It's Not Our Supper But the Lord's

Reflections on 1 Corinthians 11:17-33

Khen Lim




The Last Supper scene from the motion picture 'Passion of the Christ' (Image source: thelordssupper.org)

At Hosanna EFC, we follow the once-monthly communion like many other Protestant churches in the world. For us, it’s the first Sunday of every new month. We are called by the Gospel into God’s kingdom to be united as one in the sharing of the Holy Communion because Christ Jesus, while instituting His Supper, spoke of not doing so with His disciples again until that day when the Kingdom of God arrives (Heb 2:11-12). 

That kingdom – the church (Col 1:13) – came on the day we call Pentecost, a Sunday (Acts 2:1-42), which fuelled the Early Christians’ decision to observe communion and gave of their means on that day (1 Cor 10:16-17).

Like anything that becomes a fixture, it isn’t difficult for an event like the Holy Communion to be mechanically suffused into a clockwork-like ritual. As they often say, ‘familiarity breeds contempt.’ And by allowing this to happen, we unwittingly or otherwise encourage apathy and neglect to seep in.

For those Sundays where the Lord’s Supper is a feature on the service programme, millions of Christians will partake of the breaking of bread (or wafer) and the drinking of wine. This is usually a fairly sombre and quiet time in church but for some people, it’s about readying their offerings (or tithes) as they anticipate the bag being passed around. Some others might use that time to ready their kids with their own activities before the pastor gets to his sermon. You might even catch a few checking their phones for SMS or Facebook dialogues.

Many of us might want to think hard about our own conscience when it comes to offering God a meaningless sense of worship in which the Lord directs us to praise Him in spiritual truth (Jn 4:23-24) but beneath the superficial veneer, our hearts and minds are completely somewhere else (Mt 15:7-9). So the question here is are we all that removed from the one who made it a habit to forsake the assembly? (Heb 10:25) Are we truly only outwardly present but inwardly, we are void and absent?

Taking this into context, it is obvious that the Apostle Paul had issues with the church of Corinth to do with an apparent abuse of the Lord’s Supper (1 Cor 11:17-33). He questioned their sincerity, saying that the way they treated communion was like indulging in the comfort of their homes to eat and drink whenever they were hungry. 

To them, Paul says, communion was no different to a comfortable home serving up run-of-the-mill meals day in and day out without batting an eyelid. People would then just dig into the meals not bothering if others might like to join in or leave a share for hungry latecomers. Verse 22 says their actions reflected a contempt for God’s church for which Christ His Son died and therefore, Paul felt unworthy of commendation.

By treating communion like an insignificant or meaningless meal, people have come to view the worship of God as merely a part of what they do regularly but minus the true sense of purpose and the very reason behind it. And because of this, God inspired Paul to use his letter to verify its institution by Christ by relating the circumstances that brought with it its importance beginning the night Jesus was betrayed and the night before He died (v.23). 

Through this, Paul brought home the reminder that the bread of the communion represents His body “which is given for you” (v.24) to take on the excruciating pain of torment and humiliation at the cross in order to save us from paying for our sins (Rom 5:6-11), which would have been impossible on our own. The cup is symbolic of ‘the new covenant between God and His people; an agreement confirmed with My blood’ (v.25). It is this covenant that does what the first couldn’t, that is, to forgive us for our sins through the blood Christ shed at His crucifixion (Heb 8:7-12).  

When we partake of the communion, we are called to remember these very things that Christ did for us by His death and by doing so, we declare the great proclamation of the Lord’s death until He returns (v.26). If we choose to trivialise its eternal significance, then we end up accepting that Christ’s sacrifice on the cross for us was nothing but a common garden affair. 

It is this mindset that will ultimately pave the way for wilful sin and deceit and it is also for this reason that God warns us not to partake of the communion ‘in an unworthy manner.’ Otherwise we risk being guilty of being part of the party that crucified His Son again (v.27).

Paul urges us to do some deep and meaningful reflection of the spiritual culture of what we are partaking. We should therefore be putting in the personal effort in focusing where God wants us to be (1 Cor 9:25-27) and that is on the cross on which Christ sacrificed His life saving all of us. Our discipline therefore is to singularly train our thoughts and not stray to banal matters.

Remember, ultimately, this is not our Supper but the Lord’s. In other words, it does not belong to us. We do not own it but we are called to remember the Lord’s Supper and discern the sacrifice of His body that is symbolised by the partaking of the bread. If we belittle the significance of His death, we become not just spiritually weak and sick but also irrelevant. It’s not a good place to be when God brings judgement of the second death upon those who ignore the spiritual purpose and reason drawn from the communion.

Paul’s reminder worked for the church of Corinth and it still works in our modern churches. The relevance cannot be underestimated since all too often, we don’t consider the seriousness in the way we do and don’t do things in church. Even more so, we fail to understand the things that God places so much importance on, no less so, the observance of significant passages of service such as the communion. And invariably these are the very observances in which negligence can result in us being condemned by God (v.32).

Let us not go that way.