Discerning the Body

I was recently listening to a reading of a passage in 1 Corinthians, the well-known one about the Lord’s supper. Something about the freshness of the way it was read gave these verses a dynamic energy, in a way that they often don’t – perhaps because I’d become so used to them, having read them so often before. This phrase really struck me:

… your meetings do more harm than good. (1Cor 11:17)

It’s a shocking thing to say to an ecclesia! It made me dwell on what had provoked Paul to issue such a stinging criticism. As we might expect, Paul himself goes on to address the issue with detailed expositions in the surrounding chapters. We are going to follow his train of thought, starting with these very well known verses,

For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.” For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes. (1Cor 11:23-26)

We normally read these verses as describing the Lord’s supper to be a memorial for Jesus and his crucifixion, especially as Paul says these things proclaim the Lord’s death. Without a doubt, it is appropriate for us to look back and remember Golgotha. But Paul’s words hint that we shouldn’t stop there. In our eating and drinking, he says, we proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes. That means we are not just looking backwards at the cross, but we’re looking forward as well. Jesus himself indicated the same idea,

After taking the cup, he gave thanks and said, “Take this and divide it among you. For I tell you I will not drink again from the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.” (Luke 22:17-18)

After thanking God for the cup – a profound act as we shall see – he passes it to the disciples declaring that he will wait to drink until everything is completed in the kingdom of God.

Powerful though these two observations are, neither of them is the main point Paul is intending to make in this Corinthian letter. He is neither asking his readers to look back to Golgotha, nor to look forward to the fulfillment of the kingdom. Instead, we will see that his purpose is to make the Corinthians consider the present moment. Paul wants them to look around, right then and there, to see the body of the Lord gathered in the meeting place. Here’s how he puts it:

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. (1Cor 11:28-29)

So what’s he talking about? Discerning the body of the Lord? Discerning means seeing, appreciating, perceiving. Does he mean them to discern Christ’s physical body? To concentrate on the physical torment he endured? Or perhaps perceive something about the future?

Paul himself makes the answer clear with his extensive imagery in the very next chapter.

Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. (1Cor 12:12)

Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it. (1Cor 12:27)

Any collection of disciples constitutes the body of Christ, whether we are old or young, poor or rich, female or male. Together we are the body of Christ, and each one of us is a part of it. Paul is determined that his readers take note and realize the body of the Lord was gathered right there, participating in the things of Christ.

With this observation, lots of other things in 1 Corinthians 11 fall into place in. For example,

When you come together, it is not the Lord’s Supper you eat, for when you are eating, some of you go ahead with your own private suppers. As a result, one person remains hungry and another gets drunk. (1Cor 11:20-21)

It can’t be the Lord supper, he says, because they are not sharing.¹ They are failing to notice the needs that each person has, failing to provide for one another, failing to perceive the body of the Lord.

The bread

The symbol of the bread, Paul says, is supremely a symbol of the gathered body of Christ.

Is not the bread that we break a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one loaf, we, who are many, are one body, for we all share the one loaf. (1Cor 10:16-17)

By breaking bread together, says Paul, we demonstrate that we are participating in the body of Christ. And he goes further. They are all sharing one loaf, one bread. And because they are all taking of the same bread, they are making a declaration that they are all of the same body. The one bread symbolizes the one body – one body gathered in Christ’s name.²

Nowadays, we might be sharing a meal while we are online and physically dispersed. Then there is bread here, bread there, lots of breads. But in metaphor, it’s all the same. All one. And even in Corinth they may have had multiple separate loaves (though I doubt that they were wafers).

Paul also says, the bread that we break. Why is the bread broken? What is that saying about the body? Unfortunately, the King James Version is unhelpful here. It reads,

And when he had given thanks, he brake it, and said, Take, eat: this is my body, which is broken for you: this do in remembrance of me. (1Cor 11:24 KJV)

This makes it sound like Jesus’ body is broken. The Greek text behind the KJV indeed has the word broken, but modern reconstructions of the Greek text don’t have the word, believing it to be a later addition. So most modern translations read as follows,

This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me. (1Cor 11:24 NIV)

This connects with an observation John draws out in his gospel. The soldiers had come to the crosses to break the legs of their victims, to accelerate their deaths. But Jesus had already accepted death, so there was no need to break him. John notes,

These things happened so that the scripture would be fulfilled: “Not one of his bones will be broken” (John 19:36)

The physical body of Jesus was never broken in its structure. The bones were intact, and he was never dismembered. His body was buried in its entirety. Not because that would have been necessary for the resurrection – I don't think God needs that at all – but symbolically, God was showing that Jesus remains whole. He remains one. He remains united. When we look at the body of Christ now, it remains whole. It remains one. It remains united. Or at least it should. That’s the high intention Jesus has for us as we gather together.

But if this is so, why did Jesus did break the bread? What’s going on with that? Well, there’s a fascinating little verse in Lamentations that is helpful,

The young children ask bread, and no man breaketh it unto them. (Lam 4:4 KJV)

This usage makes it clear that breaking the bread is about sharing, it’s about distributing the one bread to many people. Breaking the bread is the equivalent of spooning out stew, but you can’t spoon out bread. In order to share, you have to tear off a chunk, now tear off another. Jesus’ purpose in breaking the bread was not to symbolize that the body of Christ is severed or broken or divided in any way. Rather, he broke it to indicate that the one body is shared by the many who all participate in one loaf, one body.

Now of course there are multiple assemblies, multiple ecclesias. Even though each is fully the body of Christ, having many assemblies around the world does not mean there are lots of separate bodies of Christ. Rather, it’s like each gathering forms a low resolution image of the same body of Christ. Put many of them together, and you would have a higher resolution image of the body of Christ. More people is like more pixels. Each assembly, each ecclesia, each individual gathering is the whole body of Christ, but not in all of its richness.

The cup

Let’s broaden our focus. When we gather for communion, we take bread and wine. That’s how we commonly describe it. But maybe you’ll be as surprised as I was when someone pointed it out to me that the Bible doesn’t talk about “bread and wine.” The language the Bible uses is “bread and cup.” We’ve already seen examples of this:

For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes. (1Cor 11:26)

Everyone ought to examine themselves before they eat of the bread and drink from the cup. (1Cor 11:28)

It’s intriguing as to why this language is used, why Jesus and Paul don’t mention wine but instead talk about the cup. Why the emphasis on cup?

We get huge insight into this from Gethsemane. Just a few hours after Jesus initiates the Passover meal supper,³ he leaves Jerusalem with his disciples, goes up the Mount of Olives, enters the garden, and spends three hours in prayer. And his prayer is,

My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet not what I want but what you want. (Matt 26:39)

I find that connection really powerful. He had just given them the cup to drink and now, a couple of hours later, deep into the night, he’s praying, May this cup pass from me.

This cup metaphor had already been on Jesus’ mind. Just a week or so earlier, James and John had come to him asking for a favor, for them to be on his right and left when he comes in his kingdom glory. Jesus responds,

You don’t know what you are asking. Can you drink the cup I drink or be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with? (Mark 10:38)

Clearly, Jesus has the same metaphor in mind.⁴ Drink the cup, I drink, he says here – and his command to Peter in Gethsemane underlines the point,

Put your sword away! Shall I not drink the cup the Father has given me? (John 18:11)

Continuing in the James and John incident, Jesus then draws a parallel between drinking the cup and being baptized – the experience of being completely engulfed by something. While his usage is more general than a water baptism, it’s helpful to reflect on what was happening when you had your water baptism. You will have come to your baptism with a sense for where you wanted your life to go, sensing a calling to follow Christ. You came ready to make a commitment, declaring to Christ, I want this to be my path in life; I commit to following you. You made that commitment as a vow. It wasn’t something casual, something that you didn’t really mean or hadn’t really thought about. Even though baptism is a starting point – a birth – there had been a lot of spiritual growth leading to that point. Now you were ready to make a vow. And then, to emphasize the significance of the vow, you sealed it with the ancient practice of baptism – being buried in water and then coming forth in resurrection.

Obviously it’s all symbolic. There’s no magic that takes place at the moment of baptism.⁵ Rather, baptism is a visible act of promise, a promise about the path being taken from this moment forwards. Now that baptism promise needs to be fulfilled in the choices that will be made day by day by day. My baptism in water was a foreshadowing of the reality of daily dying, the practicality of crucifying flesh and tuning to spirit. And so I ask myself, To what extent am I continuing to fulfill my baptism by my choices?

There are parallels with marriage. You wouldn’t want the bride or groom to come to their wedding not prepared to answer whether they take the other to be their lawfully-wedded husband or wife. Um, I haven’t given it much thought, is scarcely an appropriate response! Instead, everyone comes having already deeply considered their choice. A lot of preparation leads up to that moment. And again, no magic change occurs right then. Sure, something is new: we enter a new legal state, and we made public promises and commitments we intend to fulfill throughout life. But the fulfillment of those promises is in the outworking over days, weeks, months, years. Day by day, it is appropriate to ask ourselves, To what extent am I fulfilling these promises and commitments I made?

And here, with James and John, Jesus parallels drinking the cup with baptism. Drinking the cup seems to be a choice. Can you drink the cup? Are you willing to put it to your lips and to take what it contains? Not just literally, but metaphorically too. In Gethsemane, Jesus uses the cup as a metaphor for the things that were going to happen the next day, when he was going to be shamed and abused and tortured and mocked. Not just for a moment, but for hour upon hour upon hour. He understands his father’s purpose, that submitting to the brutality of our sin will be a powerful witness that ultimately draws people in. And so he accepts the path. It’s a choice that he makes here in Gethsemane. And in many ways, the victory is won in Gethsemane. The next day, in Golgotha, he manifests that victory in actions. But it’s here the decision is made, in three hours of meditative prayer, wrestling with his flesh in the presence of his father.

And finally, after these hours of perhaps the most intense prayer humanity has ever experienced, he rises from prayer, imbued with strength from having entirely given his life over to his father. And when he rises, he’s fully ready to drink of that cup, not just in metaphor but in reality.

A few hours earlier, Jesus had said, This cup is the new covenant in my blood, as he invited them all to drink of it, to share in it. That is why Paul says,

Is not the cup of thanksgiving for which we give thanks a participation in the blood of Christ? (1Cor 10:16)

Paul isn’t just thinking about spiritual metaphor. For Paul, participating in the blood of Christ is to be willing to walk in the same path, to give our lives over to the path laid before us by the father, whatever the cost. As he says to the Colossians,

Now I rejoice in what I am suffering for you, and I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ’s afflictions, for the sake of his body, which is the church. (Col 1:24)

For Paul, his path of ministry led him to face immense suffering. Even so, when Paul compares his suffering to those of Christ, they still fall short. Of course they do. With rare exceptions perhaps, so does the suffering of any of us. And knowing how much further Christ had gone gives Paul courage to endure whatever he encounters as he sought to nurture the body of Christ.

All of this, I suggest, is in Jesus’ mind when he gives thanks for the cup at the supper. It is a powerful connotation to hold on to when I am presented with the cup, Sunday after Sunday. The little drink of wine is not a mechanism for magically healing my sins – we have forgiveness because we’re in an ongoing covenant relationship whereby our sins are not counted against us.⁶ But the cup is a week-by-week declaration that I make to reassert my willingness to do the things that the father has laid out for me. Before I drink, I ask myself, Am I willing to drink the cup of the Lord? Whatever he places in front of me?

Fruit of the vine

We noted earlier that Jesus doesn’t talk about bread and wine. However, he does briefly allude to the content of the cup during the last supper. As he passes the cup to his friends he says,

Take this and divide it among you. For I tell you I will not drink again from the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes. (Luke 22:17-18)

The fruit of the vine, he calls it. Again, it is language deeply imbued with meaning. And he explains his meaning as they leave the upper room, heading out to Gethsemane. Jesus says,

I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. (John 15:1-5)

Jesus used the vine as a symbol for his body, his spiritual body. He is the vine, the whole plant, and his followers are the parts of the plant. Whereas a human body has arms and legs and feet (as Paul expands upon at length), a plant body has branches. Some branches are large, supporting many others. Others are smaller, perhaps bearing fruit directly. And together we bear fruit by being connected to the head of the vine, the stem and rootstock. This is where the energy of the vine comes from, the sap that enlivens us.

Jesus is very clear. The fruit of the vine comes from what the branches produce, from you and me. The fruit of the vine is not something external poured on the vine. It comes from within the fruitful branches, which are fruitful so long as they are connected to the vine.

This makes the symbol of the cup even more powerful. The cup that we take is filled with the fruit of the vine. So as I take the cup, I reaffirm my baptism promise. And at its core, that promise was a commitment to be led by spirit, to manifest fruit of spirit in all the things I do day by day. Manifested in things like love, joy, peace. Like patience, kindness, generosity. Like faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. All fruit of spirit. Not done by me, but done through me. Because I am connected to the vine. And enlivened by that connection.

Ritualism

In one sense, the last supper was a ritual – it was a feast connected with Passover. But it was a ritual in the same way that Thanksgiving or Christmas dinners are rituals. In the United States, Thanksgiving is a time to draw together with family or friends. At its center is a meal. A feast really. Ideally it’s a time of great fellowship and friendship. And that’s what Passover was like. People would come together and celebrate around a meal, because they wanted to share their food together, to share it in friendship and thankful fellowship.

It’s in the middle of such a meal that Jesus interrupts the flow. He blesses bread and blesses a cup, imbuing them with particular significance, calling on them to remember him whenever they share bread or wine.

In our modern Christian assemblies, we are a long way removed from that evening in Jerusalem. Instead, we have inherited 2000 years of Christian tradition, a tradition that strips the bread and cup from its meal context and elevates it to an isolated ritual. Image we did that with another meal like Thanksgiving, say. Perhaps in the distant future people might celebrate Thanksgiving with a little pumpkin wafer and a sip of cranberry juice. What a horrifying thought! It would be hard to claim that that imagined ceremony would retain the essence of Thanksgiving. But that is exactly what our forebears have done with the last supper.

In Corinth, twenty five years after the original supper, the body of believers is still coming together for a real meal. From the verses we’ve already read, it sounds like a potluck bring-and-share meal that are popular in many of our churches today. The problem was that they didn’t share their food, so hard luck if you didn’t bring any, especially those slaves who couldn’t get away until late into the night (they were most likely meeting on Saturday evenings).⁷ Those with food and drink just went ahead and didn’t seem to notice that there was nothing left for the underprivileged. In their eating, the Corinthians may have remembered to look back to Golgotha, perhaps also looking forward to the fulfillment in the kingdom, but they had forgotten to look around, to see the body of Christ right in front of their eyes. By being blind to the needs of their sisters and brothers, they were failing to discern the Lord’s body. In eating and drinking in a manner so unlike Christ – so unworthy of Christ – they were bringing harm to themselves and each other.

In our shared potlucks today, there’s often plenty of food for everybody. But imagine that there’s not. Imagine that there’s barely enough. Now what does eating and drinking while discerning the body of the Lord look like? It looks very different. It looks like a caring space in which everyone is watching to make sure that no-one is forgotten, that everyone gets to eat and nobody leaves the evening still hungry, that it is the Lord’s supper that is being eaten.

A meal like this doesn’t need to be in the context of a formal ecclesia. It could take place anywhere. Early on, our community noted that church is not about a building, it’s about the people. That’s why we have a history of being cautious about using the word church and instead started to use the Greek work ecclesia. In its original Greek, ecclesia just means assembly or gathering. But over time, we too have lost that simple interpretation. Now, the word ecclesia has come to mean the organizational structure of the group – it includes things like the constitution of the ecclesia, the arranging board, the membership list, and so on. But that’s not how Paul uses the word. He simply means any gathering or assembly of the followers of Christ. And assemblies arose in lots of ways, perhaps as ad hoc groups in the temple courts or in people’s houses. It’s in the context of all gatherings such as these that Paul exhorts the followers of Christ to discern the body of the Lord as they get together.

That means that any kind of shared meal among disciples has the potential to be the Lord’s supper, so long as a spirit of unity and sharing is present. Remember me, Jesus says, whenever you eat and drink together. See the food and the drink as having spiritual meaning, and use the remembrance to manifest love and care for one another.

The recent explosion in online participation in our assemblies has opened up new challenges for what it looks like to have a fellowship meal together. When we are not physically present with one another, what does it mean to discern the body of the Lord? This is a space in which kind and thoughtful exploration will be valuable, but similar principles surely apply. And traditional ecclesial services are not the only option that is true to scripture. Consider, for example, an online discussion gathering in which the participants each come with a light meal in front of them, a meal that includes something bread-like and something wine-like. Perhaps the meal starts with a dedication prayer, and then discussion proceeds while eating mindfully. This is a meal of fellowship: sharing thoughts, experiences, worries, encouragements, moments of doubt, moments of faith. Gatherings like this have the potential to deepen the spiritual connections between us, where we come to learn to trust one another more and more deeply, to be willing to me more real in the things that we discuss. And to be comfortable with times of silence, knowing that it is often in the space between words that we are more open to spiritual insight.

One lesson gained from online fellowship meals like this applies to any online gathering: discerning the body may not be primarily about sharing food. It may be more about making sure that everyone is connected. Discerning the body may be making sure that I’m not hogging the conversation. Discernment may be found in taking care that people are being drawn together, that what we say is helpful, perhaps for our own healing or for building one another up. To discern the body of the Lord is to be sure we really are connecting and taking care of one another, whether physical food is involved or not. Only then, as we come together, will we know that it is the Lord’s Supper we eat.