The Early Church Gathering - Part 1

What was Paul actually saying about the Last Supper and the Lord's Supper?

This is the first in a three-part series. This series is somewhere between a paraphrase and a Socratic Dialogue written in Paul’s voice, which is intended to help clarify and bring to life what he was saying in 1 Corinthians 11:17-14:40. This passage focuses on the shape of the weekly gatherings that Paul expected the early churches to engage in. I’ve added in some additional dialogue to provide context and emphasis using the following three critera:

a.) How Paul understood the stewardship Jesus had given him, and his cohesive thinking and strategic implementation of that stewarship across the first century churches

b.) How 1 Corinthians (his second letter to them) is situated in Paul’s early letters which mainly address young or immature churches that had not yet grasped the gospel well

c.) The particular situation in Corinth that Paul kept having to address over and over (with four letters, of which we have letters #2 & #4), since they had not yet comprehended the gospel and shaped their community life around it, but instead were attempting to mix-in the values and practices of their culture with the patterns and principles of Jesus’ family - thinking they could create a hybrid

Understanding this context becomes even more significant when you look at what Paul was addressing in 2 Corinthians, where the church was on the verge of rejecting Paul’s apostolic authority.

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“None of you have been following the instructions that I carefully laid for you when I was there. In the first place, when you have your gatherings, I hear that many of you are still focused on yourselves, emphasizing your differences and creating divisions. And it’s not that hard to believe, since I’ve already written to you earlier about some of these same issues. (Would those of you who are genuine in your faith please stand up? Because right now it’s difficult to tell who is genuine and who is not.) When you have your gatherings each week, you’re not patterning your meal together around the tradition formed by the Lord’s meal with His disciples.

Those of you with a measure of independence and wealth arrive early, and since you are the ones providing the majority of the food, you just dive right in, eating and drinking your fill (sometimes until you are drunk). By the time everyone else arrives, there are only scraps left and the situation is awkward and uncomfortable. What are you thinking!? I know for sure that the wealthier among you have your own houses, your own food, your own wine. What’s the point of coming to the family gathering if you’re just there to satisfy your own appetites? Treating those with lower circumstances like they are unworthy of you? Humiliating them in front of everyone by highlighting their less fortunate circumstances? They already experience this sort of treatment in every other part of their lives.

I wish I were able to write and tell you that you are doing a good job, but unfortunately I have to engage in correction instead of congratulations.

Have you forgotten that Jesus had a specific job for me that was important enough for Him to break into my timeline and pluck me out of my circumstances (even though I was the least worthy person to represent Him, since I was actively engaged in persecuting His family)? But in spite of that, He gave me a specific calling and taught me Himself, giving me the unique responsibility to make known His plan for building His global family, and then commissioning me to implement that plan, and I spent significant time teaching you how to live as a family based on that plan, but you have not done what I taught you. So let me just remind you again of the bread-and-cup statement that we all use to help us remember what this weekly meal is all about.

On the night that Jesus was betrayed, He began the meal with His disciples by saying:

This bread is like my body, which is broken to make you whole

This cup is like my blood, which is spilled out to give you new life

Every time you gather and eat this meal, it is a visible proclamation of the gospel

Now let me expound on that poem for a moment. As I said before, the night that Jesus was betrayed, He began the meal with His disciples by telling them that the “eating and drinking of this meal” provided them with a visual reminder of what He was about to accomplish. That His body would be broken in order to create one new unified family, and His blood would be spilled to establish a brand new covenant, a totally new paradigm, a new way of understanding the world [because a new and lasting covenant requires a new and lasting sacrifice].

This weekly meal is meant both as a reminder of the sacrifice Jesus made and as a visible reenactment of that sacrifice to any unbelievers gathered with you, proclaiming that the new reality Jesus introduced has changed all the old rules of how the world used to work and established a new set of principles for how His family should be living together [apparently unbelievers were regularly a part of these gatherings]. Because of this new reality, you should be taking captive all the perspectives and practices of your culture (which have dominated your thinking and living up until now) and bringing all of these into obedience to Jesus, until such a time when He will return to make everything brand new, even the earth itself.

So then, if you show up at the gathering and don’t eat together as a family, you are actually mocking what Jesus did, and any unbelievers gathered with you will think that there’s no difference between what you are doing and the ritual meals and civic gatherings they encounter out in their pagan culture. This type of behavior does not present a picture of Jesus; it just pictures the brokenness of your own society. (His body was broken to make you whole and His blood spilled to create a whole new set of family relationships!) All of you need to take stock of the way you are treating one another and correct it now! When you treat one another this way week after week, aren’t you just as worthy of the Lord’s judgment as the rest of the unbelieving world? (Who we know He will judge when He returns!) You’re putting yourselves in harms way, in the zone of His judgment, which is not where His family is meant to be!

And, honestly, I think it’s even possible that some of the sickness and death that has occurred among you may be the Lord lovingly intervening to correct you now, so you aren’t subject to His eternal judgment later on. So, think that over for a minute. You’re supposed to be able to sort these things out yourselves, but no one, not even your leaders, are willing to deal with this issue [just like in chapters 5-6]. If you would treat each other like family and sort out these problems yourselves, then there wouldn’t be any need for correction from the Lord (or from me). The Lord doesn’t want to judge us alongside unbelievers. He corrects us now, so that we won’t be judged on the last day with the rest of the world, because we are not of the world. We are His living family, a signpost in the midst of the brokenness of the world around us.

So stop behaving like everyone else in your pagan cities!

Stop and remember that we are a family together. You are my brothers and sisters in Jesus’ family!

So, to summarize what I’ve said about the meal, when you gather each week, wait for one another. Those who are able to arrive early (those with means and easier life circumstances), might want to eat something before you come to the gathering, so that when you come together you can focus on assisting and serving your brothers and sisters, so that you are all reenacting Jesus sacrificial love for each other, not reenacting the brokenness of your society, which will be judged by Jesus.

The next time I’m there with you, we can sit down and get into the details of this more thoroughly.”

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The Early Church Gathering - Part 2

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Scott Canion is based out of the NYC area and is part of the METRO equipping team, a network of global leaders who are establishing churches that are families, patterning themselves after Acts.