Shelby Olive

1 Corinthians 11:18-34

For, to begin with, when you come together as a church, I hear that there are divisions among you; and to some extent I believe it. 19 Indeed, there have to be factions among you, for only so will it become clear who among you are genuine. 20 When you come together, it is not really to eat the Lord’s supper. 21 For when the time comes to eat, each of you goes ahead with your own supper, and one goes hungry and another becomes drunk. 22 What! Do you not have homes to eat and drink in? Or do you show contempt for the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing? What should I say to you? Should I commend you? In this matter I do not commend you!

23 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, 24 and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” 25 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.” 26 For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.

27 Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be answerable for the body and blood of the Lord. 28 Examine yourselves, and only then eat of the bread and drink of the cup. 29 For all who eat and drink without discerning the body, eat and drink judgment against themselves. 30 For this reason many of you are weak and ill, and some have died. 31 But if we judged ourselves, we would not be judged. 32 But when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined so that we may not be condemned along with the world.

33 So then, my brothers and sisters, when you come together to eat, wait for one another. 34 If you are hungry, eat at home, so that when you come together, it will not be for your condemnation.

Reflection:

It was the summer before my fourth-grade year, and I sat, with many other children, packed in the sanctuary of the big Baptist church in town. It was Vacation Bible School, the end of the fourth day, and being the introvert that I am, I was exhausted by three whole hours of intense socializing. And there was a girl in my age group who I had intentionally been avoiding for no other reason than…. She talked too much. She was too loud. She was too nosey. She was too repetitive. She was, in a word, annoying. And at the end of this long day, as we were exiting the building, she had uttered one too many words. I don’t remember what she said, but I do remember my response, a shout: “I KNOW!!!!!!” My patience had been utterly lost… in front of my mother, who was absolutely mortified by my behavior. To say that she was angry is a bit of an understatement. The whole ten-minute ride home was filled with, “I can’t believe you would speak like that to another person.” “Did you see the look on her face?” “You WILL apologize to that girl first thing tomorrow morning.”

It is hard to not hear my mom’s voice in Paul’s seemingly harsh words to the Corinthians. She reinforced a core value shared by the Christian family: how we treat one another matters. It matters so much, in fact, that it is the catalyst for the only biblical instructions for Holy Communion. The “factions” in the Corinthian church were many, but one particularly egregious division directly impacted the way the church observed the Lord’s Supper: the wealthy who had the luxury of leisure time and the non-wealthy who worked laborious hours. The wealthy would gather and consume all of the bread and wine before the laborers could even get to the worship space. What was meant to reflect the last shared meal between Christ and his disciples became an exclusive, extravagant feast that deprived food and drink from an already-hungry and already-thirsty group of people. If how we treat one another matters, then it must especially matter how we treat one another when it comes to the holiest of meals.

This is why I love it when pastors say the words, “this is not our Table but the Lord’s Table” before we take Communion. Not just because it includes all people to be transformed by a simple meal of bread and juice but because it invites us to examine how we relate to one another, in the church and out of the church. Our table draws lines between who is “in” and who is “out.” The Lord’s Table says, “All are welcome.” Our table is first-come, first-served. But at the Lord’s Table, a seat is prepared for everyone.

I have to wonder, what would it be like if our own tables were an extension of God’s Table? We could certainly remember the Last Supper on our own terms and not worry about how we treat one another once we leave the sanctuary. But the gift of bread and wine, the gift of the Christian life is so much sweeter when we depart from the meal as vessels of Christ’s love in the world.

Prayer:

Dear God,

Thank you for the gift of your love. I confess that I don’t always treat people as I ought to treat them. I forget that they are just like me — bearers of your holy image. Help me to make my table an extension of yours so that I may extend the love you have poured out for me and for many to others. Amen.