One must not short
the understanding of what is being said by thinking of the Lord’s Supper as
simply the bread and the cup of the communion. The Lord’s Supper must here
be understood in the context of the well understood tradition of the entire
meal of Jesus and His disciples (and Jesus’ repeated meal practice), of what
that meal and the specific and identifiable tool for remembrance and
identification of kingdom participants that Jesus provided to His disciples at
that meal, and of the hopes of the messianic banquet. Thinking must be
adjusted so that when the Lord’s Supper is considered, that thinking goes
beyond just the bread and the cup of communion and of those few minutes of
church services that are taken up by the practice. Participants must
force themselves to think of the Lord’s Supper in its larger context and
against the background of the common meal practice of the ancient
world.
Moving then to the
twenty-first verse, where the facts of the matter seem to become more glaring,
Paul writes: “For when it is time to eat, everyone proceeds with his own
supper. One is hungry and another becomes drunk” (1 Corinthians 11:21). With
this, when considered along with what is now known about the banqueting tables
of the ancient world, in which the most honored get the best food and drink,
whereas those possessive of less honor get lesser food and drink, whereas some
in attendance may get nothing at all, with service taking place in order of
most honorable to least honorable. Thus
it becomes quite evident that Paul is taking issue with the meal practice of
the Corinthian church.
Reiterating then
because this is important, this serves as a reminder of the common and accepted
situation of banquets, in that the honored guests would eat first, and that
they would also eat the best food while receiving the best wine, while the
guests towards the other end of the social spectrum would have to wait to be
served, and perhaps may not be served at all.
In practice, some guests could be full and drunk before other guests
receive a single morsel of food.
Here then, it is
appropriate to reflect on the story of Jesus turning the water into wine at the
wedding feast of Cana, and in the context of what Paul writes to this church,
consider that the best wine was then going to be reserved for those that would
be receiving their food and drink at the very end of the meal. This would have been contrary to all custom,
and serves as a reminder that Jesus regularly flouts societal customs that He
believes to be out of step with the ideals of the presence of the kingdom of
heaven (heaven, the realm of the Creator God’s existence, coming to earth and
appearing where Jesus is and where those that believe in Him act according to
what they believe to be His ideals).
Returning to
consideration of Paul’s statement about one being hungry while another is
drunk, it is important to remember that in some cases when it came to the meals
of that time, invited guests would receive nothing at all. In that time, such a situation would not
necessarily have been thought to be a problem, especially if the honored guests
(those possessive of more honor in the court of public opinion) had received
their food and drink.
It would appear that
this altogether unfortunate situation was occurring within this church at their
common meals. Rather than demonstrating that they truly believed that all
were one because of their belief in Jesus as the Christ, and that there was
neither slave nor free, neither male nor female, and neither Jew nor Greek,
there were divisions being put on display at the very meal that was supposed to
be demonstrative of the messianic banquet, and to which they were apparently
making reference as being the “Lord’s Supper.”
No comments:
Post a Comment