1 Corinthians 11:17-34 The Ceremony of True Unity

You're listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Mattawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsak preaches from his sermon series titled,

First Corinthians, Sinful Church, Powerful Gospel. Let's listen in. Well, good morning and welcome to Recast Church.

I'm Don Filsak, I'm the lead pastor here. And I want to just say how glad I am to be together here with all of you.

It is all of you slid in on the roads and made it here. And I'm welcome to those of you that are maybe here just checking things out.

And maybe you found out that we were having services, so you showed up. Or maybe it's your first, second, or third week here.

Really, I'm glad that you're here. I look out regularly, and I think those of you that have attended here for a while recognize that there have been a lot of new faces around here.

How many of you know what I'm talking about? So I encourage you to reach outside of yourself this morning and meet somebody that you don't already know.

I encourage you to get plugged in together in relationships. Reach out this morning and introduce yourself to somebody you don't know, maybe during connection time or something like that.

And remember, as Linda said, I just kind of want to give an added plug to the community groups to get plugged into community.

We believe that all of us, the definition of maturity in the Christian life is not crossing a finish line, but it's a commitment to ongoing growth.

And so we here want to be growing in faith, growing in community, growing in service, taking on more that God desires for us and trust in him, in relationship with others.

He's made us relationally, amen. He's made us to need one another, and then he's also given us an ability to serve the body.

And so growing in faith, growing in community, and growing in service is vital here. Sunday morning is going to naturally lean into more casual conversations about things like national title games and things like that.

Yes, yes, yes. But I'm confident that we all have a lot more going on under the surface in our lives than celebrating a football game, right?

There's a lot more. There's a lot more depth. There's a lot more. That's going on in our lives that good, bad, ugly, and all in between.

And we want our community groups to be a place where we can have those deeper relationships forged, where when you go through hard times, you have a people surrounding you at that moment who can pray with you, who can reach out to you, make sure you're doing okay, can hold you accountable, all those things.

And this is not just one big plug for a church program, but it doubles as a lead in to our text that we're going to be going over this morning.

Paul is taking it in our text this morning to the Corinthians with a really strong rebuke.

We're going to be in 1 Corinthians 11, and despite the familiarity that our passage will have to many of us who grew up in evangelical or Baptist churches or just took communion at a church where they went over this passage regularly,

I'm going to ask you to war against preconceived notions about this text. Oh, this is a text I already know.

Because I'm guessing that many of us have no idea of the context of this passage because the only times that we've ever heard it is when it's been taken out of context for the purpose of just...not

really out of context, but just taking a chunk of it out without its context to talk about communion.

But this passage is really a rebuke to the Corinthians. We think, oh, this is the communion passage, right?

It wasn't until this last week, as a matter of fact, that I realized I have a good chunk of this memorized just from my childhood, from mere repetition.

I have heard almost this passage almost every time I took communion in my youth all the way up until we started

Recast. You'll maybe have noticed that I don't issue this mantra every time that we do communion, and some of you are used to that.

But much more than a passage to give us something to say and reflect on during communion, it's a stern rebuke and even more a stern warning to the church in Corinth that we are called to take on for ourselves.

Paul cannot, in this passage, he says as much at the opening, Paul cannot say anything good about the

Corinthians surrounding their practice of the Lord's Supper. And he will at one point even say, it would be better if they didn't even meet.

It'd be better if they didn't even meet than to slander the worship of the holy and incur guilt, he says, pertaining to the body and blood of Jesus Christ.

Really, really stern words. Paul gets my attention when he says, better that you don't go to church at all than go to church and do this.

Now, how many of you want to know what this is? Like he said, it's better that you didn't even show up here this morning than that you do this together.

And I'm like, oh, man, we better mine into this and find out what this is and be sure that we're not doing that.

When we see what this is in the text, we might be just drawn up to a level of motivation to get more involved in life and love and fellowship with one another.

We might want to sign up for a community group when we understand the this that the Corinthians were doing that was maligning the body and blood of Jesus Christ.

We might want to get more connected in relationships within the body. And in this passage, we're going to be called to discern the body, that is the metaphorical body, us.

We are the body of Christ, the church. And while the Corinthians were disdaining each other through classism and factions within the body, we might be guilty of a deeper problem of apathy and individualism in our culture.

You know, we could come in here in this place, and maybe God has this word for some of us even here, but it's just a simple,

I don't care about all of you. I'm just keeping my head down. I'm going to get together. I'm going to get my church on.

I'm going to sing some songs. I'm going to get my spiritual dose. My, my, my, my spiritual dose of penance by listening to Don preach.

I'm going to keep my head down. I'm cracker juice out the door, now back to my week.

Check. I did my spiritual thing. In our worst modern equivalence to the problems in Corinth, I would suggest to you that we don't have as much of a problem anymore with disdaining the poor or even disdaining the rich.

We disdain each other rather by selfish apathy and indifference. A telling problem in the modern church is that we simply don't even know who the poor are among us.

We can't enter into the problem of classism because we honestly just don't do life well together in our modern age, an indictment on us all.

And I'm hoping that here at Recast, we're going to make some strides, maybe even through this message in 2024, with really, really, really doing life better together.

But let's open our Bibles or your scripture journals or your devices to 1 Corinthians 11. We're going to be reading verses 17 through 34.

And while you're turning there, I want to just ask you a question. And the question is the question that the text is going to ask.

And I'm going to show you a couple of things here. Here's a cracker, here's a cup of juice. And the question is, how can we honor the body without honoring the body?

How can we honor this body without honoring each other?

That is the question that this text is going to be asking this morning. So 1 Corinthians 11, starting in verse 17,

Recast, God's holy and precious word. Give it your attention. Let it wash over you.

But in the following instructions, I do not commend you because when you come together, it is not for the better but for the worse.

For in the first place, when you come together as a church, I hear that there are divisions among you, and I believe it in part.

Though there must be factions among you in order that those who are genuine among you may be recognized.

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. 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. Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the

Lord. Let a person examine himself then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup.

For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself.

That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died. But if we judged ourselves truly, we would not be judged.

But when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined so that we may not be condemned along with the world.

So then, my brothers, when you come together to eat, wait for one another. If anyone is hungry, let him eat at home so that when you come together, it will not be for judgment about the other things.

I will give directions when I come. Let's pray. Father, I thank you for this gathering.

I thank you for this family that you are knitting together. I thank you that we don't all see things exactly the same.

We don't all cheer for the same football teams. We don't all work in the same places.

We don't all have the same gifts, and talents, and abilities. And yet, it's such a beautiful thing.

Your church gathered together. Even on a cold and icy day like today, we're gathering together in your name to lift up Jesus Christ, our

Lord, the one who bled and died for us. Redeem us, to rescue us, to save us from our own sins, and from our wayward ways, from the patterns of this world, from the futile ways that we inherited from our forefathers, and we have been purchased by the precious body and blood of our

Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. I pray that that would wash over us fresh and new this morning.

As we have a tradition here of taking communion every week, it can become a habit. And Father, I pray that today would be a recentering time for us to reflect more deeply on what this means.

Father, I thank you for the opportunity we have to mingle our voices now. What a beautiful thing that you have called your people to do, to sing your praises, to let our voices rise up to you together, together making a beautiful sound to you.

Father, I pray that you would be in our worship and help us to think of you rightly, high, exalted, and worthy, in Jesus' name.

Get comfortable and open your Bibles or reopen to your devices to 1 Corinthians chapter 11, verses 17 through 34.

It's good for you to have that open on your lap to be able to see that the things that I'm getting are coming from the word.

And you can feel free at any time during the message to get up if you need to. But our goal is to keep our focus as much as possible on God's word for the remainder of our time together.

And let me return to the key question that I asked at the end of the introduction, and that is, how can we honor the body together, communion, the body of Christ, without honoring the body of Christ one another?

And the answer in the text is going to be pretty clear, we cannot. We cannot.

It is impossible to take communion in a God -honoring way in isolation, focused on yourself, without any thought about others around you, without any love for others in your midst for whom

Christ died. The Lord's Supper ceases to be his supper, and it instead becomes your self -serving spiritual snack without consideration of others.

There are going to be a couple of minor cultural hurdles for us to overcome in this text, like the fact that they have a major meal associated with communion back in Corinth and back in the biblical times.

But those are fairly low hurdles for us to overcome. And so let me first begin with an outline, if you're a note -taker, here's where we're going to be going this morning in verses 17 through 22, the disunity of communion at Corinth, a little bit of a focus on what they were doing wrong, more than a little, what they were doing wrong.

And then the uniting purposes of communion, verses 23 through 32, the fact that it is much more communal than we think it is, much more communal than I think any of us were raised to believe it to be.

And then the third is the practical local corrections. These are a little bit more specific corrections that I just have to take off as a different point because they're very specific to their context, not to ours.

And so, practical local corrections, verses 33 through 34. So that's where we're going, and we're going to start with the disunity at Corinth, what was actually going on there.

I mentioned in my introduction that I don't think that the cause of the problems with communion at Corinth are the same as we face, generally speaking, in our current context.

They're not synonymous with what our primary problems are surrounding communion. I do certainly leave room for us to get the same thing wrong that they were getting wrong.

I just don't think we routinely do. But I do leave room for classism to occur in modern America, for the rich to disdain the poor, and the poor to disdain the rich.

And we can see that in our culture. I just have not experienced that personally in the church, and I haven't heard people talk about it that much in the church to identify that it's a significant problem for us in our day and age.

But I just don't think it's the primary cause of conflict among us like it was in Corinth in that day.

We have other problems that I'm going to speak more directly to throughout the message, more things like individualism, and isolationism, and selfish, and all of those kinds of things.

Certainly, those are the seeds of all of this classism that was going on there. But it's good for us to peer into the multilayered problems at Corinth to identify, again, once again for us, the sinfulness of our human hearts, and just how far down we can go, even as a church, how we have to be really, really careful.

Paul begins this segment of rebuke in his letter with a very, very harsh statement. One of the harshest statements he says in all of Corinth.

It's a little lost on us, but verse 17 basically says, I've got nothing good to say about the next topic.

Now, he's bent over backwards to try to speak positively into the situations where he can.

And here he says, I got absolutely zero good to say about this, the way that you take communion.

But that isn't the most harsh part of verse 17. He goes on to say, your gatherings are a detriment.

When this church gets together in Corinth, in their what was likely a Sunday evening gathering.

That's probably when the early church gathered was Sunday evening. Remember, they didn't have the work day off. They still had to work.

So they got together on Sunday evenings to celebrate and to hear the word and the breaking of bread together and all that.

But he says, when you get together in your Sunday gatherings in Corinth, it is worse than if you had stayed home.

Worse than if you had stayed home. How many of you know, it's gotta be really bad for a pastor to say, you all better just stay home because the gathering is detrimental.

You see the harshness of what Paul was saying here? It's detrimental. It's for the worst that you're gathering, he says.

And we begin to see the diagnosis in verse 18. There are divisions among them. Now, Paul has heard this report by someone in the church who's been informing him personally about how things are going in Corinth.

And they've been writing back and forth to each other. And he says, it's hard to believe things are this bad.

But at the end of verse 18, but knowing what I know about all of you, I can see it.

I can see it, he says. I can see that this report about the divisions among you are fairly likely, he says, and I believe it in part.

I'm kind of prone to believe the report. And he spends a lot of time on church factions earlier in the letter.

So really chapters one through three really emphasize church divisions. And we've already gone there as a church.

I mean, anybody could go back and listen to those messages. But all about the divisions that were going on in Corinth and the way that Paul was encouraging the gospel to solve that.

But remember that some were following Apollos, and some were following Peter, and some were following Paul. And these are different kinds of divisions that are being addressed here.

It's not merely factionalism or just like having your favorite preacher or something like that. That's gonna be made clear throughout this text.

In verse 19, he makes a sarcastic dig that could be lost on us because we read the words literally and we don't understand the sarcasm.

And so when it says, for there must be factions among you in order that there are those who are genuine among you may be recognized.

It sounds to us like he's saying, divisions are necessary in the church. Doesn't it kind of sound like that when you read it at first blush?

And that's not at all what he's saying, he's being sarcastic. Basically, how else are we able to sift out the weeds from the wheat unless you voluntarily line up accordingly?

Could we just have the bad apple sit on this side and the good apples on this side so that we could just see who's really in? That's kind of what he's saying here, he's being facetious.

But how are we gonna know who's really in unless those who are out really show themselves to be really out?

He's saying your divisions are tantamount to wearing a name tag that says wolf. How else are true

Christians gonna be seen unless the wolves form a pack? What are they doing in this context? Off eating sumptuous feasts early in the dining room before the day laborers even arrive.

Talk about disunity, and they're calling it the Lord's Supper. Verse 20 is short, but has a direct impact and has had a direct impact on the way that we do things here at Recast Church.

When we first started, we were coming from a church that took communion every couple of months, alternating between Monday and,

I mean Monday, morning and evening services, Sundays. But one communion would be on a morning service, and then two months later you would take it in the evening service.

Now if you missed one of those, how long could you go without taking communion in the body? You could end up going a few months without taking communion together.

And I just think celebrating the central death of Jesus Christ for us and what he sacrificed for us is pretty significant.

So I combed through the scriptures early on when we were starting Recast and landed here on this very passage. And then another passage in Acts, and I came to a fairly strong conclusion that when the organized gathering, the church, got together, they did what they called breaking bread.

That's synonymous for the participation in the Lord's Supper and taking communion together.

And here in this very short verse, verse 20, note how it's clearly presupposed that they participated in the

Lord's Supper together when they gathered, when they got together. When you come together, it is not the

Lord's Supper that you eat. Well, when they come together, they're celebrating some form of supper. Now, of course, here in verse 20, he's chastising them, again, in crazy harsh terms.

What you call the Lord's Supper is some knockoff, cheap plastic model. It isn't the real thing.

It might look like a Stanley Cup, but does it say Stanley on it? Did you overpay for it? If not, then it isn't original, right?

Now, that might get some laughs, but I don't know. Anybody know about the Stanley Cup craze?

I'm not talking about hockey here. So what were they eating? What were they eating together if it wasn't the

Lord's Supper? But what were they doing together? Because they're taking bread and breaking it and spreading it around.

They're drinking juice or wine in that context. They're doing the things. So what were they actually taking if it wasn't the

Lord's Supper? And I contend that they were just merely eating their own suppers. They were doing their own thing and calling it spiritual.

Could we not be guilty of doing the same thing from time to time? They were in a state of radical disunity with one another while claiming to reflect the central unifying theme of the gospel and participating in the bread and the cup.

Namely, what is the gospel? That we have one Lord and Savior over rich and poor and everybody in between.

One Savior who shed his blood because each and every one of us is an unworthy, filthy, rotten sinner who needed the blood of Jesus Christ to cover us and his body to be sacrificed in our place.

Now, what were they doing in Corinth? They refused to acknowledge the leveling power of the table. The place where we come to get that bread and that juice is a leveling place where we are all on the same footing before our

God, all desperately needing his salvation over us. No one higher, no one lower, all of us on the same plane.

Does that make sense? And this is a good place to interject that they came by their divisions naturally over this issue, because no place seems to have been less level than the table in Roman culture.

James speaks about seats of honor and being seated at seats of honor and taking seats of honor for yourself at tables in his letter to the churches.

And then Jesus talked about this as well. And so did many, many, many Roman authors dating to this era, spoke about the culture surrounding the feast and the festivals and the dinner parties and the meals and all of this.

So much was written about the political drama that routinely unfolded around dinner parties daily in the

Roman world. This was a routine thing for them. This was almost as baked into their culture as radical independence and an

I can do it spirit on our part is baked into us. They had clearly taken

Paul's instructions to commemorate Christ through the bread and the cup. They were doing it.

And they had adopted it into their own cultural practice of what I would call table segregation.

They were segregating the table. So their divisions are the main thing shining through during what is meant to be a celebration of unity.

What is meant to be a unifying thing is where their divisions are showing up the most. A couple of things that we need to understand culturally to wrap our mind around this text,

Roman houses had two places to eat. What was technically called in here, geek out a little bit on history, but it was called the triclinium.

It was a formal dining area where about 10 people could recline with their heads. Why in the world did they eat reclining?

This is a mystery to me. Seems like gravity doesn't work with you on that, but that's what they would do. And they would, about 10 people around in a circle head toward the central table where courses of wine and delicacies would be served by a household servant.

The triclinium was where you entertained high standing guests and people that you respected.

But all but the most modest houses would have a triclinium, but they all had a covered porch called an atrium, a word we still use in English today.

And this is where the servants and the lesser guests would be welcome to eat a modest meal, sometimes supplied by the owner, but often not.

And that was where they could sit and eat their own food. It was estimated that about 30 to 50 people could sit comfortably and eat together in an atrium, where only about 8 to 10 could sit comfortably in a triclinium.

This configuration isn't mentioned at all in our text, so don't look for it there. But it helps to imagine some of the potential conflicts an early church could face by meeting in a home that was set up this way.

You knew if you got to eat in a triclinium of a dinner party, you were esteemed, left out of the atrium.

And I'm suddenly getting flashbacks to middle school cafeteria. Who am I gonna sit with today? Probably alone again,

I don't know. So some of you get that, and then some of you are the people who wouldn't let me sit with you.

Okay, talk about classes in here. Other important considerations are simply that Sundays were work days too.

And so I mentioned that earlier, that the poor would have long work hours. Church was held on Sunday evenings.

The wealthy would be getting past their eating time, while the average day laborer wouldn't even be there yet.

And so what's happening, the wealthy are just going ahead with their meals. I don't know if people will show up when they show up, but I'm hungry.

This man's gotta eat. And so verse 21, people, when you see in verse 21,

I mean people think rich people go on with their meals in advance. And if you were poor, you probably didn't even have a shot at a seat in the triclinium to begin with.

It was already full by the time you got there. And so our modern sensibilities likely are most offended by a specific word that you see in verse 21.

For in eating, each one goes ahead with his own meal. One goes hungry, another gets, what's the next word?

Oh, how offensive, how offensive. We might be very, very offended by that word.

And yet there's a word in that text that ought to be at least equally offensive to us, hungry, hungry.

The church letting people in the church go hungry, while they dine and they feast and they have extravagant meals all the way to the point of over indulging while others are hungry.

Do you see how repugnant that word ought to be to our ears when you think about what's actually happening in Corinth?

Gathering together for a feast and some are literally their stomachs are grumbling and others have just had a sumptuous meal and some are just a bit tipsy.

A little bit past that even. Some are wrapping up a fine dining experience and feeling a bit tipsy.

They've already toasted Jesus, the food is gone, and now the hungry start to arrive. And church, you need to understand, how harsh is

Paul being to them? Not harsh enough. Week after week after week, this is happening in Corinth.

This is their plan. No change in sight, just this is what we do. Week after week after week, this is what's going on.

Now imagine, if you will, that this is the very context into which this letter arrives to them.

So it arrives in his first read to Corinth in a church gathering where some are already drunk.

That's the context. This letter, first read, a letter from Paul. Everybody gather around and we're going to read it tonight.

Get here, get here as soon as you can and we'll have the meal together and then we'll do what we do and then we'll read

Paul's letter. Can you imagine when they got to this section? First time it was read, some were sitting there, stomachs empty and grumbling.

While others had loosened the top button to their pants because they just had a little too much at the buffet. Someone else is snoring in the corner from a little bit too much wine.

Corinth, Corinth, Corinth, are you kidding me? This is what's going on there. Their gathering was for worse indeed, do you hear it?

This is a bad thing going on here. Just don't even, just stay home rather than do that.

Their practice of eating a meal together was a practical matter of the time, of day that they were meeting.

But it also developed into for at least a phase of church history called the love feast. They would do this.

I believe that this idea of eating a meal together every gathering was disestablished as a routine church practice in part because of this very passage we're reading right now.

I think this passage was part of one of the reasons that that didn't become established as just a way that churches do things.

When we lived in England, when Lynn and I were in England for a couple of years, we would often take communion in the context of a potluck meal together with our church where we would all eat a meal together and then our pastor would get up at the end, pass a loaf of bread, pass a cup of juice.

It was interesting, it was unique, it was different. And while it was meaningful, it is not in any way to be established as the regular routine practice, required practice rather.

And by the end of passage, Paul will say so. Yeah, it might be better that you don't have a meal together if you can't handle it.

It might be better that you just eat at home before you gather if you can't get over the cultural baggage that comes in the form of Roman table segregation to the

Corinthians. But Paul expresses incredulity at their practice. What? Are you kidding me? Don't you have homes to eat and drink in?

Wouldn't it be better to not eat a meal together than despise the church by humiliating those who have nothing?

Obviously, better than any of this, of course, is to share. Eating at home is not the cure for the lack of generosity in your heart or a lack of love for each other.

But Paul was making an extreme statement here. Are you serious? Can I say anything good about the situation in which you're practicing the

Lord's Supper, Corinthians? Of course not. You see that at the end of verse 22. And so now we come to the well -known portion of our text and possibly the most well -known passage potentially of the entire letter to Corinthians except maybe the love passage that's read at most weddings in chapter 13.

But here we find the uniting purpose of communion in verses 23 through 32. Paul is passing along a direct teaching of Jesus and he's already communicated it to them.

And you can see that, For I received from the Lord what I also delivered, past tense, to you.

They're already aware of these things. This is not new information. He's reiterating it for a specific purpose.

He's already told them and they've already been instructed on the source of the Lord's Supper. This passage, this section of Scripture is called the words of institution whereby

Jesus institutes this as something for his church to participate in and it's believed to be a formula well -established and spread throughout the early church to educate on the centrality of the

Lord's Supper as a instituted practice that we still practice today. But it goes back to the

Last Supper and reminds us that this took place on the night he was betrayed. You notice that that's stated in there, more than just a way of identifying the particular night, you know, the one on which he was betrayed.

The mention of betrayal in this context also reminds us of the relational nature of his death.

It was someone who purported to love him who betrayed him. In the church, it is those, in the church in Corinth, it is those who are meant to love one another that are betraying one another.

And there at that practice of the Passover feast, Jesus transformed it, obviously, into a deeper meaning for us.

He took the bread, which is broken near the start of the Passover, and we have documents that indicate how the

Passover was practiced. There was usually a cup of wine that preceded the breaking of the bread in that Passover feast.

But he broke the bread and he associated it with his body broken for them and us, and he instructed his followers to do this in remembrance of him.

Verses 24 to 25 clearly support an institution of taking and eating communion bread, likely unleavened bread in its original context, in the gathering of Christ's people when they gathered together, and the church has been doing so since this time.

Paul had already taught the Corinthians to do this when they gathered, but they were going beyond the bounds of this simple church ceremony that was instituted by Jesus.

And it seems likely to me that even turning it into a substantial meal, taken unintentionally and not even together, was part of the main problem that Paul is addressing here.

More than just the drunkenness, more than people eating caviar while other people have bologna sandwiches, there's an issue of them not participating in this together with a focus on remembrance.

They are not remembering, and so Paul is fixing that. And as a side note, it's kind of for this reason

I won't give personal communion at weddings. This has been a policy of mine since I became a pastor because communion is for the gathered believers together, not just something for a couple to do that they perceive as meaningful on their wedding day.

That's not the meaning of it. The meaning of it is the together people of God. I've offered communion at weddings when everyone that's present that's a believer is welcome to participate too.

Does that make sense to you guys? This passage is incredibly clear about the unity of believers in this activity, not the unity of a couple.

It's your vows. Take vows. Let's do that. Let's take rings. Let's do different cultural things. But communion is not to be adopted in that.

And for that reason, even I would just discourage a family from doing it alone. I would encourage it to be something that you preserve for the faithful body of Christ when it's gathered together.

The fundamental elements missing in the Corinthian table can be summarized by two very important words that we ought to have in our mind every time we think about the

Lord's table, every time we think about communion. And it is these two words that drive the force,

I hope, behind your participation every morning, every Sunday morning in communion.

It's these two words. Write them down even if you're not a note -taker. Together and remember.

Together and remember. That's what we're doing. Together and remember. Neither were present in any meaningful way in the

Corinthians practice. And if we don't consider ourselves carefully as we're called to do in this text with even severe warnings of judgment, we may find that we are often lacking together and or remember in our hearts as we come to those tables.

Together and remember. The same is said of the cup here. Only Jesus added a beautiful phrase into the middle of instituting the cup, not just take a piece of bread, but also drink when you are together.

It is a potent statement that's here. The cup is a new covenant in my blood, said

Jesus Christ. Covenants in the Old Testament were ratified by blood sacrifice, and they were in the

New Testament too. The new covenant ratified by the blood of Jesus Christ.

The new covenant of his blood is a powerful pledge from the Almighty to accept all who trust that blood as payment for our sins.

The pledge is only as good as the faithfulness of the one who makes it. So a good question to ask yourself as you think about the covenant in his blood is how faithful is the

Almighty God to keep his promises? How faithful is the Almighty God to keep his promises?

He says, if you are covered by the blood of my son, you are holy and righteous in my sight.

You are acceptable to me. In verse 26, we're reminded that there's an element of proclamation when we stand in those lines here in a moment, but every

Sunday morning to take the bread or the cracker and the juice. I say it often because I think that what we're doing can be lost in tradition or personal fog or even worse, just routine familiarity.

We don't think deeply about things we do as a course of habit. Getting up and standing in these lines each week is a way of showing everyone that Jesus bled for you.

His body was broken for you. How could anybody take communion in a prideful way when you realize what you're reflecting when you stand in those lines?

I'm not good, I'm not okay, I'm not sufficient in myself.

I didn't fix this. I come to those tables as a needy person at the, just saying,

God, by your grace, save me. By your grace, redeem. My hope is placed in the work of Jesus Christ, not in anything that I can accomplish.

I'm particularly fond of the way that we actively partake, rather than sitting and having somebody pass it to you, we have to get up.

I'm not saying that other churches that pass it are doing it wrong. I just, I like the active nature of it. We have to be patient with one another.

We have to be kind to one another as we stand in lines. We have to at least acknowledge the presence of others in our gathering.

If I'm left sitting in my seat, I can just pretend that I'm alone, close my eyes, bow my head and be down on the floor.

And just me and God, that's not what this is intended to be. We come to those lines and we stand there as evidence of our broken, sinful selves who needed a savior to die, to pay the price for our sins.

And then we look others in the eye, maybe accidentally, but we see the eyes of others who are just as broken as us.

And who by standing in those lines are equally testifying that he died for them too. You can kind of make eye contact and quick look away or whatever.

Just acknowledge one another in this. I hope that we are called to remember together each week in our communion as we take the

Lord's Supper. With such a powerful symbol of this pledge given to us, it comes with responsibility that Paul now communicates in pretty heavy terms.

Whoever participates in this ceremony unworthily, as the ESV has it, I like the translation, because we don't use the word unworthily very often, in an unworthy manner, in an unworthy way.

Anybody who participates in it in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of Jesus.

And he doesn't get into a lot of detail, he doesn't emphasize in verse 30 some of the consequences of that. But what does it mean to be guilty concerning the body and blood of Jesus?

I don't want to be guilty of that, do you? Sounds like a pretty harsh thing. But a quick lesson in adjectives and adverbs would have helped me a lot in my youth.

And many of us in our upbringing would have been helped at least by somebody studying the difference between an adverb and an adjective.

Maybe you didn't want to be the person studying it, but you would have benefited by your pastor, or I would have benefited from my pastor identifying the difference.

Unworthy is an adjective describing something. Worthy is an adjective describing something.

And which of those two words describes you best? Unworthy, that's the right answer.

Don't anybody shout out worthy real quick. Unworthy is the right answer. That's the adjective that defines,

I'm saying this as your pastor, that's the word that defines me. Unworthy, is there anyone who is worthy of Jesus Christ dying on the cross for them, him shedding his blood, him being broken for you?

And you go, yeah, that makes sense, because I'm worth that. I hope not. So it's not, and it's beautiful that in the text here in Greek, this is not an adjective.

Take it because you're worthy. Don't go to those tables if you feel worthy.

Skip it, please skip it, if you think you're worthy. But take it worthily, take it in a worthy manner.

Worthily is an adverb describing an action. We are called to take communion, not as worthy people.

We never have been and never will be. Instead, we are called to take it in a worthy way. Properly recognizing our unity with others in the body and our equal standing with them at the cross is a worthy way.

The problem is when you come to the tables and you think you're better than, that you really do deserve this, that God got a bargain when he bought you.

So that the personal examination that we see in this text of self is much like that which transpired on the night which he was betrayed.

There's a little bit of reflection here. In the context of the last supper, the disciples were actually introspecting.

They were self -examining, much like we're called to examine ourselves before we come to the table. And what were they saying in their self -examination?

Jesus says, one of you is going to betray me. And what was their response? They're introspecting.

Is it me? Is it me? Is it I? Showing an introspective self -reflection on my sin against my

Lord in isolation to others or even over against others. And that's what they were doing. How many of you know that the disciples were just like us?

They were competing. Well, certainly not me. I'm better than all these other guys.

Probably five of them are going to betray you, but not me. Am I better than him?

Am I better than her? But rather Jesus calls them in that very context to serve each other.

He takes their solo concerns for self. Is it me? And he says, hey guys, lift your heads up and do something different.

Wash each other's feet, wash each other's feet, care for each other.

Think about the other, serve the other. Examine yourself, yes.

Examine yourself in terms of your relationship to others, in terms of your relationship to others in the body.

Before you participate in communion, have you offended? Have you been apathetic? Have you been dismissive? Or have you been judgmental towards others in the body?

The key concern, the key according to Paul is found in Jesus' instructions.

Remember, he didn't just die for you. That's why we do it together. Remember, he didn't just die for you.

You're not alone in this. Remember, together, together, remember, remember, together.

Let that be the heartbeat of communion and fellowship together with one another. By misunderstanding the self -examination, we have actually turned it on its head and turned it dangerously close to the very offense that the

Corinthians are doing. We have turned communion into one more isolated thing that I do with my

God. Me holding a cracker, me holding a cup at my seat, thinking about myself.

Me and God, screw everybody else. Just me and God, we'll take care of this.

I'll solve this. I'll confess all my sins. I'll take care of all my problems. I'll do all this. I'll speak the right words and God will accept me and then

I'll take this drink and then I'll eat this cracker and then I'll be okay for this week. Oh, no, no.

It is so much more communion, community together with one another.

Are you hearing it? Are you seeing what he's calling us to in context? Why is it offensive?

Why is even bringing up the fact that some are eating and some are hungry and some have and some don't in the context of communion?

Because our love for one another is meant to be reflected in this action that we do together. Communion means, it comes from a really weird word.

It means with, with. With, with. Communion means unity with, union, you know, like united together.

Calm is the together prefix. Together with, unity with Christ, unity with others in the body.

That's what we're practicing when we practice communion together. Verse 29, as the core corrective, taking communion without discerning the body, without thought for the body of Christ, that is the people.

Metaphorical is to eat and drink judgment on yourself. Beware. The body here is metaphorical.

Paul loves to mix metaphorical uses of words in with literal uses like the word of head, like the word head last week at the opening to this chapter.

Taking communion without any deference or love to other Christians in your fellowship is not communion at all, and it is worthy of judgment.

As a matter of fact, some in Corinth were weak, sick, and had died as a result of their abuse of the Lord's Supper. Now, I want to point out that that's, that's a revelation to Paul that we don't have.

And so, it was revealed to him that the cause of the sickness and the cause of the illness and the cause that some had died is, is there.

And yet, this doesn't teach us that every time someone in the church dies, that they are being judged by the Lord, oh, must have taken communion wrong.

I know you can't, you don't go there. But, but it does mean that we ought to consider the possibility over our own life and take it accordingly.

God's judgment of his own people is a real possibility. And yet, and, and lots on the table on that.

Sickness is on the table as a corrective for his people. Did you know that? Even to the point of death being there.

But, I love how Paul just always goes to a caveat whenever he's talking about judgment or discipline of God's people.

Even death and illness are on the table, but his, his discipline is always a grace that comes short of condemnation, according to verse 32.

For us, when we are judged in this way, like the Corinthians were, he's saying, don't worry about where their eternal state is because they very well may have been all in with Christ, but the judgment is still there, not unto condemnation.

Verse 31 encourages us to head that off at the pass by applying this passage quite directly by judging ourselves before we are judged by God.

If our communion habits have not included love for one another, if they have lacked together and or remember, let's start fresh this year with a commitment to more remembering and more togethering, if I can use that as a verb.

I don't think we can squeeze out from under this passage by intentionally distancing ourselves from one another.

As if we might be tempted to say to God, I'm all good because I don't disdain the poor in our church.

Heck, I don't even know a poor person. Now, you don't get out from underneath it by distance from one another.

You get out from under it by doing life together, by loving one another, by serving one another. So now to wrap up, there are a couple of practical local corrections in verses 33 and 34 that need to be addressed.

He says, wait for one another. Don't attempt to start remembering together until you're all together. That's practical advice.

And then in the phrase, wait for one another, has a nuance of welcome one another in Greek.

More than merely a time -based waiting, though that's there, it has some room for relational waiting for one another or even kind of an idea of waiting on one another.

Care for each other enough to together this thing. Together it, church, when you get up to take communion.

One of the more snarky punches in scripture, he says here near the end, get a sandwich at home.

If you can't wait, you poor, poor rich people, so that when you come together, you're not crossing into the realm of God's judgment.

Verse 34 dispels any notion that we are doing it wrong as a ceremony with only bread and juice and no full -on meal.

He says, even very directly, better you don't have a meal and just have the cracker and juice than that we are tempted to enter into the specific enticements of sin so well demonstrated by the

Corinthians. Thank you, Corinthians, for taking the fall for us so that we could see how we ought to do better.

And I can hardly imagine a more practical message that we can put into practice right away than a passage about communion.

Now we get to do it. Now we get to put it into practice. Anybody scared? Anybody a little scared? Hold on. There are two things that I want us to think about before we come to these tables.

The first is a legitimate call. They're both very overlapping. The first is examine yourself regarding together and remember.

Look around. Maybe pray for other people as you see them and remember what

Christ did for both of you. Not just you, but for us. Are you together in unity with these people?

And further, are you remembering why you must love and forgive each other? Because he died for us and he bled for us and his grace is enough for us.

The second thing that comes up is judge ourselves truly. Not just merely examining, but judging.

Am I in the right place? As fearful as this warning can be in this passage, this does not push the ceremony out of the realm of celebration.

This passage is not meant to push this off into somber, serious tones of kind of like darkness and impending judgment.

Rather, it is a celebration and the Corinthians were not practicing it that way. Rather, it's pushing it into the realm of much, much, much more relationship than most of us are accustomed to pertaining to this.

We think of it as one more isolated thing that I do in my spiritual journey. But a genuine self -assessment is being called for here and it would be wise for us to embark on the same thing that Paul is calling the

Corinthians to here. Genuinely judge for yourself whether or not you take the Lord's Supper in a way that I would define as a together remembrance.

For years, I had a tradition with a man here in the church who came to faith in Christ here. He accepted

Christ very early on in our church and whenever we would take communion at the storefront or at the school, now that the church is bigger, we've gotten a little away from it, but we would clink cups together and say cheers.

We'd find each other and say cheers before we took communion together. He wasn't raised in the church and he probably had no clue then that this tradition would have been borderline flippant and maybe even considered blasphemous in the

Baptist church that I grew up in. Can you imagine? Anybody raised in my context?

Guys in suits standing up front, they serve one another, then they serve you, then you take it all together, and there's a formality to it, right?

You get what I'm saying? I'm not saying it's bad, it's just there was a formality. Does anybody know what I'm talking about? Can you imagine standing up in the middle of that context, looking for another guy, walking across this congregation and going, cheers!

Can you imagine that? You guys know what I'm talking about all of a sudden, don't you? About maybe that feeling a little bit blasphemous, a little flippant, people kind of looking like, okay, kick them out of the church, what?

But that tradition was used by God in my life in the early formation of Recast to remind me every

Sunday what we are doing. We are doing together. We are doing celebration.

We are doing joy. We are doing remembrance that we are not the answer. We are doing remembrance that Jesus is the answer.

We are not doing slick. We are not doing formal. We are doing messy. We are doing needy.

We are doing together. Recast, cheers indeed! Cheers!

Let's go to the tables if you belong to Jesus and can accurately reflect the words together and remember this morning.

And maybe even find someone to clink cups with and offer a cheers this morning to somebody next to you in celebration of what

God has done for both of you at the cross. Let's pray. Father, I thank you.

I'm not a traditional guy. I don't do a lot of tradition. I wasn't raised in a context of tradition, kind of raised on my own a lot.

And so I can do isolation and I can do individualism really well and I can like change and I can like all of those things.

And you are a God who has instituted so much ceremony, so much orderliness, so much focus.

And we do this every week. Would you please make it fresh to us every week the call to together and remember.

Remember together. Father, I've seen over the last 15 years you bring people together.

You forge a church here. I think back to April 19th, 2009, about 15 adults in a basement sitting on folding chairs sharing the word.

You brought people together. You have made this body. And you have not made this body just as a token gathering on a

Sunday morning, but you've made us to love each other. You've made us to hold each other accountable. You've made us to work through the rough patches with one another.

And I thank you for this unifying thing that we keep coming back to. The place where we reflect on the precious, precious price that was paid to make us whole and to draw us back in relationship with you.

Father, I pray that that would not be lost on us, but it would be new and fresh every week that we would take the moment to examine and to judge and to reflect where we're at in terms of the body around us.

And Father, if there's anybody here who does not, is not in unity, is not together, is looking around going,

I don't know about these scrubs. Father, I pray that you would help them to see the need to skip that communion this morning, but also recognize the need to come into a right understanding of the cross, a right understanding of the body of Jesus sacrificed for us and the blood of Jesus sacrificed for us.

Father, I pray that you would continue in 2024 to make this a place of unity and love and growing in community together and participating regularly in communion together with joy and gladness.