Please note that this article is the second article derived from a five-part teaching series on the Lord's Supper given in Bermondsey Gospel Hall, the audio and transcripts of which can be found here.
But in the following instructions I do not commend you, because when you come together it is not for the better but for the worse. For, in the first place, when you come together as a church, I hear that there are divisions among you. And I believe it in part, for there must be factions among you in order that those who are genuine among you may be recognised. When you come together, it is not the Lord's Supper that you eat. For in eating, each one goes ahead with his own meal. One goes hungry, another gets drunk. What! Do you not have houses to eat and drink in? Or do you despise the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing? What shall I say to you? Shall I commend you in this? No, I will not. (1 Corinthians 11:17-22)
The phenomenon of fake news has burst onto the world stage over the last few years to great effect. The idea that you can take facts and twist them to the point that they become fiction has us questioning even the most trustworthy of media sources. However, the idea is not new. Whether it was the political spin of the 1990s or the pure propaganda of earlier decades, people have long sought to change the story by manipulating the facts.
As Christians, we must take great care not to turn the most trustworthy source available, God’s Word, into a fake news story – or better yet, sermon. When we come to the Bible, we need to ensure that we aren’t framing it in a way that twists it’s meaning to suit our own preferences and agendas. We need to approach it honestly and openly, allowing it to set the agenda and build the frame in which we see it.
We are told very little about what was actually happening in Corinth in 1 Corinthians 11. The picture we are given essentially amounts to seeing that when the church gathered together, they were not united. Instead, some of them left the gatherings hungry and humiliated. Anything beyond that, correct or not, relies on assumption and implication. Many commentaries, and sermons, are filled with elaborate explanations about the possible architecture of the rooms they might have eaten in, the kind of time different classes in the church would have arrived at and the various cultural practices that were involved in sharing a meal like this. While such information is helpful for adding colour to our picture, we need to make sure we stay within the lines when colouring in. Great care must be taken to ensure that we don’t draw a completely different picture! When framing the text, we must follow the advice of Charles Simeon for preachers - we must never say either any more or any less than what the passage says.
What does the passage actually say? It can be summed up in three words: gathering, dividing and humiliating.
1. Gathering
Notice the repetition of the idea of gathering throughout our paragraph – see it mentioned in verses 17, 18 and 20. And it’s not just our paragraph, but the passage as a whole. Paul bookends it with the concept, for it is found both here at the beginning and in his conclusion in verses 33 and 34. Beyond both this paragraph and passage, this part of the letter focuses on problems that are occurring when the local church gather together – see the same phrase repeated in 1 Corinthians 14:23-26. The gathering of the local church is the first detail provided to us by Paul – ‘when you come together as a church’.
What happened when the local church gathered together? From the New Testament we can piece together a few, though only a few, facts. The indication of passages like Acts 20:5-7 and 1 Corinthians 16:1-2 is that they gathered together on the first day of the week, being on our Sunday. They probably met late at night, after the day’s work had been done (Acts 20:7-12). It is unlikely that they would have met in a purpose built building, but rather in the house of one of the believers (1 Corinthians 16:19; Colossians 4:15). Indeed, from Romans 16:23 we can surmise that this Corinthian church met in the house of Gaius, one of Pauls early converts in the city. When they met, different believers would bring ‘a hymn, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation’ (14:26). But they would also have had extended times of teaching by gifted teachers – for example Paul in Acts 20 taught the whole way to dawn the next day! Not only was there ministry, but there was a meal. As set out in the previous article, this is probably the love feast referred to in Jude 12. With all of the believers sitting together eating, from this passage we can see that part of this meal would have included the Lord’s Supper. Notice that it is called the Lord’s Supper, not the Lord’s lunch. It specifically refers to the evening meal. Just as Christ ate it in the evening, so did they. The bread was probably broken at the start of the meal, with the cup taken after they had finished eating – this not only matches the order in Luke’s account (Luke 22:14-20) but also as set out by Paul later in verse 25. Without even more implication and speculation, we know little more about the gatherings of the early church than this.
Now take what is usually done among local churches when they gather today. Some of it may be similar, some of it not so much. There may be gathering on a Sunday, teaching, the Lord’s Supper on occasions and perhaps even the opportunity for informal contribution at times. However, even if the elements contained in a service today are the same, certainly timing, location and the central place of a meal are all usually different. But how much should our gatherings look like those of the early church? The problem is that the New Testament not only provides very little description, but that there is even less prescription. So what should we do when we meet together?
Firstly, we should take what is prescribed and ensure that it is done. We should gather and remember the Lord in the Lord’s Supper. Then we should take what is described and examine those practices in order to find the principles behind them. Take the time they met, being in the evening. What time is convenient for all in the church? Take the fact that they brought hymns and lessons. Is there opportunity for each believer to exercise their gifts in ministry? Take that they were taught. Is there teaching that will build up the body? Take the meal they shared. Is there a coming together, an integration of lives. Is our gathering together more than just a place to check in and out of for an hour on a Sunday morning?
When we meet together as a local church, we need to ensure that we are ticking all those boxes, for each of these elements play a crucial role in our life together and individual walks of faith. The writer to the Hebrews exhorts his listeners to ‘stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another’ (Hebrews 10:24-25). When we gather we should be stirring each other up, encouraging each other to press on in our faith. The hours we spend together, usually on a Sunday morning, are some of the most important hours in our week, for during them we both minister to and receive ministry from each other. Such ministry will have results far beyond Sunday. In fact, it will have consequences that will last for eternity. When we are building up each other we are building up the household of God. When we are strengthening each other, we are strengthening the body of Christ. When we are washing each other with the word of God, we are beautifying the bride of Christ. When we gather together we have an opportunity to do eternal good.
And yet despite all of this possibility, Paul tells these believers that it would be better if they didn’t meet at all. That is what he says in verse 17, ‘when you come together it is not for the better but for the worse’. They were spiritually worse leaving than when they came. Some of them were less encouraged, less built up. What was the problem? What was going so drastically wrong when they meet together?
2. Dividing
In verses 18-19 we come to what Gordon Fee calls ‘one of the true puzzles in the letter’. This puzzle is created by Paul not only saying that divisions exist, but explaining that they must exist in order to show who is ‘genuine’ among them.
There are broadly two ways of reading these verses. The first, using the most probable translation, goes down the line of Paul admitting that there must be divisions because divisions are necessary in order for some of their number to be shown as genuine Christians, with others being shown as false Christians. This interpretation is of course in line with other passages in Scripture. Whether it be divisions over doctrine or conduct, we believe that divisions on certain issues help to show us who are our true brothers and sisters in Christ.
However, while this interpretation fits within the great context of the canon, it sits awkwardly within this particular passage. Indeed, inserting such an interpretation into this passage breaks the flow of Paul’s argument. Paul would be in effect saying that, "I can’t praise you because your gatherings are spiritually bad for you. They are bad for you because there are divisions among you. But these divisions aren’t wrong or unloving, but they are in fact necessary." It also leads to the implication that Paul believes that those individuals not acting correctly at the Lord’s Supper are likely to be false Christians. Such implications lead me to believe that the second interpretation is preferable.
Rather than Paul reluctantly resigning to the necessity of divisions, the second interpretation presents Paul ironically challenging them to think about the effect of their conduct. In this view, Paul is saying, "when you come together there are divisions, and of course there are divisions, you cause divisions so that the ‘real’ Christians can stand out." Campbell skilfully paraphrases it in stating that ‘there actually has to be discrimination in your meetings so that the elite may stand out from the rest’. The divisions were caused by their attitude in the Lord’s Supper to each other, and in this way they were inevitable because of their attitude towards one another. Therefore, rather than the divisions revealing who the true Christians are, they reveal that the church has completely misunderstood the Lord’s Supper and allowed elitism into their gathering.
Regardless of which interpretation you favour, it is clear that there were divisions in the gathering. However, in what way was the church being divided? As seen below, it becomes clear that the divisions are caused by humiliating a certain portion of the group.
3. Humiliating
Verse 20 is the real heart of the paragraph, ‘When you come together, it is not the Lord’s Supper that you eat.’ Paul bluntly tells the Corinthians that what they are doing does not constitute the Lord’s Supper. He explains that it is possible to celebrate the Lord’s Supper in such a way that its character is destroyed by your conduct. The supper that they shared was no longer what was provided to them by the Lord. It is not the Lord’s Supper, but their own supper, their own version of what was handed down. They can call it what they like, but it’s not the Lord’s. It is this thought that launches Paul into verse 23 ‘For I received from the Lord…’. In effect Paul is saying that if they want to celebrate the Lord’s Supper, they must listen to what the Lord told him about it.
What were they doing that so radically changed the meal, that it could no longer be recognised as the Lord’s Supper? What was causing these great divisions? Verse 21 tells us, ‘For in eating, each one goes ahead with his own meal. One goes hungry, another gets drunk.’
As with verses 18-19, we are presented with one of the great puzzles of the letter. The second sentence is clear enough – there is a division between two groups, one group is hungry, they don’t have enough, and the other is drunk, they have had too much. But while the division is clear in the second sentence, the cause of this division, contained within the first sentence, is entirely unclear. ‘For in eating, each one goes ahead with his own meal’. Our interpretation of this sentence all turns on timing. The usual way of translating it, included above, gives the sense that one group ate their food before the other. But again that interpretation doesn’t fit the flow of the argument very well. As seen in the second sentence, the issue is one of amount, not of timing. It’s not that one group is finishing late, but that they are finishing hungry. They aren’t humiliated because they are still eating when people leave, but because they have nothing to eat when people are there.
That’s why it is better to translate verse 20 in line with how Garland does, ‘During the meal, each one devours their own supper’. In translating it this way, the preposition that some read as giving a temporal sense, ‘each one goes ahead’, is read as emphasising the action of eating, ‘each one devours’. Reading it this way in line with the only other use of the same word construction in the Bible, which is found in Galatians 6:1 and where no temporal sense is normally implied. Both the grammatical and contextual evidence points to such a construction.
In translating it this way, we are left with a situation in Corinth where when the church gathered together, each member just went ahead with eating what the food that they brought for themselves. While such a situation is hard to imagine in an age of church potlucks, it was actually common practice for gatherings in the period. Rather than pooling food toshare together when you gathered as a group, each member of the group would get out the food that they brought for themselves. The result was obviously that the well-off members were eating shredded duck pancakes for starter, fillet steak with sweet potato fries for main and tiramisu for dessert (or at least that’s what I would have eaten). In contrast, the poorer members of the church, the slaves and workers, were eating cheese sandwich and a bag of crisps, every single Sunday. On one side of the room you have somebody tucking into a feast, stuffing his face until he is bursting at the seams, while at the other his Christian brother is just trying to eat what little supper they have slow enough to make it last longer than last week!
It is this situation that outrages Paul, causing him to give such harsh criticism. As far as he is concerned, they can just feast at home. They have failed to see the effect their behaviour is having on their brothers and sisters. By humiliating those who have nothing, they demonstrate that they despise the church of God. The division existing between the ‘have’ and ‘have nots’ has split the body of Christ, meaning that when they come together, they aren’t really coming together. Rather than leaving built up and encouraged, poorer members of the fellowship were going away hungry and humiliated.
This interpretation not only fits the passage perfectly, but also its placement in the letter. After all, Paul has just been writing to them for the last three chapters about how to consider one another when deciding whether to eat food offered to idols. In finishing that discussion, he used words that would be just as appropriate here ‘so whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. Give no offence to Jews or to Greeks or to the church of God, just as I try to please everyone in everything I do, not seeking my own advantage, but that of many…’ (10:31-32).
Our 21st Century Problem
I think it is easy to see how a first century problem can quickly become a twenty-first century problem. After all, at least in the UK, socio-economic division in society is plain to see. Whether disparity over income, living standards or educational background, we need to take care that the divisions preeminent in the world are not present, or even amplified, in the church. In an age of potlucks, we are unlikely to find ourselves in a similar situation to the church in Corinth. However, we surely must take care in things as varied as our dress, language and location to be as inclusive as possible. Members of our local church should not leave our gatherings feeling either humiliated or discriminated against.
To borrow a slogan that’s been going around lately, when we come together, we need to think of the many, not just the few. We need to make sure that we aren’t just ha
ving our own little suppers, creating our own mini-churches, little bodies of people like ourselves within the local expression of the body of Christ. Instead, we are to remember that there is one single body. This truth is most visibly displayed when we gather as a local body to partake of the bread and the cup. We must ensure that our behaviour around the table does not undermine what is symbolised by the elements on the table. When we gather, it is the Lord’s Supper that we want to participate in. We can eat our own suppers at home. The meal that Paul received from the Lord, that Christ handed down to his followers on the night he was betrayed, is what we should strive to celebrate. And it is the particulars of that meal that Paul goes on to remind the Corinthians of next.
ALEXANDER ARRELL