1 Corinthians 11: 23-34

Theme: Lord’s Supper

Some of you have been coming to this table for years and you have shared in the Lord’s Supper hundreds of times. Some of you are new to the table. You have seen it but you may have only taken the Lord’s Supper a few times and it’s meaning is not at all clear. I don’t think we have done a good job, I have not done a good job of teaching about the Lord’s Supper. I can excuse a new Christian who is still learning. But I wonder if some of us have done this so often that we have become too casual about it, stopped being awed by it? I am afraid that the gathering around the Lord’s Table has become so routine that little thought is given to it. For many it has become just a religious ritual, something that church-folk do on occasion.

It is easy to take such a symbolic act and miss the point completely. Apparently the Church at Corinth had done this. This act of commemoration was commanded by Jesus and the Apostles took the practice quite seriously. Paul, as any good Apostle would do, taught the Church at Corinth to practice the Lord’s Supper. It is a serious time of contemplation and remembrance. The Church there had forgotten that.

The Corinthians prided themselves in their expression of fellowship. When they came together, they apparently had a fellowship meal, what some call an agape feast. This sounds great and their intentions, I am sure, were good. But, it was at this feast that the trouble began. The rich and the prominent were given the highest tables while the poorest may not have gotten a table at all. The rich and the prominent would eat and drink their fill while the poor would go away empty. They drank wine and some were getting drunk. And when the time came to celebrate the Lord’s Supper together, it was a mess. There was no seriousness. They did not hold this ritual with the seriousness which it deserved.

Paul chastised them for their abuse of the Lord’s Table. And we need to hear his admonition. The trouble was not only what they did at the Table but was wrong with their hearts–how they treated each other and how they treated God. They abused their relationship with each other and they ignored God and his word to them. They were not remembering him.

To do this in remembrance of me is to more than just bring a passing thought to current memory. It is more than retelling an old story. It is more than just us as individuals thinking about something. We remember that we have been formed into one body. We are the Body of Christ and we come to gather to remember, to become contemporary with the fundamental act of Salvation (Thiselton). We are there, the nails are fresh, the bearing of sin brings suffering and pain. We remember that we are in Christ. We share in his suffering because we caused his pain.

To remember is not a merely passive act, but is an active expression of faith. To remember God is to worship him, to trust him and to obey him. To fail to remember God is to turn one’s back on him. Failure to remember God is not mere absent mindedness, it is rebellion, it is unfaithfulness and it is an act of disobedience. Remembering transforms our attitudes and our actions. It calls us to confession and repentance and to positive action. (See Thiselton, NGTC, 879)

Paul was quite serious about the way we approach the Lord’s Supper. Note what he said:

"Therefore whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner, shall be guilty of the body and the blood of the Lord." This is not a sacrilege against the elements of the Lord’s Supper. You are not guilty of the bread and wine. But, you are being held liable for the sin against Christ of claiming identification with him when you have lived your life in disobedience to Christ. You are a walking contradiction. You claim to love Jesus and you identify with his death, burial and resurrection and yet you live contrary to it all. Paul said that such sin brings its own judgment. Some of them were weak and sick because of their sin. Some had even died. God’s judgment against them was an act of grace trying to bring them by into remembrance of Jesus. And death is preferable to sinning beyond salvation. Paul says that God judges us, even harshly so that we will not be condemned along with the world.

Some of the believers at Corinth came to the table with a sense of their own self importance. They were more important than their fellow believers and even God. I must ask you, how do you come to this table this morning? Are you judgmental of others? Do you stab your brother or sister in the back whenever you get a chance? Have you developed running down others into an art form? Do you tithe from your income as God has commanded? Do you visit the sick and take care of their needs? Do you help the poor and needy? Or do you think that is someone else’s job? Do you give your time to the church or do you just take without ever contributing to the work of service? Are you more concerned about your wants and desires than meeting other people’s needs? Do you have a vision of what God wants for you, or are you so comfortable that you want to be left alone, you want the church to be left alone, no change, nothing new? Do you come here to worship or is it just habit? Do you pursue Jesus every day, or do you just think about him on Sunday? The list of questions can go on and on.

But these expressions are not even the core of the problem. The root of the problem is the lack of love for God. While God has called us by our names and called his name over us and made us part of his family, we still rebel against him. We don’t love him or serve him or share him with others. We give lip service by presenting a certain appearance. But, we know, we all know when we are out of fellowship with Jesus. We know when we don’t give him control. I have heard folk actually say that God will have to forgive them because of whatever they were doing at the time. The truth is, he does not actually have to forgive you of anything! We impose on his grace with little thought that God may withdraw his grace from us. Is it any wonder our church is not advancing the kingdom of God? Is it any wonder that so few of us are full of the joy of Christ? Is it any wonder that people cannot look at us and tell that we are servants of the most high God? And it explains why when I go to nursing homes that people ask me why don’t churches come here anymore? And it explains why our society continues to go downhill while we have rich churches and ministries on TV 24 hours a day. Culture is never changed if it is not confronted by genuine faith.

Coming to the Table should be a time of reflection, of confession and repentance. We cannot approach this table in a casual, nonchalant way. We are not acting out a religious ritual, we are connecting as the Body of Christ with our Lord and Master. As we come to the table, we must judge ourselves rightly. It calls for honesty. We cannot think of God and our relationship to him as if it did not matter, as if we can lie to God. Judging ourselves rightly means being brutally honest with ourselves. We must spend some time asking God to show us our sin so that we may confess it and repent.

If we are to eat the bread and take the cup in remembrance of him this morning, we must be in him and with him on the cross. Are you with him? Have you died to the sin that entangles us? Have you rightly judged yourself?

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Chrysostom: "Our chastening before Communion is more like admonition than condemnation, more like healing than vengeance and more like correction than punishment." (ACC 114)