrate the Lord’s Supper at the conclusion of that larger fellowship meal.

The problem seems to be that some people could afford to bring a lot to these meals and some could afford to bring only a little. And those who brought a lot gorged themselves, even becoming drunk, while some of their brothers and sisters has very little, if anything, to eat. Remember that one of the most amazing and most attractive things about the church was that it was a gathering place for all kinds of people (Gal 3:28). Paul had pointed out to the Corinthians that many of them had come from the lowly places in life (1:26-29). But this also implies that some were of noble birth and of earthly means among the believers.

After these meals where their inequalities were apparent to all, they then participated in that special meal instituted by Jesus, the Lord’s Supper, in which their unity in Christ was proclaimed: “Because there is one loaf, we, who are many, are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf” (10:17). And they did not get that there was some hypocrisy in this that needed to be eradicated.

Listen to Paul’s words: “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 (ekklesia), there are divisions (schismata) among you, and to some extent I believe it.” Some have claimed to have found indisputable evidence here that Paul was a Baptist! Indeed he knew of meetings that “do more harm than good.” He laments that when they come together as God’s ekklesia, his called out people, they are torn by divisions (cf. 1 Cor 1:10).

I mentioned last week my recent encounter with Mormon missionaries. One of the things they asked me as we talked was, “What do you think about all the divisions and denominations in Christianity?” This is a standard line of argumentation for Mormon missionaries. They know that many immature people are confused by doctrinal and practical divisions among Christians who, otherwise, hold to firm agreement with Biblical Christianity. So, they try to gain common ground in criticism with you, so that they can move forward to announce that Mormonism offers a unified recovery of the true church. Of course, what they fail to grasp is that Biblical Christians hold basic, firm agreement on the core issues (fundamentals) of the faith, despite their differences of peripheral matters. They also fail to point out that Mormonism is, and always has been, fraught with massive internal inconsistencies that have spurned many splinter groups. By the way when they asked me that question, my answer was, “I am not at all disturbed by these differences. It means we are struggling toward a truth that is now veiled but will one day be revealed.”

What does Paul say here? Does he throw up his hands in disgust? No, quite the opposite. He says, “No doubt there have to be differences among you to show you which of you have God’s approval” (v. 19). Differences help us struggle toward the truth. If we find we all agree on everything all the time we have either all arrived simultaneously at the truth or, more likely, we have agreed with each other that there is no truth to be found. We have placed harmony over truth.

Cf. what Paul says in Phil 3:15-16:

15 All of us who are mature should take such a view of things. And if on some point you think differently, that too God will make clear to you.
16 Only let us live up to what we have already attained.

Paul says differences prod the church toward healthiness and so he does not mind taking the Corinthians to task for a failure in their fellowship. In v. 20, he says, “When you come together, it is not the Lord’s Supper that you eat.” This by the way, is the only place where the term “The Lord’s Supper” occurs in scripture. In the Reformation this Biblical phrase was used to replace terms like “mass” or “communion” that were not Biblical. He continues in v. 21, “for as you eat, each of you goes ahead without waiting for anybody else.” Again, the meals had become free-for-alls where the wealthy gorged and the poor were overlooked. “One remains hungry, another gets drunk” (v. 21).

In v. 22 Paul sarcastically asks if they do not have homes to eat and drink in. He pointedly asks if their actions are, in fact, showing that they despise “the church of God” and are humiliating “those who have nothing” (v. 22). Paul makes it plain that he has no praise for them in this area. Reading this, you sort of wonder why Paul held so much in. I mean, why doesn’t he just come out and say what he means? No, Paul was no shrinking violet.

Paul has clearly laid out the problem in the church. The Lord’s Supper was not for them a meal celebrating their unity in Christ, but it had become an opportunity for a flagrant display of their disparities and differences.

2. The memory (vv. 23-26). Paul’s first response to this problem is to ground the community in the memory of what the Lord’s Supper was all about. You see, in less than one generation, they were forgetting. How much more vigilant must we be in this day!?! What he does is take them back to that night when Jesus was arrested, and he shared one final Passover meal with his disciples, and he transformed that meal into, as we said, one of two living links (baptism being the other) that would keep his people physically, visibly connected to him. Think of it. Every time we celebrate the Supper, we are putting a link in a chain connecting believers stretched back over the ages all the way back to the very night when Jesus sat at table with his disciples. The chain stretches unbroken over 2,000 years of histories and cultures.

Paul first stresses that the tradition he passes on is trustworthy (v. 23). “For what I received from the Lord I passed on to you” (cf. 11:2; 15:1-4). Then he recounts the trustworthy tradition of the Last Supper preserved in the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, that initiated the Lord’s Supper.

First Jesus took bread, gave thanks, and broke it. Here, like a prophet, he physically acts out what will happen to him as his body will be broken on the cross.

Paul then quotes the words of Jesus himself: “This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.”

Of course there has been a lot of disagreement (again, not always a bad thing) over what Jesus meant here and about what happens to the bread. Roman Catholics believe in something called transubstantiation. The bread literally becomes Christ’s body. Lutherans believe in something called consubstantiation; the real presence of Christ is there alongside the bread.

It is hard for me to take what Jesus says here, however, as anything but symbolic. Jesus said: I am the true vine, but we don’t think that grapes were growing from his fingertips. He said, I am the gate, but we don’t think he had hinges or a latch. So, when he says, This is my body, we naturally take him to mean, “This represents or symbolizes my body as I go to the cross.”

I am struck more by the phrase: “which is for you.” Jesus addressed these words to his disciples. And each time we observe the supper these words are addressed to us. It speaks of our particular redemption. Jesus goes to the cross to redeem the church. Christ died specifically for me.

In v. 25 Paul then recounts the words of Jesus about the cup: “This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.”

This is an echo of Jeremiah 31:31-34:

31 “The time is coming,” declares the LORD, “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah.
32 It will not be like the covenant I made with their forefathers when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them,” declares the LORD.
33 “This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after that time,” declares the LORD. “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.
34 No longer will a man teach his neighbor, or a man his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest,” declares the LORD. “For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.”

Jesus says that this promise is now fulfilled in his person. A new covenant, a new agreement, has been made between God and man, written in the life of Jesus.

Jesus says this covenant is written “in my blood.” In Eph 1:7 Paul says, “In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace.” The cup then is a symbol too of the blood of Jesus that will be spilled on the cross. He is the sacrificial Lamb and without the shedding of his blood there is no forgiveness of sin (Heb 9:22).

Then in v. 26 Paul caps off or summarizes the message of the Lord’s Supper. Whenever we eat this bread and drink this cup we proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.

It seems that there are two foci to the supper for Paul. It is about memory and proclamation.

First, there is the memory. After both the bread and the cup, the command of Jesus is, “do this in remembrance of me.” The Lord’s Supper is not some magical ceremony. Do you know how the phrase “hocus pocus” came about? It came from the time when the worship of the church was done in Latin and the Lord’s Supper was observed, and the priest lifted the bread and said, “Hoc est corpus meum,” “This is my body.” And the people who did not know the language began to think that when the priest lifted the bread some magic, some “hocus pocus” happened. But the Lord’s Supper is not a “hocus pocus.” It is not a sacrament. It is a memorial. It reminds us of the body of Jesus broken for us and the blood of Jesus poured out for us.

Second, there is the proclamation. It proclaims his death. It proclaims the cross. It proclaims the atonement. It tells us that we were desperate sinners, lost and bound for hell, till Jesus intervened and stretched out his arms on the cross and died for us.

Now, it is as if Paul says to the Corinthians, given the magnitude of the grace represented in what this meals puts before our minds, how can anyone despise the “church of God” by giving himself any privilege above any other believer. The ground at the foot of the cross is level, and the ground at the foot of the Lord’s Supper is level too!

3. The solution (vv. 27-34). Now Paul moves on to the remedy. Paul begins by laying down the seriousness of eating the bread or drinking the cup in an unworthy manner. To do so is to sin against the body and blood of Jesus. It is blasphemy of the highest order.

Paul says that the first thing that is called for is self-examination: “A man ought to examine himself before he eats of the bread and drinks of the cup” (v. 28). Note that it does not say, “A man ought to examine his neighbor, or his adversary, or his spouse, but he ought to examine himself.” If we spend the time needed to get our own house in order, we’ll usually find we don’t have time for anyone else. The Lord’s Supper is a festival of self-examination.

In v. 29 Paul warns that if one “eats of drinks without recognizing the body of the Lord eats and drinks judgement on himself.” What does he mean? Is he talking about not recognizing the bread as the literal body of Christ and the cup as his literal blood? No, remember that it symbolizes those things. Paul is talking about those who partake in the supper without recognizing that this is not just another meal, but one set in the midst of the church. Those disciples gathered in the name of Jesus are his body. Paul will spend all of chapter 12 meditating on that image. He will say to them: “Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it” (12:27).

In v. 30 Paul says there are dire consequences for dealing flippantly with the holy things of God. He claims that some have grown weak and ill and have even died as God’s judgement on their sinful behavior. Do we still believe in a God like that? Do we so fear his holiness that we would fear death if we were to wrongly approach his table? Think of Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, who were consumed when they offered “unauthorized fire” before the Lord (Lev 10:1). Sometimes we like to fool ourselves into thinking there is a wrathful God of the Old Testament and a loving God in the New Testament. But it’s the same God in both parts of the book. His character does not change. He is a God of wrath and love and there is no contradiction in his nature.

The answer for our physical and spiritual safety is given in v. 31. We need a preemptive strike. Before we come under God’s judgement we should judge ourselves. We should take steps to evaluate our lives before we fall under the Lord’s ultimate evaluation.

In v. 32 Paul compares the Lord’s judgement on those who are believers to the discipline that a father gives to a son. When a child runs out into traffic and a father sternly grabs his arm and pulls him back, the child may think, Why is my father being so cruel to me? Why is he hurting me? Doesn’t he care about me? When, in fact, the father has just saved the child from being killed.

Cf. Hebrews 12:7-11:

7 Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as sons. For what son is not disciplined by his father?
8 If you are not disciplined (and everyone undergoes discipline), then you are illegitimate children and not true sons.
9 Moreover, we have all had human fathers who disciplined us and we respected them for it. How much more should we submit to the Father of our spirits and live!
10 Our fathers disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good, that we may share in his holiness.
11 No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.

Paul concludes then by urging them when they come together to eat this fellowship meal, and, more importantly, the Lord’s Supper, to “wait for each other” (v. 33). Paul’s request in v. 34 is that the Lord’s Supper not be treated as a meal that satisfies one’s physical hunger, but instead addresses our spiritual hunger, and, thus, staves off judgement. This has led to the ways of today when we separate the Lord’s Supper from the fellowship meal to give us focus to what the bread and cup remind us of.

Paul here lays out the problem of divisions over the Lord’s Supper in Corinth. He then reminds them of the core memory of the atoning death of Jesus that undergirds this meal and that they proclaim in it. And he offers the solution that they do some incredible self-examination in order to come to the table with clean hands and a pure heart.

In his book Return to Worship, Ron Owen tells of a powerful sharing of the Supper from church history (pp. 118-19):

It was on Wednesday, August 13, 1727, that the Moravian Brethren congregation at Herrnhut met for a special communion service at the Bethelsdorf church. Times were extremely difficult for these Brethren. Many of them had endured severe persecution for their faith, and many had laid down their lives.

You may recall that the Moravian Brethren movement had sprung out of the martyrdom of John Huss, the great Bohemian Reformer. Now many of them had found refuge on the estate of the wealthy Christian, Count Zinzendorf. They had come from many different walks of life, with differing opinions and ways of thinking. During these early years “harmony” would not have been the most descriptive word for the gathering of believers. But then something happened, and it began around the Lord’s table that Wednesday in 1727.

God had been dealing with them about their self-will, self-love, judgmental spirits, and disobedience. As they gathered around the table that day, they were overwhelmed with a sense of their own unworthiness in light of all God had done for them. For what seemed to be the first time, they saw the wounds their Lord had endured and the blood he had shed for them....

It is said that two of the members at work approximately twenty miles away, though unaware that the meeting was being held, became conscious of the same presence at that same moment. Some described it as another Pentecost....

The impact of this meeting would be profound. It would spark a 24 hour prayer chain that would last for over 100 years. From these renewed Brethren would come out missionaries that would go all over the globe with the gospel. Some of these Brethren missionaries would be with John Wesley on ship at sea during a storm, and he would witness their faith, and he would wonder about the security of his own salvation. John and Charles Wesley, later, would go on to found the Methodist movement and lead a time of revival and renewal in England that many believe saved that land from the horrors of the French Revolution.

Who would have guessed the influence of the this small bad of believers that they word saw as small but God saw as useful in his hands? And their renewal began with a celebration of the Lord’s Supper on Wednesday, August 13, 1727.

In two weeks we will approach the table in this place. Will we be prepared? Will we expect the Spirit to move?

Jeffrey T. Riddle
Pastor, Jefferson Park Baptist Church

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Sermon

1 Corinthians 11:17-34 — The Proper Observance of the Lord’s Supper

March 23, 2003

Jeffrey T. Riddle Pastor, Jefferson Park Baptist Church

Jeffrey T. Riddle
Pastor, Jefferson Park Baptist Church