A week ago at church we looked at communion/Lord's Supper/eucharist from 1 Corinthians 11. We can easily see this as Paul seeking to provide a nice liturgy for modern pastors to use on communion Sunday. That is not the case. Paul wrote this because the Corinthians were celebrating communion in the wrong way. Having been in the Anglican, Pentecostal and now Baptist churches, I have seen communion celebrated in different ways. But that is not Paul's concern. The problem with the Corinthians is that they included communion as part of a larger meal (not a problem) and then were content with the rich eating much and the poor eating nothing or very little (big problem). It is interesting that in 1 Corinthians, the body of Christ means two things. It means the body of Christ broken for us as symbolized by the bread. It also means the church (1 Corinthians 12). It is incredibly ironic that Christians could treat a piece of bread with more respect than they treat brothers and sisters in Christ. When we take time before communion for self-examination, we should reflect on how we are treating each other. Do we truly recognize the body of the Lord?
0 comments:
Post a Comment