Sermon from St Mary's on Sunday 13th March
Reading: 1 Corinthians
11 v 17-34
Preacher: Dorothy Haile
This
passage is about two meals. The early part of it (verses 20-22)
sounds like a shared lunch gone horribly wrong, and then Paul goes on
to some strong words about the importance and meaning of the Lord’s
Supper, or Communion as we usually call it here. In order to see the
connection Paul is making between these kinds of meal, which may at
first look unconnected, I think it is helpful for us to think for a
minute or two about the city of Corinth and the church.
This major city had a
quarter of a million citizens plus many slaves and so was the largest
and most diverse that Paul had come to. He arrived from Athens,
probably in about AD 50. Corinth was a Roman colony, an important
crossroads for sea and land routes, cosmopolitan, multi-cultural, a
centre of commerce, wealth, idolatry and immorality. Paul worked
there for about 18 months and many people came to faith. Inevitably,
because of the sort of city Corinth was, the church was made up of a
wide variety of people, who would not normally have had much to do
with each other in a personal way. He had spent much of his time
teaching these new Christians, who were learning to live their
Christian lives in a very challenging environment, so he had a
special relationship with them. Later he went to Ephesus, and it
seems that while he was there he started to get news of divisions in
the church at Corinth. There is lots of discussion in the
commentaries about the exact sequence of events that led to what we
now have in our New Testament as I and 2 Corinthians, but there is no
disagreement that the situation in the church was pretty bad. When
you read the letter you find Paul addressing very diverse – and
sometimes rather odd - issues, but if we can remember that he is
responding to reports, questions, and concerns, it may help us to see
some themes.
In our passage verse 18
refers to divisions among the Christians, and in chapter 1 of the
letter Paul says that there were factions – some of the Christians
saying that they followed Paul, others, Apollos, others Peter and
others that none of these men was as significant as Christ – they
were the really spiritual people in fact! We can easily identify with
this sort of division today, depending on which of the preachers and
leaders we find most helpful, or most sympathetic to our particular
views. These and other differences are inevitable, Paul says in verse
19, and they bring out the genuineness of our faith and how it is
applied in our lives. I think he is saying that differences of
opinion among genuine believers should not destroy relationships. I
had a colleague in the mission who used to say that we had to learn
to agree to disagree agreeably. Our passage today about the unhappy
meals they had together is one example of the divisions, but there
are several other examples earlier in the letter – they were taking
each other to the secular courts instead of sorting out their legal
differences among themselves; there were different convictions about
eating meat that had been offered to idols before it was sold in the
market – some said it was wrong to eat it and others that it was OK
because idols were meaningless anyway; some were saying you should
not do a certain thing because it could offend another Christian,
some of them probably thought that if other people were offended it
was their problem. This sort of argument is familiar now as well,
because we don’t always agree about what it is right to do as
Christians. Here again I think it is really important that we have
respect and sensitivity for each other, and don’t allow these
differences to destroy our relationships.
So we come to the
symptom of disunity in today’s passage: it seems that the
Christians of Corinth met together quite often in their homes to eat
together, and then to have Communion together. But the problem was
the lack of ‘togetherness’. At this shared meal there was
discrimination among them – apparently the rich people brought lots
of delicious dishes and didn’t share them; the poor people in the
church who didn’t have enough anyway and couldn’t bring anything
the others were willing to eat were excluded and went away hungry.
This would be bad enough if it were what you might call ordinary
hospitality.
But the crunch came
because they were going on after this shared meal to have Communion,
which is a stimulus to real unity as well as a symbol of it. As Paul
writes in verses 23-26 we have this special meal to remember what
Jesus did for us when he died on the cross. In fact another theme
that is woven all through this letter is Paul’s emphasis on the
cross of Christ and the implications of it. Back in chapter 1 he says
that he came to Corinth to preach the gospel – the good news of
Jesus Christ – as simply as possible, not like a specialist Greek
orator. In chapter 2 verse 2 he says ‘I resolved to know nothing
among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified’. Why was and is
that so important? Because, I think, we are all equal in our need of
God’s gift of salvation. It doesn’t matter if you are rich or
poor, young or old, well-educated or not, privileged or not, ashamed
of things in your past or not - we all need God’s grace and
forgiveness if we are to become part of his family of saved people.
That gift of God’s forgiveness and new life in Christ is possible
only because Jesus died for our sins. The ground is level at the foot
of the cross, as someone has said. And because of this we all come to
Communion on the same basis. We come remembering and thankful for the
death of Christ, eating the bread and drinking the cup, and (verse
26) proclaiming to each other and the world (including the unseen
spiritual world) that our salvation depends utterly on the death of
Christ for our sins.
Also,
I think, this passage challenges us to look at how we relate to
people whose Christian faith we share, but who may be very different
in other aspects of life – perhaps political views, or lifestyle
choices, or social background. How can we welcome each other in
genuine ways with respect and love? The people of the church in
Corinth were all Christian believers, at different stages of
Christian maturity, and with a great range of attitudes and
backgrounds beyond their shared faith. What about us? I’m still
pondering what this might mean for me.
Paul ends this passage
by going right back to the place where he began – when you have
these meals together, wait for each other and be together in a real
way. Our Christian faith has very practical implications: for the
people in Corinth it meant changing their behaviour and living like
people who all followed Jesus and loved each other, as he says in
chapter 13. The implications for each one of us will of course be
different in some ways from the exact situations that applied to
Corinth nearly 2000 years ago. The challenge to me, and to us all,
remains – how can I live as a follower of Jesus, in unity with my
brothers and sisters, and showing in all aspects of my daily life
that I am a believer? I depend on God’s grace each day, and come to
Communion this morning, as you do, to remember the life, death and
resurrection of our Lord, knowing that he told us to do this until
the day of his return. May the Lord help us to have real togetherness
as we worship and as in a whole variety of ways we serve the Lord.
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