28 March, 2024

Recognizing the Body

by | 25 August, 2015 | 0 comments

By Mark A. Taylor

I first prepared the following as a Communion meditation for the church where I worship. It occurs to me that it considers a biblical challenge that Christians everywhere do well to remember.

We don”t read far in Paul”s first letter to the Corinthians till we see this was a church with problems.

“I appeal to you brothers,” he wrote, “in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another in what you say and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be perfectly united in mind and thought” (1 Corinthians 1:10).

Aug25_MT_JNBut unity seems like an elusive goal for this group sparring over conflicting allegiances to different leaders in the church. “I follow Paul,” some said. “I follow Apollos,” or “I follow Cephas” proclaimed others. And then there were those who elevated themselves above the rest by smugly claiming, “I follow Christ” (v. 12).

All of this dismayed and disappointed Paul. “You are still worldly,” he told the Corinthians (3:3). “For since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly?”

Not surprisingly, the problem showed up in their weekly worship, too. It seems the Corinthians were combining worship with a fellowship meal, but here the evidence of their self-centeredness came clear again.

“I hear that when you come together as a church, there are divisions among you,” Paul told them (11:18). “When you come together . . . some of you go ahead with your own private suppers,” he wrote. “One person remains hungry and another gets drunk. . . . Do you despise the church of God by humiliating those who have nothing?”Â (vv. 20-22).

Then follows a passage most familiar to those who still today observe the Lord”s Supper week after week. Paul reminds the Corinthians of the meal hosted by Jesus, in which he infused the simple elements of that dinner with spiritual significance. Jesus broke the loaf of unleavened bread and said, “This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” He poured the fruit of the vine and explained, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me” (vv. 23-26).

And then, in the face of the quarreling and selfishness and shallowness and division within this troubled Corinthian church, Paul issued a warning that any of us would do well to heed today:

So then, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord. Everyone ought to examine themselves before they eat of the bread and drink from the cup.  For those who eat and drink without discerning the body of Christ eat and drink judgment on themselves (vv. 27-29).

How do we “recognize” the body of the Lord? Of course, we think of his broken body on the cross. But throughout 1 Corinthians, Paul speaks of the church as the body of Christ. We Christians are members of his body, each of us with a unique function to perform, each of us a part of all the other members of the body.

If we do not recognize the unity that God has created in the church, if we do not embrace and celebrate the fact that all of us are equally vital to the health of this body, if we insist on perpetuating division in the body before and after we come to this table, we are partaking in an unworthy manner.

Kim Wright wrote about unity in The Lookout magazine. “Sometimes,” she said, “we need to take a step back, take a deep breath, and remember our common ground is in the Lord.”

There”s no better time or tactic for doing that than when we pause to thank Jesus for his sacrifice and ponder our place in the work of his body.

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