Sermon Tone Analysis

There’s something about gathering around the dinner table, isn’t there?

You have friends over or friends have you over and you share a meal.

Someone spends hours cooking the meal (and cleaning the house so its presentable for company) and then you take your seats, say a prayer, pass the food, eat and drink, and then promptly go home.

No, that’s not how it works.

You eat and drink and converse with one another for long after the food runs out.

In our house, even though we have two comfortable living areas, we tend to sit around the table in the hard wooden chairs and visit with one another (whoever the ‘one another’ might be).

It doesn’t make much sense unless there’s something about sharing a meal with one another...

Carolyn Steel, the author of How Food Shapes our Lives, says, “Someone with whom we share food is likely to be our friend, or well on the way to becoming one.”

It’s a powerful act, sharing a meal.

It’s an expressive act.

It means something, the sharing of a meal.

And so it has been for centuries, millennia, even.

The issue here in Corinth (there’s always an issue in Corinth; this is the second issue with the Corinthians’ worship.

There are always issues in worship)—the issue here in Corinth was that the Corinthians were being divisive when it came to a meal that should have been gracious and welcoming, loving and kind.

I’ll just go ahead and break it to you: the Church can sometimes be the opposite of what it should be.

This is true in Corinth and it’s true here in Rich Hill.

There are going to be issues, no matter which church you find yourself in.

The Corinthian Christians have seemingly forgotten that one meal, in particular, was meant for the Lord’s people.

The meal at issue here is the meal that Jesus Himself instituted the night He was betrayed.

Knowing that He was going to His death, Jesus re-imagined the Passover and transformed it into a memorial of the New Covenant He would usher in.

The Corinthians were dividing, segregating themselves as if this was just another meal.

They fail to realize that this meal, this meal, this meal is for the Lord’s people—all the Lord’s people, and only the Lord’s people—and that the Lord’s people were meant to eat and enjoy it together.

>If you have your Bible (and I hope you do) please turn with me to 1 Corinthians 11.

If you are able and willing, please stand for the reading of God’s Word, out of reverence for Him:

May the Lord add His blessing to the reading of His Holy Word!

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In the city of Corinth, a meal was an occasion for gaining or showing social status.

A dinner party would been one of the primary places where there would be a divisions of people based on class: wealthy over here, poor people over here.

What was happening can be summed up as “social snobbery at the Lord’s Table.”

No one likes a snob.

We’ve all encountered them, those people who think and behave as if they’re better than you because they have more money, more talent, fancier possessions, etc.

No one likes a snob.

Now imagine there’s snobbery present in the church.

Take a minute; I know it’s difficult to get such an outlandish picture in your head.

Now consider that the upper-class folk in the church were partaking in the Lord’s Supper (communion) by themselves, or eating before the poorer, working-class people because they thought themselves superior and deserving of such.

This is disturbing on many levels, and it’s clearly wrong, Biblically speaking.

This meal is for the Lord’s people.

More specifically:

This meal is for ALL the Lord’s people...

The issue is that some church members are reinforcing a common social distinction between rich and poor—the division between rich and poor ran like an ugly line through ancient society just as much as it does today, and it threatened to deface the celebration of what Jesus has done for His people.

There’s all sorts of problems with this, making distinctions, elevating one group over the other.

For one, it’s absolutely sinful.

Favoritism of any kind is sin.

The behavior of the Corinthians is clearly sinful, AND (2) the Corinthian Christians are making the same type of social distinction the pagans would, showing that they are more controlled by their culture than by their faith.

Our actions, our behavior will betray the natural bent of our hearts.

What we care about most will be painfully obvious.

For some of the Corinthian Christians, acceptance in their culture matters more to them than honoring their Master.

And it shows.

The distinction between rich and poor has absolutely nothing to do with God’s creation or God’s achievement in salvation.

God doesn’t favor the rich over the poor, or vice versa.

God saved both rich and poor believer without help from or preference for either.

This divisive meal, Paul says, isn’t the Lord’s Supper.

It can’t be the Lord’s Supper if it’s met with all these conditions and provisos and hierarchy.

This sounds almost like the adult equivalent of a kiddie-table.

Kids, how many of you have been there?

There’s a big dinner, you’re invited (or dragged along with your parents) and then, when you get there, when it comes down to the moment of eating, you’re seated, not at the main table, but the flimsy little card table at the other end of the room or in another room altogether.

I always hated that, especially as I got older.

I always thought that I deserved a place at the big table.

I had good manners and could carry on conversation better than some of the adults.

Let them set at the card table.

In the early church the Lord’s Supper/Communion—this meal we’re discussing here this morning—took place in private homes, not in a special ‘church’ building.

And there was often a full meal served, during which special words were said over a loaf of bread and a cup of wine.

The issue in Corinth was that this full meal had become a sign of the social divisions that ran through the church.

Imagine going on a picnic with a large group of friends.

When you get to the picnic spot, some people get out big fancy Yogi and Boo Boo pic-a-nic baskets with expensive cutlery and china, crystal glasses, the works.

They serve themselves delicious, decadent, lavish food and fine wines and you, sitting right next to them have brought a couple of PB&J sandwiches and a bottle of water.

Even at a picnic that wouldn’t seem right.

How much more when you’re meeting for worship, and the people you’re with are not just friends but are your brothers and sisters, members of your family, a single family in the Lord.

One goes hungry while another gets drunk!

Is that really an expression of what God’s people actually are?

The world puts up all kinds of clubhouse signs: ‘No boys allowed.’

‘Girls keep out.’

‘Whites Only.’ ‘VIPs Only.’

The Church should have no such signs, no such restrictions or hierarchy.

There’s no kiddie-table where this meal is concerned.

There’s one table and it doesn’t belong to you or to me.

It belongs to Christ.

And He invites all of His people.

This meal is for ALL the Lord’s people...

Paul is very clear (v.

20)—It’s not the Lord’s Supper you eat if you’re behaving like I hear you’re behaving.

“You’re coming together.

You’re even eating a meal.

But as long as you continue to act like this, relating to one another as you are, rest assured, that meal you’re eating is not the meal of the Lord, because this meal is meant for all the Lord’s people.”

One of the amazing, unbelievable, and incredible truths about Christ’s work on the cross is that His blood removes every social barrier—socio-economic, racial, class, gender, age.

Think of a social distinction our culture makes, and rest assured, the blood of Christ removes it.

This meal, this meal, can’t celebrate what Christ has done if we ignore what Christ has done as we gather together.

This meal is for ALL the Lord’s people—and ONLY the Lord’s people—

Notice who Paul addresses: in verse 18 he refers to them as a church.

Of course, we know (or I hope we know by now) that Paul is addressing this group of Christians in Corinth—the local church that Paul planted in that city.

Paul addresses them as a church and also as brothers and sisters (v.

33).

This meal—the Lord’s Supper—is meant to be enjoyed by the church, by the brothers and sisters there in Corinth.

This is not another pagan meal or a meal featuring food that had been offered to idols.

This is a different kind of meal.

It’s open to ALL the Lord’s people, but understand, the invitation to this table is sent only to the Lord’s people.

Those without faith, those who worship another, those who don’t belong to God by faith in Jesus Christ are not to eat this bread or drink from this cup.

No doubt some pagans would have no problem eating this meal—for them, it would function very much like any other meal; it would have no real meaning.

Or, if it did have religious significance, it would, in their minds, go right along with all the other meals they would have eaten—meals to worship or celebrate other gods.

But this meal is different.

Paul quotes Jesus in verses 24-25:

Jesus has identified this meal with Himself.