The Lord’s Supper: Discern the Body (1 Cor 11:17–34)

Commendation and rebuke. Paul commended them for keeping the traditions that he passed on to them regarding worship practices (1 Cor 11:2), but is subject to severe qualifications (11:17–34). Paul received word of divisions in the church during their celebration of the Lord's Supper (1 Cor 11:18); thus, he rebukes them for their disunity and offers a stern corrective of their common worship meal.

Church disunity and division. The unnamed report about their disunity at table was from either Chloe's people (1 Cor 1:11) or Stephanas, Fortunatus, and Achaicus (1 Cor 11:16:17). Division is a consistent concern of the letter (1:10–17; 3:1–4) with differences in the Lord's Supper. The meal should be the symbol and seal of oneness but some of them shamed others (1 Cor 11:21–22). Their assembly for the common meal became an occasion for them to "eat and drink judgment against themselves" (1 Cor 11:29). Paul says that "when you come together it is not for the better but for the worse" (1 Cor 11:17).

The Revised Common Lectionary has 1 Cor 11:23–26 as the Epistle reading for Holy Thursday each year but not the full passage (11:17–34). This retells the Lord's Supper without having any context. Paul uses the specific situation of the Lord's Supper tradition to address issues of inequality and conflict in the church. 2 preliminary observations.

1. Paul's reference to the Lord's Supper is not about a liturgical ritual celebrated in a church building. At the time, there were no separate buildings for Christian worship. The Lord's Supper was an actual meal eaten by the community in a private home. There's a distinction—later in church history—between "the agape" (love-feast) and "the eucharist," but Paul makes no such distinction. The sharing of the symbolic bread and cup of the Lord's Supper occurred as a part of a common meal, or the passage makes no sense. Christians who experienced the Lord's Supper only as a ritual "in church" removed from a meal setting, must keep this original setting in mind.
2. The problem addressed is not sacramental theology, but social relations within the church with their conventional social mores, requiring distinctions of rank and status to be recognized at table: the more privileged members expect to receive more and better food than others. This humiliates the community and is an abuse of the Lord's Supper, for it contradicts status divisions. Paul reminds them of the tradition of Jesus' institution of the meal to highlight Jesus' death. This memory of him as they eat together should halt their selfish behavior.

3 main parts.

1. Paul describes and deplores their behavior (11:17-22). Divisions at the Lord's Supper.
2. Remember the tradition of the institution of the Lord's Supper (11:23-26). It's the proclamation of the Lord's death.  
3. A call to discern the body. Infer the meaning of the tradition to reshape your practices of sharing the meal (11:27-34).

Divisions at the Lord's Supper (11:17–22). 1 Cor 11:17 is a deliberate counterpoint to 1 Cor 11:2. After commending them for keeping the traditions, he will now not commend them for what happens when they gather for worship. Note the 5 fold repetition of the verb synerchesthai ["to come together"] (1 Cor 11:17, 18, 20, 33, 34). This means either "to assemble" for a meeting (the obvious primary sense here in 11:17–34) or "to be united." Paul's rebuke plays off this double sense: when they come together as a church they paradoxically do not "come together" in unity and peace. Rather, their coming together makes things worse, because their schisms [schismata (1 Cor 1:10)] are clearly brought to light. Aristotle suggested that the coming together of citizens in the polis promotes the common good: "For it is possible that the many, though not individually good men, yet when they come together may be better, not individually but collectively...for where there are many, each individual, it may be argued, has some portion of virtue and wisdom, and when they have come together, just as the multitude becomes a single man with many feet and many hands and many senses, so also it becomes one personality as regards the moral and intellectual faculties." But Paul sees the opposite effect in their worship: rather than acting as one body when they meet, they are divided, and their disunity damages all.

Paul "partly" believes the report of divisions among them (1 Cor 11:18). He has emphatically scolded them for their factionalism. Here Paul's rhetorical "mock disbelief" implies that they've fallen way short of the norm expected of them, for he believes the reports (1 Cor 11:20-22). That he believes the report only "to some extent" (NRSV, NIV) is indirectly expressing his shock about what he's heard. His incredulity heightens his characterization of their conduct as outrageous. It is as though he wrote, "I can't believe it! You couldn't possibly have done what they report, could you?"

To expose authentic members of God's people and those who are not (1 Cor 11:19) is Paul's sobering observation that it's "necessary"—presumably in the divine plan—for there to be factions in the community. This foreshadows the theme of God's judgment (11:27–32), which is rooted in Jewish apocalyptic soil. Apocalyptic texts warn that times of trial will bring out the true colors of those who profess the faith (Mk 4:14–20; 13:9–13). Those who are dokimoi ["approved by God" [NIV] will stand the test, while those who are not will fall away or separate themselves from the community (1 Jn 2:19)]. Paul doesn't welcome this community split, but acknowledges its inevitability. Placing the community's divisions in an apocalyptic context emphasizes the gravity of the situation.

The problem: Those with greater resources feast on their own food and wine when the church gathers for its communal meal, while others "who have nothing" go hungry. As a result—contrary to what they may suppose—what they eat is not "the Lord's Supper," but their own private meal (1 Cor 11:20–21). This scenario seems strange in our time. It's hard to imagine how the wealthier could show such overt snubbing of the poor. But in the context of 1st-century Greco-Roman culture, they saw their actions as entirely normal. What is the concrete setting of the meal and the dinner party conventions in their cultural environment?

The Christian gatherings were held in private homes, not in large public spaces. Roman houses from this period show that the dining room (triclinium) of a typical villa could accommodate only 9 persons, who would recline at table for the meal. Other guests sit or stand in the atrium, with space for another 30-40 people. The host would, of course, be a wealthier member of the church. Therefore, the host's higher-status friends would be invited to dine in the triclinium, while lower-status members of the church (such as freedmen and slaves) would be placed in the larger space outside. So, the higher-status guests in the dining room would be served better food and wine than the other guests—like 1st-class passengers on a plane receiving much better food and service than others on the same plane. Pliny the Younger describes his dining experience as a guest of a man who boasted of his hospitality: "The best dishes were set in front of himself and a select few, and cheap scraps of food before the rest of the company. He had even put the wine into tiny little flasks, divided into three categories, not with the idea of giving his guests the opportunity of choosing, but to make it impossible for them to refuse what they were given. One lot was intended for himself and for us, another for his lesser friends (all his friends are graded), and the third for his and our freedmen."

The wealthier who host the meals continue to observe status distinctions, and while eating their own meals, there was no food for "those who have nothing" (1 Cor 11:21-22). Was it bad manners and not social inequality? "...each of you goes ahead without waiting for anybody else" (1 Cor 11:21). The Greek verb "go ahead without waiting"—has a temporal sense ("to take beforehand"), but not necessarily. A simpler translation would be "For, when you eat, each one consumes his own supper." So it's not that some are refusing to wait for others but that they're eating their own private food without sharing it.

Such practices—however "normal" in respectable Roman culture—is outrageous. He doesn't deny the more prosperous to eat and drink however they like in their own homes (1 Cor 11:22a), but he insists that the church's common meal should symbolize the unity of the community through equitable sharing of food at the meal. Their present practice demonstrates "contempt" for the church and "shames" the poor in the church (1 Cor 11:22). This powerfully indicts the high-status members who disregard their shameless behavior for the church as a whole. Paul's exasperation with the status-conscious Corinthians is forcefully expressed: "In this matter I do not commend you!" (1 Cor 11:22, 17).

The Lord's Supper as proclamation of the Lord's death (11:23–26). In response to this problem, Paul reminds them of the tradition he had taught them about Jesus' last meal with his disciples (11:23–26). The language of "receiving" and "handing on" refers to early Christian tradition (1 Cor 15:3). It wasn't in some experience of revelation (Gal 1:11–12), but that he received it "from the Lord" in that it was Jesus himself who originated the tradition of sharing the bread and cup as a sign of his death and of the new covenant. This shows clearly that Paul's original preaching and teaching included the events of Jesus' passion (1 Cor 15:3–5; Gal 3:1b). There were no written Gospels in Paul's time. So the telling of the story of Jesus' death and resurrection stood at the center of Christian proclamation from the beginning. Paul is not giving them new information, but is recalling the story that he told them about the foundational redemptive event, a story that they repeat—or should repeat—every time they gather at table.

God gave Jesus up/handed him over. "For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was handed over took a loaf of bread…." (1 Cor 11:23). Translations don't repeat the verb paradidmi ("hand on, hand over"). The 2nd instance refers to Judas's handing over of Jesus to the authorities, and is translated as "betrayed." Though this is a possible interpretation, Paul's own usage of the same verb elsewhere suggests a different sense: Jesus was "handed over" (paredoth) to death by God "for our trespasses" (Rom 4:25), and God "gave him up [paredken] for all of us" (Rom 8:32). If Paul thinks similarly here, the meaning would be, "on the night when God handed the Lord Jesus over to death for our sake, he took a loaf of bread. …" This must be heard as echoes of the Septuagint: "And the Lord gave him up [paredken] for our sins" (Isa 53:6) and "And he bore the sins of many, and on account of their iniquities he was handed over [paradoth]" (Isa 53:12b). This is the background of 1 Cor 11:23. Even if the story of Jesus' betrayal was circulating in the early Christian tradition, Paul never mentions it. Instead, he consistently interprets Jesus' death as an act of obedience to the divine will—as foreshadowed in Isaiah 53—and at the same time as God's own act for the salvation of the world.

The eucharistic tradition in 1 Cor 11:23–25 is closer to the pattern in Lk than in Mk and Mt. The differences (Paul and Luke place the cup after the meal) is of interest for scholars to reconstruct the evolution of the eucharistic liturgy, but such comparisons are unnecessary for understanding Paul's advice to them. (See schematic comparison, Fee.) Paul's point rests not on any particular "order of service" for the Lord's Supper but on his overall interpretation of its significance.

Paul's emphasis on memory in his renarration of the tradition: "do this in remembrance of me" [twice (1 Cor 11:24, 25)]. The precise interpretation of this phrase is much debated: Is the church to perform these actions to remember Jesus, or that his memory might be kept alive in the sight of God? Whatever Jesus originally meant, Paul thinks of the symbolic action as reminding the church of Jesus' death: the proclamation of Jesus' death (1 Cor 15:26) occurs in and for the church. This "remembrance" is consonant with the Passover: it's to be "a day of remembrance for you" (Exo 12:14) a day Israel recalls God's deliverance of his people from bondage. Similarly, the Lord's Supper is for the people of God to remember God's action of deliverance through Jesus' death.

"Remembrance" (anamnesis) is suggested to be the actual making-present of the Lord through representing his body and blood in the eucharistic elements. But this is far removed from Paul's concerns in 1 Cor. The Lord's Supper expresses the community's memory of his death in the interval between cross and parousia: "For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death—until he comes" (1 Cor 11:26). This is precisely the opposite of the "real presence" of the Lord (1 Cor 11:26). Thus, the meal acknowledges the absence of the Lord and mingles memory and hope, recalling his death and awaiting his coming again.

2 closely linked themes stand out:

1. the sharing of the Supper calls the community to think of Jesus' death for others, and 
2. that death is understood to initiate a new covenant (1 Cor 11:25; Jer 31:31–34).

A covenant relation with God is to belong to be bound together by responsibilities to God and to one another. This new covenant is in the sharing of the meal. But their celebration of the Supper disregards the covenant obligations and shows amnesia about Jesus' death. By showing contempt for those who have nothing, they act as though his death had not changed their relationship with one another. Paul therefore retells the story to spotlight the death of Jesus as the central meaning of the Supper. His recounting of the tradition is only in 1 Cor 11:23b-25 and 11:26 is not a part of the tradition but Paul's explanatory commentary. Thus, the meaning of the meal is the same as the fundamental message of Paul's preaching: Christ crucified (1 Cor 2:1–2).

Not the Lord's Supper. Proclaiming the Lord's death isn't just in preaching accompanying the meal. The community sharing in the broken bread and the wine is itself an act of proclamation, an enacted parable of the death of Jesus "for us" and the church's common participation in the benefits of that death. That is what they're doing in their common meals is not the Lord's Supper (1 Cor 11:20). It's not that they don't say the right words but that their enactment of the word is deficient: their self-serving actions obscure the meaning of the Supper so thoroughly that it no longer points to Christ's death.

Call to discern the body (11:27–34). From 1 Cor 11:27, Paul draws conclusions and proposes remedies. 1 Cor 11:27–28 have often been taken out of context and seriously misinterpreted. Eating the bread and drinking the cup "unworthily" (1 Cor 11:27) is misunderstood to mean that only the perfectly righteous can partake of the Lord's Supper, and the call for self-examination (1 Cor 11:28) is heard as a call for intense introspection. This is a grave misreading. The context is that the more affluent are consuming their own food and shaming the poorer members (1 Cor 11:20–22). Thus, to eat the meal unworthily means to eat it in a way that provoke divisions (1 Cor 11:18), with contemptuous disregard for the needs of others in the church. Paul's call to self-scrutiny (1 Cor 11:28) must be understood not as an invitation to probe the inner recesses of their consciences but as a straightforward call to consider how their actions at the supper affect brothers and sisters in the church, the body of Christ.

This is indeed Paul's concern: "For all who eat and drink without discerning the body eat and drink judgment against themselves" (1 Cor 11:29). "Discern the body" cannot mean "perceiving the real presence of Christ in the sacramental bread"--a complete non sequitur. It means recognizing the community of believers for what it really is: the one body of Christ. Paul has used this image for the church (1 Cor 10:16–17), and he'll develop it at greater length (12:12–31a). Those who fail to "discern the body" are those who act selfishly, focusing on their own spirituality and exercising their own social privileges while remaining heedless of those who share with them in the new covenant inaugurated by the Lord's death.

You sin against Christ. Those who eat and drink in this selfish way, are "answerable for the body and blood of the Lord" (1 Cor 11:27). What does this mean? The NEB says, "guilty of desecrating the body and blood of the Lord." But this puts the emphasis wrongly on the holiness of the eucharistic symbols per se. [Paul avoids identifying the wine directly with the blood of Christ (1 Cor 11:25).] It's not desecration of the sacred elements but rather offense against Christ himself. It's similar to 1 Cor 8:12: "When you sin against your brothers in this way …, you sin against Christ." By mistreating other members of the church, they repeat the sin that made the death of Christ necessary; they place themselves "among those who were responsible for the crucifixion, and not among those who by faith receive the fruit of it" (Barrett). They're like the lapsed Christians in Hebrews who continue to sin, who are "crucifying again the Son of God and are holding him up to contempt" (Heb. 6:6).

You're courting disaster by your division. Rather than find grace at the Lord's table, they bring God's judgment on themselves (1 Cor 11:29), which is already felt in sickness and death befalling church members (1 Cor 11:30). This is God's displeasure and his corrective discipline to make them recognize the error of their divisions, and change the church's behavior to avoid eschatological condemnation along with the unbelieving world (1 Cor 11:32). [Suffering as God's loving discipline (Heb 12:5–6; Prov 3:11–12).] If they make right discernments about their own church life—i.e. mend their divisions—they'd not be subject to the judgment of God (1 Cor 11:31). This reasoning may be disturbing to many, but Paul's judgment is clear: you brought suffering on your church by your divisiveness.

Paul may also be calling on the church as a whole to exercise disciplinary authority over those abusing the common meal. To understand this, note a series of etymologically related words for judgment that Paul uses (1 Cor 11:29, 31-32): "All who eat and drink without discerning (diakrinon) the body eat and drink judgment (krima) against themselves… . But if we discerned (diekrinomen) ourselves, we would not be judged (ekrinometha). But when we are judged (krinomenoi) by the Lord, we are disciplined so that we might not be condemned (katakrithonen) along with the world."

Paul used the verb diakrinein (to discern or judge) with disputes earlier in the letter: "can it be that there is no one among you wise enough to decide (diakrinai) between one believer and another?" (1 Cor 6:5), and again to describe the community's activity of judging and regulating prophecy in their midst (1 Cor 14:29). So 1 Cor 11:31 may not just be a summons to individual self-judgment but as a call for the community to exercise self-regulatory judgment to bring order to the Lord's Supper by disciplining those who treat it as their own private dinner party. Where the church exercises disciplinary discernment, it averts God's judgment. But where the church fails to exercise discernment, God's judgment intervenes to prevent them from falling under final condemnation.

Specific practical directions (1 Cor 11:33-34) close this discussion. There are 2 possible readings of 1 Cor 11:33 [ambiguity of the verb ekdechesthai ("to wait for" or "to receive").] Most English translations and commentaries says to wait for (ekdechesthai) one another when they assemble to eat. If too impatient or hungry to wait—the wealthier Corinthians—are told to eat at home before the meeting ["Do you not have homes to eat and drink in?" (1 Cor 11:22a)] so that they won't shame the poor by gorging themselves on their private store of rich food in front of the whole assembly, perhaps before the poor have arrived. [ekdechesthai elsewhere in the NT consistently means "wait for," including Paul's only other use of it in 1 Cor 16:11.]

In 1 Cor 11:21–22 the problem is not in the timing of the eating as in the unequal distribution of food. A 2nd interpretation is to not just wait for one another but to receive one another as guests (Rom 15:7) when they come together. Thus, Paul calls the more affluent not merely to preserve a public appearance of unity in the celebration of the Supper but to break down the barriers of social status and to receive the poorer members as guests in their homes, sharing their food with those who have none. This 2nd interpretation is a more satisfying solution to the problem (1 Cor 11:21–22), and is preferred.

Paul stops far short of calling for radical economic equality.  Eat at home (1 Cor 11:34a)—a stopgap solution until Paul can get to Corinth to straighten things out—presumes that the wealthy may continue to eat as they like in private."Within their own four walls they are to behave according to the norms of their social status, while at the Lord's Supper the norms of the congregation have absolute priority. Clearly this is a compromise." (Gerd Theissen)

"About the other things I will give instructions when I come (1 Cor 11:34b)" What are the "other things?" We'll never know. Paul had a list of matters in which he couldn't commend them (1 Cor 11:17-18). "to begin with"/"in the first place (1 Cor 1:18a) is not followed by any additional items. Perhaps he decided that the other matters were too complicated to deal with in a letter, or he deemed them less important and able to be deferred until his arrival. Alternatively, 11:34b means that he'll give further instructions about the Lord's Supper or about issues of economic sharing when he returns. But we'll never know.

REFLECTIONS. We're indebted to them messing up their celebration of the Lord's Supper. If not, Paul wouldn't have written to correct them, and we'd know nothing about the tradition and practice of the Lord's Supper. (Some NT scholars insist that the Eucharist was unknown in the Pauline churches, since he doesn't mention it elsewhere in his surviving letters!) Their trouble serves for our instruction: Paul's rebuke and advice helps us reflect theologically about what we're doing when we come together as a church around the table. 3 important themes.

1. The Lord's table must first of all express the community's unity as the new covenant people of God. Divisions and conflicts in the church are incongruous with the meaning of this common meal; indeed, disunity turns the celebration into a hollow parody of the Lord's Supper. This pertains not only to doctrinal conflict but also to divisions caused by social and economic disparity in the church. The major emphasis of Paul's pastoral response to them is in 1 Cor 11:21–22, 33: the rich must stop shaming the poor and begin sharing their food with "those who have nothing."
• This applies at the level of the local congregation, but also to the church on a larger scale: as long as some Christians go hungry, the Lord's Supper calls the prosperous to share their bread with those in need. This is a challenge for those who live in affluent societies--U.S., Europe. We tend to separate into different churches distinguished by social class, and we have made the Lord's Supper into a tidy rite disconnected from real eating and drinking. So, it's hard for economically comfortable Christians to see the connection between the Lord's table and the needs of the poor. The Eucharist is not just a private act of piety focused on receiving individual forgiveness but a coming together of the Lord's people at a common meal. This requires "discerning the body" (1 Cor 11:29): perceive the connection between ourselves and our brothers and sisters in Christ. If we discern the body rightly, we will symbolize our oneness in Christ by sharing what God has given us to eat and drink.
2. The church's memory of Jesus' death by telling the story of his death again and again at the Lord's Supper. The story Paul received and handed on highlights his self-offering: "This is my body that is for you" (1 Cor 11:24). Jesus' death wasn't an accident, or a tragic mistake of the judicial system; Jesus freely gave himself up to death for us, and the sharing of the bread and the cup signifies our acceptance of that incalculably great gift. To know Jesus rightly is to know him through the eucharistic story. To know ourselves rightly is to know ourselves as the recipients of his self-giving. How?
1. 1st, we acknowledge our desperate need: we were strangers alienated from God who could be brought into the new covenant only through this costly act of God's radical grace.
2. 2nd, we're called to live in a way that expresses such divine generosity: we too are to live sacrificially, not pursuing our own interests and pleasures but giving ourselves for others in remembrance of the one who gave himself for us. Because they failed to grasp this connection, Paul told them the story yet again: the task of all Christians is nothing more—and nothing less—than that.
3. The Lord's Supper is an occasion for us to ponder God's judgment. Some Christians are so conscious of their own guilt and unworthiness that they avoid church and the Lord's Supper, because they recognize that their lives are laid bare before God. But the Eucharist is 1st of all an offer of grace, not condemnation. In any case we cannot ultimately avoid accountability to God by staying away. Paul's point in 11:27–32 is that the Lord's Supper allows us to exercise discernment about our own lives in anticipation of God's eschatological judgment. This doesn't mean that sinless perfection is a prerequisite for eating the bread and drinking the cup: if so, no one could ever come to the table. It does mean that this supper calls us again and again to confess our sin and to open ourselves to leading a new life. In particular, this meal summons us to live—as the invitation to the table in the older Methodist communion service proclaimed—"in love and charity with [our] neighbors." When Paul speaks of eating the bread and drinking the cup "in an unworthy manner" (1 Cor 11:27), he's referring to those who ignore their poorer brothers and sisters in the church. The function of judgment language is very much like the parable of the sheep and the goats (Mt 25:31–46): it summons the church to care for "the least of these" in their midst.

God punished the church by causing illness and death among those who failed to discern the body (1 Cor 11:30). This is disturbing, due to of our discomfort with God's judgment. But this is in continuity with Israel's prophetic tradition from Amos onward, and particularly with Dt, which proclaims that curses and misfortunes will fall upon Israel if they disregard the covenant that God has made with them. Also Jesus describes the fate of the disobedient in Mt 25:46: "eternal punishment." Paul doesn't posit a one-to-one correspondence between disobedience and suffering, which wouldn't be coherent with the cross as the center of the gospel. He does, however, believe that God takes human sin seriously and sometimes acts to discipline those who defy his will. It's a message they/we need to hear. Don't we?

Reference:

1. Richard B. Hays. First Corinthians. Interpretation. A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching. 1997.
2. Gordon D. Fee. First Corinthians. The New International Commentary on the NT. 1987, 2014.
   
3. Richard B. Hays. The Moral Vision of the N.T. A Contemporary Introduction to N.T. Ethics. 1996.