observation that we owe what Paul teaches us about the Lord’s Supper in this chapter to the disgusting behavior of the Corinthian Christians. Humanly speaking, at any rate, that is true, and we may be not ungrateful to the people whose pride, gluttony, and indecency evoked this positive rebuke. At this time, it seems, Holy Communion was not completely separated from a real meal at which the whole Church gathered about a common board and had a real supper together—just as Jesus had supper (not a crumb of bread and sip of wine) with his disciples in the Upper Room. The ideal was that each should bring what he could, the rich would bring more than enough for himself, the poor would bring what they could, and enjoy at least one good supper a week where the share out was made.
In Corinth the ideal was not achieved; perhaps it was not even sought. Each cared only for himself, and gobbled up what he had. There was no sharing, except perhaps in little cliques and coteries. The poor went hungry, the rich got drunk. It was not an edifying spectacle. Paul sums it up in these words, “You needn’t call that going to eat the Lord’s Supper, you go to eat your own supper.” What are we going to eat today? The Lord’s Supper? Or our own? There is no outward guarantee which it shall be. Of course, all these things which ought to be, done and said in the Lord’s Supper will be done and said; of that we can be sure. Whatever others may think, we know that those who do and say these things are qualified in the sight of God to do and to say them. But if you had the Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury here, that would still be no guarantee that you would take part in the Lord’s Supper. There is no such guarantee. Yet everything depends on which approach we take. Are we to have fellowship with our Lord and with his people at his table, or sit solitary by ourselves? Your own may be a very good supper; but it is not a means of grace. I mean to say four things about this contrast between the Lord’s Supper and our own supper.
SELF-CENTERED, CHRIST-CENTERED
The very word own, is significant. A supper I can describe as my own supper is by definition a self-centered one. I am concerned about what I can get out of it. In its crudest form, this sort of self-centeredness appears at Corinth. People come to the supper concerned simply to get as much as they can to eat and drink—to fill their bellies as full as they can. That is disgusting and we all recognize it as disgusting. But self-centeredness can be spiritual as well as physical, and how often do we come to the Communion service with this thought uppermost in our minds—“What good am I going to get out of this service? How shall I feel myself uplifted and nourished? How shall I be built up, strengthened, fed—in my inward spiritual life?” Some of us say, “This is the supreme means of grace’, nothing else so nourishes the Christian life.” Others say, “I don’t get anything out of the service, I don’t really see much point in going.”
As long as our thought remains in this human-centered way, we have no right to think that we are taking the Lord’s Supper. It is our own supper that we eat. The Supper is not Christ’s because it does not give glory to Him. It uses Him as a convenience. We are saying—“What can I get out of Christ?” instead of simply giving him all the glory for what he is, and does, and gives.
This is the Lord’s Supper—a Christ-centered fellowship which seeks his glory rather than our own edification. I do not wish to use a back-handed argument, but it is simply the truth that if you are always thinking about yourself and what you can get out of communion, you will get nothing. If you forget yourself, and come here simply to render to Christ the sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, to give all the glory to God alone, then indeed you may find out what a means of grace can be. This leads immediately to a second point.
CARELESS OR CAREFUL OF OTHER’S NEEDS
The Corinthian Christians come to the supper thinking of what they can get to eat and to drink. That his brother went hungry was no concern of his. He could look after himself. We who are so much better brought up than the gluttonous Corinthians, can and do act in precisely the same manner. We come to the supper as an act of private and personal piety, thinking about our own souls, cosseting our own faith, nourishing our precious experiences, so busy with our religion and our virtue, that we have no time to think of our hungry brother or sister. Come to supper that way and you may make it a very nice religious occasion of it, you may have a real religious banquet, but it will be your supper, not the Lord’s that you enjoy. Come to this table forgetful of the needs of your fellow Christians, and you would do better to stay away.
On the other hand, if you set Christ in the midst of his own supper, if forgetful of yourself you come here to sup with him and to glorify him; you will not forget, you will not be able to forget his brothers and sisters. How can you really eat and drink with Christ—not in pious metaphor but in fact? Remember his own words—“come ye blessed of my Father, I was hungry and you fed me, I was thirsty and you gave me drink. . . . But Lord we never did, we were never among the lucky few who had the privilege. And the King shall say, ‘Verily, I say unto you inasmuch as you did it unto one of these my brothers and sisters, even the least of these, you did it unto me.’” It is true that this supper is one of the focal points of the social Gospel. Let it really be the Lord’s Supper, and you can’t be narrow in your affections. This again leads to another point: exclusiveness and inclusiveness.
EXCLUSIVENESS AND INCLUSIVENESS
Self-centeredness always leads to arrogance and exclusiveness. It was so at Corinth. “When you come together in assembly,” says Paul, “I hear that divisions exist among you.” Naturally, if you are setting out to have your own supper, you can always have a better time if you can get together with your old cronies and keep yourselves to yourselves, shutting all the rest out and letting them go your way. On one level you will get together with people who like to eat and drink what you like to eat and drink, who share the same social customs, and the same jokes. On another level, you will get together with those who have the same religious and ecclesiastical tastes as yourself. Whenever this happens, whenever there is a closed shop with some excluded it is our supper and not the Lord’s which we celebrate.
Let us for a moment be practical about this. We Free Church people have nothing to boast about, but there is something here we should be thankful for. No servant of Jesus Christ is excluded from this table. Whatever his ecclesiastical label if he is a repentant sinner, trusting in the mercy of Christ for salvation, he is welcome here at Christ’s table. It is not for us to be censorious of others, but it is right to say, that if these doors were shut against any of Christ’s people, it would be no Lord’s Supper we should hold in holy isolation. It would be our own supper, and much good might it do us.
It is not simply that a true Lord’s Supper is not exclusive. It is all-inclusive. Whenever we meet at Christ’s table we should not only hear his voice bidding us come to feast with him, we should also hear him saying, “go out quickly into the highways and hedges, and constrain them to come in, that my house may be filled.” Precisely because it is Christ’s Supper and not ours, we are not only his guests, but his messengers, his apostles, his evangelists sent forth from the table to go into all the world and in his name gather people into his family, that his house may be full. What are the issues of the contrast which we have studied?
DEATH AND LIFE
Our chapter in 1 Corinthians concludes with some of the most mysterious verses in the whole New Testament. “A person who eats and drinks wrongly,” says Paul, “eats and drinking judgment to himself, for this cause many of you are weak and sickly and not a few have fallen asleep.” This is not the time for a full critical investigation of what Paul means, and whether he refers to spiritual sickness and death, or physical sickness and death or both. Behind what he says there lies a principle, which is certainly true. The self-centeredness which perverts the Lord’s Supper, turning it into our supper can only issue in death. We do not have the springs of everlasting life locked up in our own bosom, and if we turn in upon ourselves, we shut ourselves away from life, and die. Even a camel can’t live on its own resources forever, though it consume its own hump, and neither can you.
The odd thing is that
