Meditation on "discerning the body" in the words of institution in 1 Corinthians 11. 17-29, by Theodore A. Gill

The following meditation on the words of institution in 1 Corinthians 11: 17-29 was given by Theodore Gill at morning prayers on Wednesday April 5th 2008
Bible Reading ~ 1 Corinthians 11: 17-29
Now 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, to begin with, when you come together as a church, I hear that there are divisions among you; and to some extent I believe it. Indeed, there have to be factions among you, for only so will it become clear who among you are genuine. When you come together, it is not really to eat the Lord’s supper. For when the time comes to eat, each of you goes ahead with your own supper, and one goes hungry and another becomes drunk. What! Do you not have homes to eat and drink in? Or do you show contempt for the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing? What should I say to you? Should I commend you? In this matter I do not commend you!
For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, "This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me." In the same way he took the cup also, 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 answerable for the body and blood of the Lord. Examine yourselves, and only then eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For all who eat and drink without discerning the body, eat and drink judgment against themselves.

Reading the letters of Paul, anachronistically speaking, is often like listening to one side of a telephone conversation. One has to imagine what is being said at the other end of the line. There are moments in early passages of this epistle when we imagine that all is not well at the Corinthian church, but as we reach the section that we know as chapter 11 there is no longer room for doubt. Paul begins to berate the Christians of Corinth for their unabashed disunity, their lack of hospitality – much less charity, their gluttony and drunkenness at the table of the Lord and – most of all – their failure to “discern the body” there.

Often in Christian history, a particular verse or phrase from scripture has been taken up as a cudgel with which to punish those with whom we disagree. Incompetence in “discerning the body”? Surely, later theologians would conclude, Paul had the foresight to offer a word of warning against the coming apostasies of Gnostics, Docetics, Zwinglians, Unitarians, rationalists, myth-and-symbol historians of religion … well, you can fill in the blanks.

But doctrines of transubstantiation, consubstantiation, and the rest lay far in the future. And Paul, though unquestionably interested in the sharing of bread and cup, seems more concerned with the place of each Christian within the community as a whole. Only a little further on in this letter, in the next chapter as we know it, he lays out his understanding of the “body of Christ” in which each believer is a member of the whole, in which all collectively are members one of another. This is not only our relationship in Christ, it is at the heart of our relationship to Christ. In faith, hope and love, in the way we interact with one another, we discern the body of Christ.

The well-to-do who failed to share their food and drink with the less fortunate had no real discernment of the body. It became clear, Paul suggested, that they were not “genuine” in their Christianity. For they emphasized the church’s division. Paul called that contempt, humiliation, unworthiness, the eating and drinking of judgment against oneself. In time, we have come to call similar divisions “ecclesiology”.

But why are we not outraged, as Paul was? Why do we not rage that we will not now, nor shall we ever commend this rending of the body that has some eating and drinking in one corner according to their own richesse, others in another corner glaring suspiciously at the first group, and everyone failing to discern the body of Christ and to make their proper contribution towards the life of the body?

It is only when we are proven worthy members of the body that we are proven genuine in our faith. And when we eat the bread, and drink the cup and embrace our fellow Christians in the discernment that we are members one of another… we proclaim the Lord’s death, until he comes.
Amen.

Copyright: WCC/Theodore Gill