October 04, 2010
There’s Always Next Week
During the Communion meditation the speaker used an illustration of his childhood Sunday dinners of pot roast, brown gravy, chunked potatoes and carrots. The elderly couple seated next to me took off on their own conversation about Sunday dinners. Then in the back of the auditorium two of the guys had a side bar going about who knows what. I became irritated with my fellow worshippers for their lack of focus, for being rude to the speaker and for interfering with the meditation of others. By the time the bread and the juice came down the aisle I was frustrated and mentally fighting with Satan for stealing my time with the Lord. I’m trying to find something in this situation to be thankful for and I guess it’s the fact that in our church we serve the emblems every week and not every quarter.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Gail;
-----If we did communion the way the early church did it, maybe we would not be to quick to be thankful that we do it each week. Their communion time was a meal. Nothing less than a meal would fit the description Paul makes at I Cor 11:20-22. Whether or not it be a potluck, there is a lot of planning and preparation necessary for such an event. So, maybe we can also be thankful it is not a meal that we do. We would miss a lot of football in the Fall.
-----And on that note, we can be thankful that somehow its import does not rise to the height it did in Paul’s day. For he also wrote, “For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment upon himself. That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died.” (I Cor 11:29-30) I know some people take this to mean eating and drinking without discerning Jesus’ body sacrificed upon the cross. I pick no bones with them, because in my discerning His body of believers, I recognize their need to be convinced in their own minds. (Rom 14:5b) But I am convinced in my mind that Paul speaks of discerning the body of believers, because it is the bread and the wine which we partake. So if it were Jesus’ sacrificed body we discern, then Paul would have mentioned need of discerning His spilt blood as well. Even more indicative, though, Paul’s discussion of the Corinthian’s faulty communion habits began with a chastisement for some going on with their own meals without waiting for the others - exactly the behavior not discerning the body of believers would produce.
-----The body of believers is so much of what the new life is about. On a more fundamental level than fellowship, support, and aid is the fiber of the new life - love. It is an intersubjective perspective which views all the others of the body in the same way it views yourself: needy for knowledge of the Lord, needy for peaceful emotions, for the goods of life which produce physical survival, and for the personal way we each must subjectively relate to these things. Then it allows the same for them as it grasps for itself. Paul’s central beef about some Corinthians not waiting for the others was that they pigged up all the food, not allowing enough for those who were not yet there. They were lacking this intersubjective perspective that is really just love.
-----Now, you also can be thankful for having discerned the body. Oh yes! Maybe your discernment did generate some frustration. But you did discern. And you lovingly held your peace, at least for the moment. Maybe sometime you might stumble onto a kind and loving way of calling those unfocused into sharper focus. And that would only be a further product of the discernment you already enjoy. So, even if the import of our communion today rose to the height it did in Paul’s day, it sounds like you would still be able to give thanks for remaining fit and healthy after those communion services.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
Post a Comment