The Lord’s Supper In The Church Meeting

Copyright© 2020, 2023, 2024 Eric S. Weiss

The traditional thesis that justification for the post-Reformation separation of a ministry of preaching and the Eucharist lies in the existence of two different forms of worship in the NT—the one deriving from the synagogue worship tradition, the other from the institution of Jesus—has proved to be untenable in modern exegesis (at first O. Cullmann, then G. Kretschmar, Hahn, et al.). In place of the Jewish (and pagan) cult Christ instituted a table fellowship within which the proclamation of the Word to the community took place (H. W. Heidland). (emphasis added) Alongside this was the service of baptism and also missionary preaching. Other meetings are to be regarded as complementing the basic eucharistic structure or as singling out specific elements of this structure, and they are always to be related to it.

Nathan D. Mitchell, Frank C. Senn, et al., “Worship,” The Encyclopedia of Christianity (Grand Rapids, MI; Leiden, Netherlands: Wm. B. Eerdmans; Brill, 2008), Volume 5, 787.

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Paul Bradshaw, a contemporary liturgical scholar, has critiqued a common way of narrating the origins of the Eucharist. In this common way of telling the story, a single highly standardized eucharistic practice developed early on in the Christian church. This fairly uniform practice was based on Christ’s words and actions at the Last Supper. Bradshaw calls this “the Dixian hypothesis” after Dom Gregory Dix. Dix was instrumental in making this the standard story through his influential book The Shape of the Liturgy. Bradshaw argues in numerous books and essays that instead there were at least two points of origin, the meal ministry of Jesus and the Last Supper. Drawing from John’s Gospel, the Didache, Ignatius of Antioch, Justin Martyr, and Irenaeus, he argues that some parts of early Christianity understood their eucharistic meals not against the background of “the Last Supper nor … the impending passion,” but rather the meal ministry of Jesus. Christ’s life-giving “flesh” rather than sacrificed “body” was being remembered, and “an eschatological anticipation of God’s Kingdom” was being celebrated, one in which “the hungry are fed” and in which “tax-collectors and sinners” are being welcomed. (emphasis added)

Bradshaw argues that the loss of this other emphasis over time, especially as eucharistic liturgies became more standardized in the fourth and fifth centuries, led in part to a decrease in the frequency of reception of the elements of bread and wine by members of the church. The greater emphasis on the “sacrifice” of the Eucharist accomplished by the priest in remembrance of the sacrifice of Christ’s “body” made the reception and co-celebration of the people less central. As Bradshaw puts it, there was “a disproportionate emphasis, if you like, on altar rather than table.” (emphasis added)

David L. Stubbs, Table and Temple: The Christian Eucharist and Its Jewish Roots (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2020), 136. (Reference is being made to Paul F. Bradshaw, Eucharistic Origins; Reconstructing Early Christian Worship.)

Also read this blog post: The Lord’s Supper—A Fellowship Feast. (The author discusses at length the reasons the Lord's supper should be a fellowship meal.)

NOTE:

• This blog post begs the question of whether every church gathering in Paul’s time included or usually included communion/the Lord’s supper. While 1 Corinthians, especially chapters 11–14, gives us the most detailed information in the New Testament about how Christians interacted or were to interact in their church gatherings, it’s not clear if communion/the Lord’s supper was shared whenever the church met. See Paul’s Church Meetings for more on Paul’s expectations and instructions for church meetings and worship and the Lord’s supper.

In that blog post I quote from James D. G. Dunn, who wrote:

Finally we might note that there is no hint in 1 Cor. 11 or 14 as to how the meeting for worship was related to the common meal. The discussion of each does not seem to embrace the other or to leave much room for the other, and we best assume that Paul envisages two separate gatherings for the different purposes (cf. particularly Pliny, Epp., X.96.7).

In that letter Pliny (the Younger) had written to the Emperor Trajan about the results of his interrogation of Christians as follows:

10.96.7 But they declared that the sum of their guilt or their error only amounted to this, that on a stated day they had been accustomed to meet before daybreak and to recite a hymn among themselves to Christ, as though he were a god, and that so far from binding themselves by oath to commit any crime, their oath was to abstain from theft, robbery, adultery, and from breach of faith, and not to deny trust money placed in their keeping when called upon to deliver it. When this ceremony was concluded, it had been their custom to depart and meet again to take food, but it was of no special character and quite harmless, and they had ceased this practice after the edict in which, in accordance with your orders, I had forbidden all secret societies.

10.96.7 Affirmabant autem hanc fuisse summam vel culpae suae vel erroris, quod essent soliti stato die ante lucem convenire, carmenque Christo quasi deo dicere secum invicem seque sacramento non in scelus aliquod obstringere, sed ne furta ne latrocinia ne adulteria committerent, ne fidem fallerent, ne depositum appellati abnegarent. Quibus peractis morem sibi discedendi fuisse rursusque coeundi ad capiendum cibum, promiscuum tamen et innoxium; quod ipsum facere desisse post edictum meum, quo secundum mandata tua hetaerias esse vetueram.

But Pliny wrote this around AD 110, more than half a century after Paul had written 1 Corinthians, so we might expect there to have been changes to the original or early church gathering/meeting practices.

• For more on the meaning and background of Jesus’s “Do this for my memorial” see Joachim Jeremias On The Memorial Formula.

• The Didache (Greek Διδαχή Didachē, pronounced dih-duh-khay or dih-duh-khee; full title (there are both short and [long] versions): Teaching of [the Lord through] the Twelve Apostles [to the Nations] Διδαχὴ [κυρίου διὰ] τῶν δώδεκα ἀποστόλων [τοῖς ἔθνεσιν] Didachē kyriou dia tōn dōdeka apostolōn tois ethnesin), which many scholars date to 80–110 CE, and some even as early as 50 CE, gives a different order of service for the Lord’s supper than we read in the gospels and in 1 Corinthians, and its Eucharistic prayers seem to support what I state about the “do this for my memorial” aspect of communion being a reminder to the Father rather than a personal or corporate reflecting on Jesus’s death. See The Didache for more about this important document and how it has both informed and complicated our understanding of the early Christians’ meals and meetings, as well as how the bread and wine of the Eucharist were regarded, and what was the “sacrifice” of the Eucharist.

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   A long time ago in a town far,    
   far away....                                   

Denton, Texas / June 22, 2000

I had an interesting experience tonight, which I will have to continue to think about.

It was years and years of doing just that, as well as overseeing and experiencing and partaking of many different forms of communion, from the common small cracker and thimble of grape juice to a loaf of bread and a shared cup to the Eastern Orthodox priest-administered Eucharist, etc., that led me to write this blog post.

At the end of the prayer meeting at 813 W. Sycamore Street in Denton, Texas, where some of the young men from a local assembly live, and where they have a weekly Thursday night prayer/worship meeting, Timothy Sheaff asked me to administer communion. This was totally unexpected, by me at least. In other words, I hadn’t “prepared” anything, and also I hadn’t really been participating in the meeting in any exceptional way—I hadn’t shared anything, I hadn’t been waiting to say something, etc.

As I began speaking and breaking the bread (originally thinking just to recite Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 11 by rote), I sensed a tangible “presence” of the Lord in our breaking of the bread and eating it that I had never before experienced during communion, a reality of His presence that I had never even associated with communion other than in a “theological” sense (and I have taken communion for nearly 23 years now, and was responsible for administering it in our former church on a monthly basis for perhaps 5 or more years). As best as I can describe it, it was like our communing was a fulfillment of Jesus’s words that He would not again drink of the fruit of the vine until He drank it new with His disciples (including us) in the Kingdom of God. I sensed—or maybe I can be so bold as to say that I knew—that Jesus was present in our gathering. He was there in our eating of the bread and in our drinking of the cup. He was there with us, maybe even eating and drinking with us. Maybe even eating and drinking as us. Or both.

It so impressed me that instead of just passing the cup around shortly after I had broken and passed the loaf around, I continued speaking and praying aloud about the bread, His body, giving everyone time to eat the bread slowly and to experience Him as I was experiencing Him, and to finish it before the cup came.

This was not for me something to be analyzed theologically, like:

1) Are the elements just symbols, or 2) is Jesus a) spiritually or even b) physically present in the bread and wine/juice, or 3) is it something else along the spectrum of which these two views are the extremes?

Rather, it was a suprarational thing, maybe even mystical (without the bad associations that word sometimes has)—or at least it was to me. I don’t know if anyone else there sensed what I sensed. It transcended reality and the words the Scriptures use to relate what Jesus said. It didn’t contradict them (though one could perhaps read the Scriptures literally and find fault with what I am saying here), but in a sense it overshadowed them and gave them life—like there was a web or cocoon of light that enveloped the inscripturated words, thus containing them and likewise illuminating them. (This was the “image” that was sort of impressed on me as I talked later with Timothy about it, though I didn’t mention this to him.)

And it likewise touched on Jesus’s words that “where two or three are gathered together in My name, there I am in the midst of them.” He really is there with us in those times, not just “by faith.” And He was there tonight.

And He wasn’t there apart from our “communion”; He was there because of it, in our gathering together and in our eating and in our drinking of His body and His blood. Eating and drinking with us in His Father’s Kingdom.

Our “communion” time is perhaps only a foretaste of the Kingdom which is to come—and yet tonight it was the Kingdom, here and now. And it is the Kingdom, here and now. Communion with Him.

I talked with Timothy a bit about it afterwards.

I shared this by e-mail with some who were there and with some who weren’t.

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In my opinion, Thomas O’Loughlin in his book The Eucharist: Origins and Contemporary Understandings provides the scholarly support I have long sought re: what communion/the Lord’s supper/the Eucharist is supposed to be in terms of its form, practice, procedures, setting, meaning, and purpose. 

This also impacts how believers are to meet when they have “church.”

I am now even more persuaded that “The Normal Christian Church Meeting” (hat tip to Watchman Nee) should be a gathering for a shared meal which incorporates the blessing to the Father over the shared loaf and the shared cup as a memorial to Jesus (per his “do this for my memorial” τοῦτο ποιεῖτε εἰς τὴν ἐμὴν ἀνάμνησιν touto poieite eis tēn emēn anamnēsin Luke 22:19; 1 Corinthians 11:24–25.), and which also includes time for worship and sharing/reading from the Scriptures, praying, prophesying, etc., with the participation/activity being done or able to be done by all the assembled members and not just by a (or the) pastor or leader.

NOTE: I discuss who can or should be allowed to participate in Thoughts On Communion. See the section under “Closed, semi-closed, or open?”

In his discussion of the Jewish meal liturgy Louis Bouyer explains that Jesus’s “do this for my memorial” was not so much intended to mean a personal or corporate reflecting on Jesus’s death but to be a remembrance/reminder to the Father:

We must add that the Seder Amram Gaon, in conformity with the oldest rabbinical tradition, prescribes certain variations in the third berakah, either for the Sabbath or for a high holy day.⁹³

The festive form is especially noteworthy, and all the more so because it is the object of very specific allusions in the Toseftah.⁹⁴ After the petition for the kingdom of the house of David to return to its place, it introduces this passage:

“Our God, and the God of our fathers, may the remembrance [or “memorial”] of ourselves and [the remembrance] of our fathers and the remembrance of Jerusalem, thy city, and the remembrance of the Messiah, the son of David, thy servant, and the remembrance of thy people, the whole house of Israel, arise and come, come to pass, be seen and accepted and heard, be remembered and be mentioned before thee for deliverance, for good, for grace, for lovingkindness and for mercy on this such and such a day. Remember us, jhwh, our God, on it for good and visit us on it for blessing and save us on it unto life by a word of salvation and mercy, and spare, favour and show us mercy, for thou art a gracious and merciful God and King.”

NOTE: I added the underlining of each occurrence of “remembrance” and also inserted “[the remembrance]” before “of our fathers” to reflect the wording of the Hebrew original. See images below⁺ showing the English and Hebrew text from David Hedegård’s book that Bouyer quotes from (marked with red brackets) and the occurrences of zikkaron (green underline) within the quoted section.

      What is remarkable in this text is the so abundant use made of the term memorial* (in Hebrew: zikkaron). It is impossible to imagine a better confirmation than this text for the thesis already so solidly established by Jeremias in his book on the eucharistic words of Jesus.⁹⁵ The “memorial” here is not merely a simple commemoration. It is a sacred sign, given by God to his people who preserve it as their pre-eminent spiritual treasure. This sign or pledge implies a continuity, a mysterious permanence of the great divine actions, the mirabilia Dei commemorated by the holy days. For it is for the Lord himself a permanent attestation of his fidelity to himself. It is therefore the basis for a trusting supplication that the unfailing power of the Word which produced the mirabilia Dei renew them and accompany them in the present. It is in this sense that the “memory” of the divine actions which the people have kept faithfully can urge Adonai to “remember” his people. For our subjective commemoration is merely the reflection of an objective commemoration, established by God, which first of all bears witness to himself of his own fidelity. Hence this prayer formula, which is so characteristic and which was to pass over from the Synagogue into the Church: “Remember us, O Lord.”

The meaningful expressions petitioning that “the remembrance of thy people, the whole house of Israel, arise and come, come to pass, be seen and accepted and heard, be remembered and mentioned before thee for deliverance, for good, for grace, for lovingkindness and for mercy on such and such a day …” underline the objective character rightly attributed by Jeremias to the memorial understood in this sense. A pledge given by God to his faithful, precisely so that they will re-present it to him as the homage of their faith in his fidelity, and in thus becoming the basis of their supplication, the “memorial” therefore becomes, as Max Thurian emphasizes, a superior form of sacrifice,—the sacrifice that it fully integrated in the Word and the act of thanksgiving which it arouses as a response.

Nothing proves this better than the fact that this “memorial” formula was added similarly to the Abodah prayer, which originally consecrated the Temple sacrifices. Hence the sacrificial character attributed to the communal meal.⁹⁶ In blessing God for its meal and in acknowledging in it through this berakah the memorial of the mirabilia Dei of creation and redemption, the community acknowledges it as the efficacious sign of the perpetual actuality within itself of these mirabilia, and still more precisely of their eschatological accomplishment in its favor. The prayer for everything which leads to this accomplishment finds here the assurance of a pledge. In “acknowledging” the inexhaustible power of the Word that creates and saves, the faith of Israel, we may say, becomes one with its object. The people here is itself consecrated to the accomplishment of the divine plan, while it welcomes it in a mysterious and real anticipation.⁹⁷ Here we have, the source as it were both of the Christian notion of the eucharistic sacrifice, and more generally, of the efficaciousness of the sacraments, as this was understood by the first Christian generations. As we shall see, the sacramental-sacrificial power of the eucharist will actually find the basic development of its expression in this third berakah, which has become the eucharistic anamnesis, together with its further extension in what will be called the epiclesis.

* The passage quoted from David Hedegård’s translation of Seder R. Amran Gaon uses “remembrance” instead of “memorial.”

Footnotes 

⁹³ D. H., pp. 151 ff.

The footnote reference “D. H.” is to David Hedegård, Seder R. Amram Gaon, Part I, Hebrew Text with critical Apparatus, translation with Notes and Introduction (Lund, 1951), available online here:

English: https://archive.org/details/DavidHedegardSederR.AmramGaonLindstedt1951/mode/2up 

Hebrew: https://archive.org/details/sederravamramgaonparticriticaltextdavidhedegard1951/mode/2up

⁹⁴ Tractate Berakoth, III, 49 a. For the text, D. H., p. 152.

⁺ See images below (from the above links) of the English and Hebrew texts of David Hedegård, Seder R. Amram Gaon, pp. 151–152, section LXXIX/(79)

⁹⁵ Op. cit., pp. 237 ff. See also B. S. Childs, Memory and Tradition in Israel (Naperville, Ill., 1962).

⁹⁶ Cf. J. H. Hertz, op. cit., p 148 and p. 972.

⁹⁷ Cf. Max Thurian, The Eucharistic Memorial (Richmond, 1960–61), pp. 18 ff.

Louis Bouyer, Eucharist: Theology and Spirituality of the Eucharistic Prayer, trans. Charles Underhill Quinn (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1968), 84–86.

In conjunction with the above, Bouyer also writes:

Every time Christians celebrate it [the Eucharist], as St. Paul says, they “announce” or “proclaim” this death, not first to the world, but to God, and the “recalling” of Christ’s death is for God the pledge of his fidelity in saving them.⁴⁶

Footnotes 

⁴⁶ 1 Corinthians 11:26.

Louis Bouyer, Eucharist: Theology and Spirituality of the Eucharistic Prayer, trans. Charles Underhill Quinn (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1968), 105.

Conversely, every time Christians eat together they can, via a shared loaf and cup, proclaim their shared fidelity to Jesus and bless and thank the Father for God's fidelity to them. I.e., every meal can be a Eucharist.  As O’Loughlin writes in his book:

The inappropriateness of a special ‘sacral meal’ category also clashes with a belief in the incarnation: if the Lord has come among us and shared in the ordinariness of our humanity, then every table must be capable of being a locus of divine encounter, and to designate the Lord’s table or the Lord’s supper as being in a wholly distinct class (however it might be perceived phenomenally by someone attending a Christian liturgy) is tantamount to adopting a functional docetism.

Thomas O’Loughlin, The Eucharist: Origins and Contemporary Understandings (London; New Delhi; New York; Sydney: Bloomsbury, 2015), 118.

O’Loughlin addresses at length the significance of partaking from a single loaf and drinking from a common cup:

3 There is a loaf

While we have many descriptions of Jewish table prayers, including those where the leader of the table offered the blessing for all at the table,⁵⁸ this emphasis on the breaking of one loaf into portions for sharing seems to be peculiar to the followers of Jesus. This is one of their distinctive practices—and as such Luke can assume that it would be the ‘historical’ basis for the moment of recognition in the Emmaus story (24:35)....

For Paul the singularity of the loaf is a realization of the unity of the new people: ‘Because there is one loaf, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf’ (1 Cor. 10:17). The unity of the loaf, a unity which can be shared in through each having a portion of it when it has been broken, is their unity in Christ. Moreover, just as ‘the people of Israel’ are ‘partners in the altar’ in Jerusalem through eating what has been sacrificed (1 Cor. 10:18), so their eating of ‘the loaf which we break’ makes them participants ‘in the body of Christ’ (1 Cor. 10:16). The body of Christ is the community who have, as individuals, consumed a fraction of the one, common, loaf.⁶¹ And as a table community is a natural unity, so the common loaf shared by those at table is expressive of the basis of that unity: their faith in Jesus.⁶²...

4 There is a cup

While the common memory of the origin of the Eucharist in the ‘Last Supper’ is that Jesus took ‘bread and wine’ (a remembering that emphasizes the distinct materials), by contrast all our texts notice that he took ‘a cup’.⁸⁵...

That this is important can be seen in a variety of ways. The most obvious evidence that ‘a cup’ was significant in the churches’ memory was that having taken the cup Jesus gave it to those at table so that they each drank ‘from it’. It was not that they all drank wine—or any other liquid—which they could do from their individual cups,⁸⁷ nor that they all had a drink of the same wine in that it came from one source or flagon,⁸⁸ but that they passed a cup from one to another and each drank from that same cup. When we recognize this we see at once that ‘the cup’ was of, at least, equal significance to them with what it contained. The focus of early memory was on the how of their drinking, not upon what they drank.

First and foremost, we need to recognize just how unusual was this action of sharing a drinking vessel. There was no equivalent to it in any known Jewish practice such as Shabbat or Pesach meals, there is no mention of anything like it in any other Jewish sect such as the Essenes or the Therapeutae/Therapeutrides, nor are there any literary references to such a practice either in Jewish documents that are certainly earlier than Jesus (be they canonical or not), roughly contemporary with him (e.g. in Philo or Josephus), nor those which are of uncertain date but ancient (e.g., the Mishnah). Making the sharing of a cup part of one’s table manners is confined exclusively to the followers of Jesus. Moreover, that those disciples considered it to be a deliberate and significant ritual is seen by the fact that they located it, and remembered it, explicitly in relation to Jesus’ own action and wishes.⁸⁹ Here we have a practice unique to the churches. Indeed, it is so distinctive that its features of being ‘disruptive of expectations’ with ‘multiple attestation’ (Paul, the Synoptics, the Didache—and, as we shall see, possible John) that we can view the action as one that goes back to Jesus himself.⁹⁰...

...While drinking is, quite naturally, a part of the meal rituals of all cultures (we need hydration more urgently than alimentation), the notion of regularly passing a cup from mouth to mouth is, to my knowledge, not otherwise attested. There are many instances of shared drink—the same liquid (a group each drinking a particular substance) or the same body of liquid (the liquid drunk coming from a single bowl or a single source)—but not of sharing the same cup.... It seems to be hard-wired into Homo coenarius that she has her own cup at table. This anthropological insight allows us to see that, first, the widespread adoption of this action of sharing a cup cannot be dismissed as some minor practical detail: something so unusual was a very deliberate choice....

When we take these pointers to the significance of the common cup, we can see that the paralleling, mentioned above, of ‘bread’ with ‘wine’ is faulty in that that parallel is based on materials. An accurate paralleling should be in terms of their formal use within a meal. One ‘loaf of bread’ (which can be shared by breaking) is paralleled by ‘one cup’ (which can be shared by being passed from one to another). Paul’s use of ‘eat of the loaf and drink of the cup’ (1 Cor. 11:28) is, therefore, a precise statement of the central ritual actions....

...Drinking from the common cup was a ‘boundary ritual’ that expressed commitment to discipleship, and as such was a serious matter: they had to be willing to answer for their decision to drink from that common cup (11:27–8). Because it is the action of declaring both commitment to discipleship and rejection of idols, it is a participation in the life-blood of the Christ (10:16) and makes them part of the new covenant which was sealed in Christ’s blood (11:25).⁹⁹ For Paul discipleship is about being part of the new covenant and sharing in the new life offered by the Christ; and taking the common cup—not a gesture that one would do lightly in any case—was accepting that discipleship and taking that life-blood of the Christ into one’s own body.¹⁰⁰ We are accustomed to think of the act of baptism as the boundary ritual of the new community, but for Paul at the time he first wrote to the Corinthians, the sharing of the cup was also a demarcation ritual—and because it was repeated weekly it was the ongoing declaration of willingness to continue along the Way. That such a paralleling of drinking from the cup with baptism was present in Paul’s mind when he wrote about that church’s meals is confirmed by his remark about the Spirit being present in that church: ‘for by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit’ (12:13). Just as the Spirit united them in baptism, so the Spirit was now what they drank in common. In short, if they wanted to be part of the new people, then they drank from the common cup accepting the consequences. They were becoming blood brothers and sisters in the new covenant.¹⁰¹...

When we look at the Synoptic Tradition, we see that this notion that the one cup of the Lord is be taken as willingness to accept what discipleship involves is reinforced, while being given a narrative expression, within a paradigm encounter of would-be disciples with Jesus. The scene appears in Mk 10:35–40 where James and John, the sons of Zebedee, ask if they can sit beside Jesus in glory. This prompts a challenge that links drinking from the same cup as the Lord with baptism: ‘Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?’ (10:38). And when they reply that they are able, they are told that ‘The cup that I drink you will drink; and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized’ but that still will not guarantee them their desired places. To accept fully what it is to be a disciple is both to share in the baptism of Jesus and to drink the same cup as him.... if you drink the ritual cup, then you consciously declare your readiness to accept the cost of discipleship.¹⁰³...

Drinking from the one cup is a declaration within the community of acceptance of a common destiny as a community, and its common destiny with the Christ; as such it formed a very real, and possibly physically dangerous, boundary for the people of the New Covenant. It was also an act that was intended to shatter other boundaries such as those of race, social status and factions within the churches, and implied a willingness for a new fictive community and a new intimacy in Jesus. As such, it is the presumed social backdrop for the logion on being friends in Jn 15:13–5: friends with one another and with the Lord.

The meal envisaged in Sir. 31–32 as a Jewish symposium may give us the general shape of the churches’ eucharistic meals, but the sharing of the loaf, and especially the sharing of a single cup, be it of wine or water, made this event stand out as forming a table community with a very distinctive view of their common destiny and what might lie in store for them as the consequence of having embarked on The Way. This understanding of the cup, when located within the overall setting of the meal in the presence of the risen Jesus, can then form the basis for its being seen as an anticipation of the Kingdom (Mk 14:25)¹⁰⁵ and the banquet of the Kingdom (Mt. 8:11–2).¹⁰⁶...

The sharing of the common cup as a central moment in any Eucharist should not be seen as merely the fulfilment of a biblical/dominical command (Mt. 26:27) or an item of traditional ritual. Rather it needs to be recognized as a constituent moment in Christian identity. It needs to be seen on a par with baptism, a uniquely christ-ian moment, that marks the gracious transformation of disciples into friends. Moreover, the actuality of sharing the cup must be seen as a direct linking with the actions and proclamation of Jesus rather than in terms of some vague ‘fuller sign value’¹⁰⁹: the Lord instituted a radical sign of discipleship and he drank the cup, and so, in the midst of convivial rejoicing, we have the challenge that we too must drink from the cup and accept the radical call of discipleship.

Footnotes 

⁵⁸ Bahr 1970.

⁶¹ See Hollander 2009.

⁶² See Rouwhorst 2006.

⁸⁵ 1 Cor. 10:16 and 21; 11:25, 26, 27 and 28; Mk 14:23; Mt. 26:27; Lk. 22:17 and 20; and Didache, 9:2.

⁸⁷ This is the normal meaning we take when we share a moment of common drinking. If I say ‘we had coffee together after the meeting’, the implication is that each had her/his own cup of coffee but we had these in company with one another. Likewise, if I said about a friend ‘we went for a pint together’, I do not mean we had one pint between us, much less that we drank from the same glass, but that we each had our own pint in our own glasses. The intimacy of friendship implied in ‘going for a pint’ together does not extend to sharing cups.

⁸⁸ This is the understanding implied when a flagon is placed on the table for the Eucharistic Prayer and ‘blessed’ (understood as blessing a creature)/‘consecrated’ so that a variety of cups can be filled from it. This practice considers the flagon as a container for a sufficient quantity of a ritual material by parallel with a ciborium—a vessel distinct from a paten—which can contain hundreds of wafers. See O’Loughlin 2008.

⁸⁹ This is already in evidence in Paul when he wrote to the Corinthians assuming there is a single cup (10:16) and that they all drink ‘the cup of the Lord’ (11:27); and that this is a practice ‘received from the Lord’ (11:23).

⁹⁰ J. P. Meier set out a list of criteria for determining which ‘sayings of Jesus’ in literary artefacts are likely to be based in actual statements by Jesus (Meier 1994, 237–43) but these criteria can equally be used in the case of an action which is as distinctive as this one and so is analogous to an utterance. See Meier 1995, 349–50; Meier, in that article, is exceptional among exegetes working on the Last Supper narratives in noting the significance that the disciples are portrayed drinking from the cup of Jesus rather than their individual cups.

⁹⁹ See Meier 1995, 349–50 who develops this understanding of sharing the cup from Paul to the Synoptics. See also Theiss 1994.

¹⁰⁰ For this aspect of commensality as part of Paul’s gospel, see Jewett 1994.

¹⁰¹ Megivern 1962, 55 uses this image of ‘blood brothers’ in the covenant as part of the significance of drinking the cup.

¹⁰³ This notion of a ritual conversion between the cup of the meal and the cup of martyrdom comes out in a developed form in Ignatius’ letters, see Lawlor 1991, 286–7.

¹⁰⁵ See Meier 1994, 302–9.

¹⁰⁶ See Meier 1994, 309–17.

¹⁰⁹ See Megivern 1962, 56.

Thomas O’Loughlin, The Eucharist: Origins and Contemporary Understandings (London; New Delhi; New York; Sydney: Bloomsbury, 2015), 159–174.

NOTE: Gordon D. Fee in his NICNT volume on 1 Corinthians (both the original and the revised edition) argues that Jesus saying “do this for my memorial” meant that when sharing the Lord’s supper his followers were to remember his death versus reminding God of the covenant effected by his death:

...Thus just as the Passover meal itself was such a “remembrance” to be kept forever in Israel, so Jesus is now reconstituting the “memorial” for the newly constituted Israel that will gather around the table in his name to “remember” their own deliverance through him.¹²⁰ That is why Jesus described it as “my remembrance.” It is not simply “in memory of him,” but it is eaten as a “memorial” of the salvation that he has effected through his death and resurrection.

In the same way, it is very difficult to escape the conclusion, based on Paul’s own interpretation to come (v. 26), that for him the “remembrance” was primarily “humanward.” After all, that is quite the point in the larger context, where the Corinthians’ meal had turned into such a fiasco that the “remembrance” of Christ is precisely what is missing. Thus Paul’s great concern in repeating these words is to remind them of the “humanward” implications of this “remembrance.”¹²¹ By this meal they “proclaim” Christ’s death until he comes, that is, they declare the good news of their salvation that makes them all one. To participate in a manner unworthy of that specific “remembrance” means to come under judgment for the very reason that it fails to acknowledge the meal as a “memorial” of God’s saving event.

Footnotes

¹²⁰ This does not exclude the possibility that Jesus “reminded” God of their need of his forgiveness based on his sacrifice. But it would seem that the primary referent is the “manward” one.

¹²¹ Even though both Jeremias and Chenderlin pay lip-service to the larger context, they seem to abandon it almost totally when they examine the word ἀνάμνησις itself. Paul’s concern throughout the passage, and the reason for reminding them of the words of institution, seems altogether to lack a “Godward” dimension. This dimension is precisely what needs to be demonstrated, not the wide semantic range available to Paul. This meal and these words do not urge on them that God remembers Jesus in their behalf, but rather that this meal is a celebration of their common salvation, which their own private meals almost totally ignore.

Gordon D. Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, ed. Ned B. Stonehouse et al., Revised Edition., The New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2014), 612–613.

There are other commentators who side with Fee, like Simon J. Kistemaker, who writes:

The command to “do this in remembrance of me” can be understood in both an objective and a subjective sense. Objectively, it refers to our prayer to God that he will graciously remember the Messiah and cause his kingdom to come at his appearing.⁷² Subjectively, it means that we as partakers at the Lord’s table remember his death on the cross. Of these two interpretations, the second one appears to be more relevant in the context. Within the Corinthian church, the people failed to observe the Lord’s Supper properly (vv. 20–21). They needed to remember Jesus’ death and reflect on its implication for them. Hence, Paul repeats the words of Jesus as a reminder to the Corinthians that the Lord’s Supper is an act of remembrance.⁷³

Footnotes

⁷² Joachim Jeremias, The Eucharistic Words of Jesus, trans. Norman Perrin from the German 3d rev. ed. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1966), p. 252; Richard J. Ginn, The Present and the Past: A Study of Anamnesis (Allison Park, Penn.: Pickwick Publications, 1989), p. 20.

⁷³ Fee, First Corinthians, p. 553. Consult also Fritz Chenderlin, “Do This as My Memorial.” The Semantic and Conceptual Background and Value of Anamnēsis in 1 Corinthians 11:24–25, Analecta Biblica 99 (Rome: Biblical Institute Press, 1982); M. H. Sykes, “The Eucharist as ‘Anamnesis,’ ” ExpT 71 (1960): 115–18.

Simon J. Kistemaker and William Hendriksen, Exposition of the First Epistle to the Corinthians, vol. 18, New Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1953–2001), 395.

While I lean towards Bouyer’s and Jeremias’s interpretation (and I think the Didache also supports the “Godward” interpretation of Jesus’s words of remembrance), perhaps both meanings are intended and can be expressed in the prayers at the Lord’s supper.

Over time (scholars debate when this process began) the church separated the Eucharist from the fellowship meal (aka the “love feast” or ἀγάπη agapē; see Jude 12). The fellowship meal, which was the original and intended setting for the Eucharist and the church gathering, eventually faded from practice and memory. The church also began treating the Eucharist as being sacramental, including regarding the bread and wine as being or becoming Christ’s real body and blood. In conjunction with or subsequent to that, a hierarchical priesthood arose or was instituted in order to offer the bread and wine as sacrifices, and to oversee or effect their supposed change into Christ's body and blood, and possibly also to “protect” the Eucharist.

While some may point to 1 Corinthians 10:16–21 in support of the sacramental and sacrificial [offering] view of the bread and the wine that the church later came to adopt, that is not the only way to understand the passage or the meaning of κοινωνία (koinōnia) there, and probably not the best way, either. See, e.g., Gordon D. Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, ed. Ned B. Stonehouse et al., Revised Edition., The New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2014), 513–522.

Others point to Ignatius’s letters as supporting an early sacrificial and sacramental view of the Eucharist. But as O’Loughlin points out:

The issue of Ignatius is complex for many Christian theologians in that he is often still dated to c. 100–110, whereas he should be dated to c. 150–160 at the earliest (see Barnes 2008), and as such an early writer seen as the best witness to the notion of three-tier ministry (i.e. for many this is seen as equivalent to a demonstration of the authenticity of a Christian priesthood qua tale) and so it is presumed that his views on the Eucharist are therefore above reproach (and, of course, they do fit with what later emerged!); but if one studies his views on the Eucharist in contrast to that of earlier writers or indeed his contemporaries, then it is clear that he has absorbed many assumptions from Hellenistic religion without question (see Brent 2006) and, in particular, has come to present the purpose of eucharistic activity as a direct counterpart to the role of sacrifices in those cults (see Lathrop 1990).

Thomas O’Loughlin, The Eucharist: Origins and Contemporary Understandings (London; New Delhi; New York; Sydney: Bloomsbury, 2015), 98, Footnote 10.

I cannot think of anywhere in the Old Testament that the people of God were told to eat and drink the real body and blood of deity, or to expect to do that one day as part of their covenant and faith. But there are many instances in the Old Testament where the people of God ate and drank and rejoiced together before God (or were commanded or instructed to do so), and I believe that is what Jesus and the apostles desired and expected to happen when believers “come together.”

NOTE: All persons sipping/drinking from a shared cup might be a problem for some. Possible approaches:

• Using a silver cup: While silver has antimicrobial properties, there doesn’t appear to be any research supporting that using a silver cup has any significant germ-reduction effect.
• Using wine instead of grape juice: Wine does not have sufficient alcohol to reduce germs compared to grape juice. (The choice of whether to use wine or grape juice is a separate issue. There is evidence that some early Christian groups used water.)
• Intinction: Having people dip their piece of bread into the cup is likely worse, as hands often have more germs than mouths.
• Wiping and rotating: Having each person wipe the rim with a cloth after sipping and then rotating the rim so the next sip is taken from a different part of the cup (where it’s not warm from body heat, which is something that germs like) might reduce the already very slight chance of spreading infection. (E.g., you are far more likely to get something like COVID or even a cold from simply being in the room with an infected person than from sipping from the same cup they sip from.) This is how we did it at the Denton, Texas, home group mentioned earlier.
• Voluntary abstaining: You can ask that people who know they are sick or have a cold or a cold sore abstain from the cup when it’s passed to them.

You can get O’Loughlin’s book here: The Eucharist: Origins and Contemporary Understandings. The author addresses some of the same things in his earlier book The Didache: A Window on the Earliest Christians.

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Orr and Walther on I Corinthians

I discovered that William F. Orr and James Arthur Walther in their Anchor Yale commentary on I Corinthians said much of what I have been saying about the Lord’s supper/communion. Thomas O’Loughlin’s views seem to align with many of theirs, though he doesn’t mention either of the authors in his books that I refer to in this blog post even though their commentary is from 1976.

As Orr and Walther state in the lengthy extract below:

If (as it would appear) the mistake of the Corinthians was a gentile misinterpretation of essentially Jewish language and the controversies of the later church have been founded on a faulty translation of the first-generation Christian ideas rooted in Jewish social and religious experience, then Paul’s explanation of the Lord’s Supper furnishes no justification for the complicated eucharistic theologies that were developed.

I have long thought that the belief that the bread and the wine of the Eucharist change or have to change into Christ’s body and blood—a foundational and non-negotiable doctrine of the Catholic and Orthodox Churches and their institutional priesthoods—might have been based on a gentile misunderstanding of Jewish practices and culture. In fact, questioning and then rejecting belief in the change or the need for the change was a major reason I left the Eastern Orthodox Church after three years. It was nice to find my hunch validated by these scholars.

COMMENT

No subject has been more controversial in the church than the meaning of the Lord’s Supper. Not only were there deep differences in understanding between Roman Catholic and Reformation doctrines on this subject, but dispute about the precise meaning produced lasting divisions among Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli. Arguments about the metaphysical nature of Christ’s body and universal presence have been virulent down to the present day.

Modern efforts toward formulating an ecumenical theology have made slow progress on the question of “transsubstantiation, transsignification, or virtualism.”* The source of the disputes is in the idea that Jesus meant to provide a material means for physical or metaphysical consumption of his body—that he could miraculously supply in the sacrament a homeopathic quantum which would convey the full power of a union with his being. So the sacramental elements came to be subject to a special veneration because of their numinous power. The idea has been persistent, even when Christians do not agree on the definition of the relationship between the elements and Christ, since they are united in the conviction that the connection is real and special (note, for example, the treatment by Robertson and Plummer, 248–249).

Unity in the church is likely to remain out of reach as long as there is no consensus in this matter. The taboo view of the elements demands sacred officials to handle them, and the salvation of the recipient is in jeopardy if they are improperly received. This, then, involves discipline. So what should be the very sign and seal of the unity of the church becomes a perpetual cause of its disruption.

Thus the problem in the Corinthian church regarding the Lord’s Supper is a critical one for the church in all ages. If (as it would appear) the mistake of the Corinthians was a gentile misinterpretation of essentially Jewish language and the controversies of the later church have been founded on a faulty translation of the first-generation Christian ideas rooted in Jewish social and religious experience, then Paul’s explanation of the Lord’s Supper furnishes no justification for the complicated eucharistic theologies that were developed.

Divisions existing at the Supper

Traditional interpretations of 1 Corinthians 11 have been wrong in many particulars because they have not been read with the Jewish practice of the common meal in view. Paul’s instruction begins with his chagrin, not that the Corinthians are profaning a holy rite, but that they are fragmenting a holy society. In the first four chapters of the epistle he demonstrated how seriously he regards schisms. With apparent resignation he accepts the inevitability of factions as a means of testing, but in no way does he approve the division that results from their practice in the celebration of the Lord’s Supper.

What is happening, he says, is that their assembling together is not to eat the Lord’s Supper but to eat their own. The accepted practice was to bring separate meals to the common place, but they were starting to eat before others arrived so that there was no common supper and no sharing. Since some of the members were very poor, they did not have enough to eat and were hungry after supper while the prosperous were sated, some beyond propriety. It is not the vicious quality of gluttony and drunkenness that occupies Paul’s attention at this point but the selfish indifference of each person or family to the needs and situation of the deprived and poor. There is no indication that he is concerned because they have not introduced the meal by a suitable liturgy. They have rushed into the meal upon private impulse and have drunk their own supplies of wine to the point of intoxication; and while Paul introduces the regulatory role of tradition in the next section, his introductory remonstrance has to do with the church’s indifference to the communal significance of what they are doing. Those with vigorous appetites and the means to satisfy them without the discipline of restraint imposed by the community setting should anticipate their incontinence by eating and drinking somewhat before they come to church.

To dine alone at church means to decline to join with the church in this great expression of common, Christian, social life; and it therefore manifests contempt for the whole assembly. Some members would be unable to come to the meeting place early because as slaves they could not leave their masters’ houses, and the free members who refuse to wait for them really shame them because their late arrival keeps them from full participation in the common life of the church. Paul recoils from this drastic abuse: they despise the church by making impossible a communal meal of the whole church. This is the situation which prompts him to cite the traditional origin of the supper practice.

The received tradition of the institution of the Supper

The tradition, which Paul received from the Lord, is recalled to show that the present abuses result from failing to continue the Master’s practice. The essential agreement with the Synoptic records is evidence that the apostle’s claim to dominical continuity is well founded, but it does not prejudice the interpretation of the tradition. Jesus gave thanks, then broke bread, and said, “This is my body for you.” All the church should be together to participate in the thanksgiving and to receive the bread which is broken for the whole company. Since every Jewish meal began by breaking bread, the whole meal is designated by the breaking of the bread. The thanksgiving is meant for the whole meal which followed. Thus the bread as such has no greater importance than it has as the first part of the meal to be distributed. It may be suggested initially, therefore, that identification of Christ with the food at the supper should probably not be confined to the bread if any such identification is to be made. This brings into question at the outset whether the passage can be interpreted to mean that the eating of the bread at the supper is actually a receiving of the body of Christ.

Jesus’ words, This is my body for you, have been exhaustively analyzed from earliest times. The greatest stress has been laid on the verb is with a great amount of attention also upon body. It has been disputed whether is should be interpreted “is like,” “represents,” “symbolizes,” “stands for,” “conveys,” or “means the same as”; and many theologians have insisted that it means “is identical with,” “is the same thing as,” or “has the same substance as.” It is remarkable that little attention has been given to the referent of this (Conzelmann, for example, does not discuss it). It has been almost unanimously agreed that this refers to bread; so the sentence is understood to read, “This bread is my body.” It is not surprising, therefore, that discriminate the body in vs. 29 came to refer to recognizing that the bread is not mere bread but is in some sense the presence and actual body of Christ; and this supports the liturgical and ecclesiastical regulations that developed about this understanding.

The neuter demonstrative this occurs also in the second part of the quotation: you are doing this for my remembrance. Because of the structure of the clauses this can hardly be construed by a single word or phrase of identity. It is curious, however, that it should occur twice where it is not precisely clear what the referent is in either case; so the sense of both clauses must carefully fit together. The word for do (poiein) is very common in both the Greek Old and New Testaments. In the Old Testament it translates two words (’āśāh and ’ābad) that are often used with various words for feast or meal (Gen 26:30; Exod 12:47, 48, 13:5, 23:16, 34:22; Deut 16:13; 2 Kings 23:21; Job 1:4; Dan 5:1; etc.); and in the New Testament it is used in similar contexts (Mark 6:21; Luke 14:12, 16; John 12:2; etc.). In the few instances in which the verb is used with “bread” in the Old Testament it has to do with baking or preparing. The sense here, then, may be connected with a meal or feast. The eating of meals as memorial observances was common among the Jews: Passover and Purim are examples enough. So this may be referred to the observance of the supper, and the action of the distribution of bread was the beginning of this meal as it was of common Jewish meals. The meal is participated in by all the assembled company as an appropriate recollection of Jesus Christ.

The reference of this to the eating of the meal together is grammatically possible, but the neuter gender cannot be used conversely to “prove” the reference. A common explanation for the neuter is that although this refers to bread, which is masculine, it has been assimilated to body, which is neuter. (The possibility that bread may be referred to by a neuter demonstrative because it is an object seems tenuous.) There is no clear case, however, elsewhere in Paul’s writings in which he uses touto to refer to a masculine noun outside the immediate clause; he regularly uses touto to refer to a clause, phrase, implied idea, or, of course, a neuter noun. (Two instructive uses are in Rom 13:11, where touto does refer to a masculine noun but is in close apposition, and Phil 1:22, where touto refers to an infinitive phrase and is not assimilated to the masculine noun in the predicate. On the other hand, the uses of hautē in 1 Cor 9:3 and 2 Cor 1:12 suggest assimilation; but the usages of touto are too independent to validate a comparison.) This usual general reference of touto suggests that in both instances in 11:24 it has to do with the circumstance just described, that is, the dedication of the meal, which in turn draws the disciples together into a table fellowship. This somehow is for you the body of Christ, and it is effective for his remembrance. Since the festival celebration includes action and idea, the notion is excluded that any particle of food is the body of Christ. (If Paul had wanted to convey that idea, his regular usage would have been to write, “This bread is my body”; cf. this bread in vs. 26, where reference to the body is pointedly missing.)

It is not possible to come to any helpful conclusion about the nature of the meal from the use of the word deipnos for “supper.” The word usually referred to a late afternoon meal (whence the appropriateness of the English “supper”). In the Bible it is never used to mean merely an act of eating: it refers to a meal, and its appropriateness for a festal meal is ambiguous. The more common way of speaking of a meal in the New Testament is by the expression “eat bread” (or “break bread”), metonymy for a whole meal (Matt 15:2; Mark 3:20; Luke 14:1; Acts 2:46; 2 Cor 3:8; 2 Thess 3:12; etc.).

Paul, then, is not concentrating on the thought of bread as distinct from the rest of the meal; but bread is discriminated from the cup that is to be drunk. In the Jewish meal the cup had a special significance because it was received with a thanksgiving separate from that offered with the bread that instituted the meal. The latter was thanksgiving for the whole meal; the thanksgiving over the cup, coming at the end of the meal, tied the whole together.

The corporate significance of the meal has already been introduced at 10:16 (cf. supra, pp. 250–253). The term “body” was applicable to the Passover societies that were formed for the festival; the group joining in the meal became a new kind of entity with such a close binding connection that all of the persons are members of each other (an idea which Paul develops in 12:12–26). This idea grips his mind, for he elsewhere calls the church the body of Christ (Rom 12:5; 1 Cor 12:13, 27; Eph 1:22–23, 4:4, 12, 16; Col 1:18, 2:17, 3:15). He thought of the body of Christ as present, active, and purified for his manifestation to the world after he was no longer present in the flesh. The body in which he is now present is the body of believers. Paul regularly refers to the physical, historical existence of Jesus Christ on earth by the term “flesh” (sarx; cf. Rom 1:3, 9:5; 2 Cor 5:16; Col 1:22; etc. The only possible exception is Rom 7:4, and the intent there is possibly a double meaning.) Body, then, in this passage may be understood to refer to the church, here recognized in its chief act of common worship, the Lord’s Supper.

Paul’s regular contrast to “flesh” is “blood” (1 Cor 15:50; Gal 1:16; etc.). It is significant, then, that here the contrast is between body and cup. (In this respect Paul makes a customary Greek distinction: “blood” corresponds to “flesh,” which is living tissue, whereas “body” means the entire organism.) The cup indicates the means by which believers accept the new covenant that is inaugurated by the death of Christ. Blood in this context represents Christ’s death (cf. Rom 3:25; Col 1:20; etc.; this is in keeping with the Old Testament idea in Lev 17:11, 14). So the cup refers to the sacrificial destiny of Christ, which brought about a new covenant (cf. cup-words attributed to Jesus: Matt 20:22; Mark 14:36; John 18:11), and one who drinks the cup receives the destiny made possible by the new covenant. Thus the passage indicates that the Supper of the Lord constitutes a body of believers who receive the meal as his followers and who receive the cup as indication of conscious participation in the benefits of the new covenant.

It is not difficult to see how Paul’s summary statement in vs. 26 contributed to the cultic-sacramental understanding of the bread and wine: as often as easily becomes a rite. The conditional sentences of vss. 24 and 26 are parallel, however; and if the word in 25 refers to the context of the meal, so should 26. The action for Christ’s remembrance is extended to announcing the death of the Lord until he comes, thus specifying the meaning of the cup and placing the remembrance in the ongoing worship and life of the church. The Passover setting is not to the fore at this point, but Paul is rather emphasizing how each common meal is to become a recollection and proclamation of the gospel.

Judgment from unworthy participation in the Supper

The traditional words of institution are recited as supporting evidence for Paul’s reaction against the behavior of the Corinthians at their common suppers. Verse 27, then, resumes the main discussion (So); and the eating and drinking in an unworthy manner refer to the mistreatment of persons present and not to misinterpretation in liturgical procedures. The indictment concerns injuring the body of Christ by breaking up the unity of the partnership (cf. 10:16–17); and the specific instance is the insult against the poor (11:21–22), which is in fact directed against the church. The erring persons do not accept the new covenant (vs. 25), which was brought about by the death (blood) of Christ; and thus the guilt is against the church and the Christ who died.

Accordingly, self-examination is enjoined in order to avert judgment that may be incurred by eating and drinking with an undiscriminating attitude. If the body means the people of the church celebrating the supper together, judgment comes because they do not discriminate the divine nature of this fellowship and are guilty of splitting it apart and mistreating its humbler members.

There is a parallel connection between vss. 29 and 31. There is no reason to differentiate the judgment in the two verses; so the objects of discrimination are evidently the same—the body and ourselves. Thus, the body of the Lord equals ourselves, in this context distinguished by the common participation in eating his supper. Failure to discriminate his body is the same as failure to discriminate ourselves, and this means failure to recognize that people together in the church constitute the very presence of Christ and are to be treated appropriately.

The identity of the church with the body of Christ leads Paul to attribute physical problems of the Christians to the violation of this body. This violation hampers and restricts the redemptive and healing nature of the fellowship wherein the poor are fed, the lonely are befriended, the sick are visited, the grieving are comforted, and sinners are forgiven. Such a redemptive fellowship can produce both spiritual and physical health while the breaking of the fellowship may cause the converse. So serious is this situation in Corinth that Paul posits a connection between it and the death rate there—a relationship that is difficult to interpret except in very general terms.

The judgment is of the nature of discipline, not of final condemnation. Condemnation has been removed by the death of Christ, but selfish and sinful perversion of the supper produces damaging results that may serve as corrective influence toward repentance. (Perhaps 5:5 is an extreme example.)

Summary instruction

The particular nature of the whole discussion and the emphasis upon the divisive propensity of the Corinthians is reiterated by the concluding sentences. To wait for one another is an evidence of discriminating the body, of recognizing that in the common partaking of the supper all the people are assembled as members of Christ’s body. Christians are not to allow their selfish appetites to endanger respect for the holy people who are participating in the new humanity. Other matters could await a personal visit from Paul; this matter is so urgent that it should be put in order at once.

As postscript it may be noted that failure to follow Paul’s principal concern in this passage and a false emphasis derived from misinterpretation of its details has produced in the history of the Christian church precisely the fault against which the apostle wrote to the Corinthians.

* Cf. The Common Catechism: A Book of Christian Faith (New York, 1975), in which “The Sacraments” are treated in Part Five, “Questions in Dispute between the Churches.”

William F. Orr and James Arthur Walther, I Corinthians: A New Translation, Introduction, with a Study of the Life of Paul, Notes, and Commentary, vol. 32, Anchor Yale Bible (New Haven; London: Yale University Press, 1976), 268–275.