When I taught on the theme of the Letters of Paul earlier this month, I used 1 Corinthians 11:17-34 as a case study in the thought of Paul. As I had spent much time reading through the Pauline corpus in my preparation, I was drawn to a threefold emphasis on Paul’s personal call (or his relationship to the Lord Jesus Christ); Paul’s eschatological focus (or his focus on “last things”, which for Paul meant that the resurrection of Jesus was the fulfillment and “first fruits” of a final age, the embodiment in the present of the world still to come); and Paul’s ecclesiological focus (the centrality of the ekklesia, the church, to Paul’s thought, and also to his personal call and his eschatology). The importance of his call, his belief that the old world was ending and the new world had come in the resurrected Christ, and his conviction that the church was the sign of the resurrection and that new world, seem to be the theological bases on which Paul formulated specific and contextually-shaped guidance on the everyday ethical issues facing his church communities. 1 Corinthians 11:17-34 is one textual illustration, among many potential options within his writings, of Paul’s theologically-based moral reasoning.
The problem with which 1 Corinthians 11:17-34 deals is “divisions among [the Corinthian church]” (v. 18), specifically manifested in the church’s common meal. Paul summarizes the problem for the Corinthians as he has heard about it:
“For when the time comes to eat, each of you goes ahead with your own supper, and one goes hungry and another becomes drunk” (v. 21).
In contrast to what the church’s meal was purported to be, Paul, in light of the evidence, asserts that the Corinthians are indeed not eating “the Lord’s Supper” (v. 20). Paul then proceeds to remind the Corinthian church what the supper of the Lord did entail, and assumes that the contrast between it and the Corinthians’ practice is obvious.
But is it obvious to us? How is the remembrance of Jesus’ eating with his disciples on the night he was betrayed (v. 23) an antidote to the church’s practice of eating together? What is it about the tradition of Jesus’ last supper that judged the Corinthians’ habits at supper?
Perhaps Paul’s intended contrast can be found in his use of the Greek verb lambano , to take, as he applies it to the supper etiquette of both the Lord Jesus and the Corinthian church. Whereas “each” of the Corinthian believers or “each” of the Corinthian church factions, according to Paul, “goes ahead [prolambanei, literally takes before] with your own supper”, “the Lord Jesus . . . took [elaben] a loaf of bread and gave it to others. Whereas the Corinthian Christians took and consumed the common food before everyone had had a chance to eat, Jesus—the honored head of the household—took the bread of the meal, gave thanks, broke it, and said, “This is my body that is for you” (v. 24). Whereas the Corinthians take their meal before everyone has been served, Jesus gives that which is his to others before serving himself.
It is this Jesus way of taking supper that Paul commends as the antidote to the Corinthians’ hunger and drunkenness, and which forms Paul’s specific counsel to the Corinthian church: not take before (v. 21) but “wait for one another” (v. 33).
As Paul moves from the problem (“taking before”) to the solution (“wait for one another”), his call, his eschatology, and his ecclesiology are clearly in view. In reciting the Jesus tradition of supper for the Corinthians, Paul claims it as his own. “For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you” (v. 23). That which Paul saw fit to hand on to others he first had to welcome in his own life. Paul’s personal connection to Jesus, his experience of being embraced by his Lord, is the strength by which and for which he hands on the way of Jesus to others.
Moreover, Paul’s purpose in handing on the way of Jesus to others is eschatological; by eating the bread and drinking the cup in the manner of Jesus the church “proclaims the Lord’s death until he comes” (v. 26). Though the resurrection of Jesus is not here explicit (but see chapter 15!), it is here for Paul the invisible pivot between the Lord’s death and his coming again. Because he is raised, the Jesus who died will come again.
Finally, it is up to the church, the ekklesia, to proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes, that is, to embody now within its common life—indeed in the ordinary but essential practices of eating and drinking—the just and equal sharing of the age to come. In the time between the passing of the old and the arrival of the new, the community of God’s people is the frail but precious witness to the hope of a new creation, the cause for which Paul urges greater faithfulness to the one in whom all things hold together.
-Joe
