Eating Together
The Franklin Federated Church family likes to eat together, not just our symbolic Communion rite, but in collations, receptions, and pot luck meals. We tend to think this is the “fun” part of being a church, but we are actually imitating the full-meal communion of the early followers of Jesus.
However, like today, some of those who assembled in Christ’s name in the city of Corinth thought they were better than others, more privileged, more entitled to power, prestige, and the good things in life. In these excerpts from his first extant Letter to the Corinthians, the Apostle Paul wrote to chastize members of the group for using sacred meals as a way of showing their status instead of modeling the community of loving equals he wanted them to be. These are excerpts from that letter:
Regarding this next item, I’m not at all pleased. I’m getting the picture that when you meet together, it brings out your worst side instead of your best! First, I get this report on your divisiveness, competing with and criticizing each other . . . And then I find that you bring your divisions to worship – you come together, and instead of eating the Lord’s Supper, you bring a lot of food from the outside and make pigs of yourselves. Some are left out, and go home hungry. Others have to be carried out, too drunk to walk. I can’t believe it! Don’t you have your own homes to eat and drink in? Why would you stoop to desecrating God’s church. Why would you actually shame God’s poor? I never would have believed you would stoop to this . . . If you’re so hungry that you can’t wait to be served, go home and get a sandwich. But by no means risk turning this Meal into an eating and drinking binge or a family squabble. It is a spiritual meal – a love feast. (1 Corinthians 11 in THE MESSAGE)
The old labels we once used to identify ourselves – labels like Jew or Greek, slave or free – are no longer useful. We need something larger, more comprehensive. I want you to think how all this makes you more significant, not less . . . but I also want you to think about how this keeps your significance from being blown up into self-importance. For no matter how significant you are, it’s only because of what you are part of . . . and yet some of you keep competing for so-called “important” parts. (1 Corinthians 12 in THE MESSAGE)
May we take to heart Paul’s warning not to think we are better than anyone else or to treat the poor or disadvantaged differently than we ourselves want to be treated.
Lyn Pickhover, Trying to Follow