Church as People at the Table

Not in a minimal sense but one that is filled with something “earnest, energetic, longing, yearning.”

Our family has had the same dining room table for about 9 years. We bought it because it fit strange dimensions in our dining room and have held onto since. We take family dinner pretty seriously and even now, with our kids older and busier, still try and sit down about four nights a week.

so 9 years, at 4 nights a week at the table means that the table has taken a beating.

There are scratches and the dents in the dining room table. Places where spoons banged and toys fell. Scratches from plates shuffling or food passed. There is paint on our table from years of doubling as an art studio.

We assume that all these bruises and scratches and dents are imperfections. But they aren’t. These are the signs that there is life, that someone has been here to scrape a fork or spill some mustard. So what is imperfect is a perfect sign of life.

And that is what we will find today, that what is shown to be imperfect is actually a perfect sign of life.

Common Meals

When 1 Corinthians 11 begins and before we get the definition of the last supper, we get some admonition and challenge. The author, Paul, is less than satisfied with how the church has been acting.

Paul is addressing a common practice in the ancient near east where individuals would come together to eat. These common meals were practiced in different clubs and associations. They were usually funded by the group and in these clubs, different members, depending on social standing would be offered either better or more food. If a guest at one of these meals was important, sometimes the host would provide the best food for them.

Patronage

This comes from a relation between what the ancient near east calls patronage. This was a relationship that worked on a certain understanding of helping one another. A patron was often someone with influence, financial means and relational networks. They were able to do things, get things, and help people more than others. People would ask patrons for help and if the patrons gave them aid, they would become clients. Clients would then gladly serve patrons in a way that benefited the relationship. A patron had the ability to care for and support a client and the client had the ability to serve the patron as best as possible.

These social feasts would usually be hosted by patrons. They would bring the food, provide the space, and then the clients would be able to show up, bringing whatever they had to the feast. Maybe only a loaf of bread when the patron provides an entire lamb. These common meals were ways of displaying and strengthening relationships between patrons and clients. (Richards, E. Randolph; James, Richard. Misreading Scripture with Individualist Eyes: Patronage, Honor, and Shame in the Biblical World (pp. 69-70).)

The early church would also practice this common meal together. The meals in the church were not based on reputation and social standing, but on charity, which is love expressing itself in action. The goal was not to offer the best food to the most important people, but consider every person the most important and offer all the best food. While the patron and client relationship was normal through the culture, the church turned the hierarchy upside down.

Everyone was welcome to join in the meal and people would bring what they were able. Because the focus of the meal was fellowship and charity, people would bring as much as they were able. People with more means, the patrons, would bring enough to share with many people and those who had little, the clients, would bring what they could to share with a few. In this way, everyone practicing charity within their means, there was always enough.

Arguing at the Table

This was the ideal but not always the practice. The worldly culture of preference and the division of social standing got in the way. People held onto their social standing as patrons and expected meals to go a certain way.

It is into this context that Paul does not commend the church in corinth, because when they come together they do so for the worse, not for the better. Paul tells the church they have divisions amongst them and he defines them

1 Corinthians 11:20–22 ESV

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.

In the early church, the invitation was to wait for each other because some people had more than others. And it was an act of love to wait to eat together so that everyone had access to enough.

Paul understands that there are differences (see verse 18) but is not ok with how those differences were played out. He is concerned that people who have access to more, those with means, the patrons, would go ahead and eat before those who had little could get anything.

People would prefer themselves over anyone else. They would act on selfishness and greed. This would create an environment of humiliation for those who have nothing.

The group Paul mentions, the ones who eat first, act on their own self-interest by choosing to take the best for themselves. Paul reminds the church of why these meals work the way that they do. These common meals in the church were intended to exhibit a life where Christ was the center and that all of Christ’s guests were equal at the table. 

in the middle of selfishness, drunkenness, anger, and greed, Paul shows us Jesus. We see the love and work of Christ to dispel the brokenness of humanity through the breaking of His own body.

Communion reminds us that we receive what is offered to us

1 Corinthians 11:23–26 ESV

For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.

Paul gives warning after warning, communicating to the church that they are bringing discipline on themselves because they are choosing themselves over others. But in the middle of it, of all the difficulty, Paul repeats the last supper, what has been recieved he now delivers to the church.

Communion is inserted into the difficulty, into the conflict, into the pressing and the pressure. Paul is not simply changing the subject or forgetting the offense because he reminds the church of the context where Jesus ate this meal: “on the night when he was betrayed.”

Not all is well in the church in Corinth and Paul still passes on what he receives

Not all is well on the night Jesus was betrayed but He still took bread and broke it and took the cup and poured it. He passed on what he received.

We recognize in the middle of what is unstable we see the Lord Jesus celebrating communion.

Jesus the Patron

Paul is showing the church that Jesus is the patron. He is the good provider, the One who has all the influence, the one who is entirely networked. And if Jesus is the provider, if He is the patron of the meal, then everyone else receives what is offered.

The church receives from outside itself. Communion starts with the invitation of the Lord Jesus. The best we do this morning is say yes or no to Him. Life does not begin or end with us, communion reminds us that not one of us is in the center. We depend on something other than us, larger than us, to sustain us. We are reminded that hope is not something we have to drum up ourselves, it is a gift we can receive.

Have you ever been in a place where you were in need and you simply just had to say yes? That you could not go on without someone helping you and that help came? It is a humbling experience but one that reminds us that we are not in charge of getting everything together. God is.

Communion Reminds us that our hope is in broken things

The images of communion are broken images. Bread ripped apart and wine spilled. Christ breaks the bread and he pours the cup.

These symbols, broken and spilled, can look useless. They can look wasted. Bread broken needs to be thrown away and the cup spilled will just soak into the ground.

Bread has to be broken to share it, the cup has to be poured to offer it. Bread remains broken so long as they do not have a recipient. The wine remains spilled so long as there is not another to catch it. Without someone to take the bread or to receive the cup, they remain something fully offered but not fully recieved.

But Christ does not break the bread to waste it or pour the cup to spill it.

Christ breaks the bread to share it. He pours the cup, not to spill it but to offer it.

Communion settles the reality that what is broken is made complete in what is shared, that what is poured out is intended to be offered. Christ is not broken from circumstance, He gives of Himself as gift to us.

When we celebrate Christ’s body as bread and his spilled blood as the cup we recognize that what looks like brokenness, because it is broken to be shared, it is life giving.

We don’t take communion or worship Christ because all has been made well, or because all will be made well, we take it because, even in the conflict and the disorder, the pressure and the darkness: all is still well.

We enter reflectively to receive what God has given us, even if we are in the middle of unstable ground, we come to the the table to find stability.

Communion is the reminder that all, in this moment, in whatever you are facing, will be well.

As Julian of Norwich states:

 “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well”

Communion becomes the inescapable reality that in Christ all is made well. What was broken was shared and what was offered was made whole in the resurrection. We are caught up with Christ in communion, reminding ourselves and our neighbors that we share in the portion of God, in fact, as Maximus the Confessor states, we are a portion of God. We belong to God because we are restored in Christ.

The broken things are shared and what is shared becomes whole. We become, in partaking of communion, a picture of the whole of Christ.

Share as Christ has Shared

We receive as the church the broken bread and spilled blood as a gift, taking what is broken and recognizing that brokeness allows for Christ to be made ours.

As we receive the bread and the cup we consume it, what Christ has offered has become ours and we have become Christs.

Communion is a reminder of who we belong to but also a reminder that we live a shared life. Just like Christ offers Himself, so the church offers ourselves.

Because we are recipients of what was broken, we enter into the brokenness of others and show them how broken things are shared.

Whenever we take of communion we hold and handle broken things and we are called upon to to be reminded of the value of broken things. That we partake, we traffic in the means of brokenness.

But as we have seen, communion is not a meal offered when everything is great, it is a meal offered in a battlefield.

Christmas Truce

In December of 1914, near Christmas, in the trenches of World War 1 in Belgium, a British soldier heard a familar carol being sung in German across the battlefield. He, with some others, piped in, singing in English. Eventually both sides agreed to a temporary truce, coming up out of the trenches and joining in Christmas celebrations together. They talked, ate, and played soccer together, where days before they had only shared bullets, they were now sharing meals and stories.

Eventually they, in the pressure of war, went back to their trenches and continued firing.

But this short truce is an image of what Christ does. But what humanity can only do temporarily, Christ does permanently.

Communion is our celebration of what is offered is recieved and what is broken is shared.

To come to the table is to receive but it is also to give. When we participate at Christ’s table we commit to share from Christ’s table. As you are offered you offer.

Maybe you feel like you have nothing to offer this morning. Come to receive

Maybe you feel broken and beat down. Share in Christ’s sufferings.

Maybe you feel like you have something to offer, something to give. Participate with Christ, what is broken is shared. Live as the portion of God.