1 Co 11:20-34
20 March 2008
Maundy Thursday
“Whose Body is It, Anyway?”
Our scripture reading tonight includes what are known as the words of institution of the Eucharist. (FYI: that’s what we say when we break the bread and pour the cup.) Banu and I were ordained in 1997, and we spent the next three years at the church in Nebraska. For quite a while, whenever we celebrated the Lord’s Supper, I would read the words from our Book of Common Worship and speak them verbatim. I didn’t want to make a mistake!
But in time, I got tired of doing that. It seemed like I was speaking the words as though they were an incantation. Mess up a phrase, and the spell would be broken! What happened was that I started telling the story. If you read something long enough, eventually, it starts to sink in. Besides, I was beginning to bore myself. I found telling the story of that Last Supper to be a lot more interesting.
The lectionary designers decided that they only wanted those words of institution for tonight. But as you can see, Paul has more to say. Both before and after them, he has what I sometimes call “troublesome verses.” Even if our lectionary friends would have us ignore them, I can’t. The apostle both begins and ends the passage by scolding the Corinthians.
Word has reached Paul’s ears of a quite unwelcome practice. To appreciate why he’s upset, we need to understand something about their celebration of the Lord’s Supper. It’s not the way we do it, with a nibble and a sip. No, for them it’s something more substantial. The practice for the Corinthian church, and for other churches, is to host a love feast, an agape meal.
However, there is a problem. It seems that some of the wealthier Christians are going ahead and helping themselves to the vittles they’ve brought. They’re not offering to share with the others. The result is that, as the apostle puts it, “one goes hungry and another becomes drunk” (v. 21).
So Paul lets them have it. If you people want to pig out and get drunk—I’m paraphrasing, of course!—then do it at home. Don’t pretend that you’ve come to worship the Lord. You’re degrading your brothers and sisters who have less. As he says in verse 20, “When you come together, it is not really to eat the Lord’s supper.”
They seem to have forgotten, as I suppose I did, that the Lord’s Supper is a communal event; it’s not simply a question of observing a proper ritual. When Jesus says, “Do this in remembrance of me,” it’s not just some mental exercise (v. 24). It’s about bringing a past event into the present moment. It means recognizing the presence of Jesus in their midst—discerning the body of Christ!
The failure of the Corinthians to honor Christ among them—by practicing selfishness instead of love—has had dire consequences. Here’s where we get into some more of those troublesome verses! The apostle is concerned because “many of you are weak and ill, and some have died” (v. 30). How has this terrible situation come about?
This matter was touched on in the late 19th century by a famous preacher in London, Charles Spurgeon. He comments on verse 27, which speaks those of receiving the bread and the cup in an unworthy manner—being “answerable for the body and blood of the Lord.”
“Many have been troubled by this verse,” he says. “They have said, ‘We are unworthy.’” Spurgeon replies, “You are, this is quite true; but the text does not say anything about your being unworthy. Paul uses an adverb, not an adjective. His words are, ‘Whosoever shall eat this bread, and drink this cup of the Lord unworthily,’ that is, in an unfit way.”[1] Or, as the NRSV puts it, “in an unworthy manner.”
Some people decide not to receive the Eucharist, the Lord’s Supper. There may be any number of reasons for that. But refusing on the grounds that one doesn’t feel worthy is actually a ridiculous reason. In fact, another 19th century minister, the American Charles Hodge, said such an unworthy feeling “is one of the conditions of acceptable communion. It is not the whole, but the consciously sick whom Christ came to heal.”[2]
No one is worthy. Nobody actually deserves to receive the body and blood of Christ. It is a gift of grace.
We hear the warning of verse 29, that “all who eat and drink without discerning the body, eat and drink judgment against themselves.” All that leads to a good question: exactly what does it mean to discern the body? Some suggest that Paul speaks of those who come to the table with unexamined lives—for example, bearing grudges and being unforgiving. As a result, they’ve been stricken with illness and death as divine judgment.
However, discerning (or not discerning) the body of Christ can be imagined in other ways. We may fail to see Christ in people—people in whom we do not wish to see Christ! It seems like this is going on in Paul’s letter. In our world today, many Christians do not see Christ in those on the margins. We fail to discern the body in the starving and the tortured. We fail to see Christ in those without health care! Over and over, verse 30 comes true: “For this reason many of you are weak and ill, and some have died.”
It may come down to a twist on a question some people ask at Christmas: whose birthday is it, anyway? Paul seems to be asking, “Whose body is it, anyway?” If we, like the Corinthians, imagine that we’re the hosts of this celebration, then that means we get to decide who’s on the guest list. And we get to decide who’s left out. I know I don’t like sitting down next to someone who’s done me wrong!
But if we recognize Christ as our host—that it’s his body we both share and are a part of—our understanding of our mission in the world gets a radical makeover!
I’ll close as Spurgeon did so many years ago after reflecting on Paul’s words: “May we to-night keep this feast in due order under the power of the Holy Spirit, and may we find a blessing in it to God's praise! Amen.”