If your family is anything like mine, you may sit around
that dinner table and tell stories… stories about the day, what’s coming up, or
even things that happened long ago.
Sometimes these stories get stretched just a little bit, and that adds
to the fun around the table.
The story we tell at the Lord’s Table is the gospel. God’s love for mankind expressed through
Jesus Christ, pure and simple. We
reenact the story every time we eat the meal.
Every once-in-a-while a couple myths get woven into the fabric of the
story. I’ve heard them, and perhaps you
have too. I’ll ask for your patience and
deep honesty as I share a couple that I often hear in the next few issues of
the New Spirit and on my blog (http://www.erictunes.blogspot.com):
Myth #1: It’s my personal time with Jesus.
This is derived from 1 Corinthians 11 when Paul gives the
instruction to “examine himself.” From
that phrase many have adopted a doctrine and practice of introspective
meditation at the Table, but have failed to account for the occasion and
purpose of Paul’s writing.
The Corinthian Christians were gathering for their love
feast, as was the custom in earlier congregations, and they included a
celebration of bread and wine in keeping with Jesus’ institution of the meal. It just so happened that the wealthy were
getting stuffed and drunk, and the poorer members of the congregation were
going away hungry. Thus the “unworthy
manner” to which Paul refers. That’s the
context.
Paul’s teaching to them was to examine their motives in view
of community, to “discern the body” and consider the overall congregation
first. To make his point, Paul didn’t prescribe
individual consumption of the bread and cup, but rather the larger meal when he
instructed them to go home and eat. The
bread and cup would remain as a corporate activity of the congregation.
It’s not that personal time with Jesus is a bad thing, or
that participating in the Table privately should be avoided. Indeed Christ died for each one of us. We miss, though, the mystery of the meal’s
greater purpose when we relegate it exclusively as an individual
experience. The early Church didn’t
practice it that way. They shared with
one another, cared for everyone’s needs, and experienced the richest of
belonging in the family of God as a direct correlation to their practice of
“breaking bread.”
It’s no accident that we often refer to the Table as
“communion” – we have union in common.
Jesus’ prayer in the Upper Room was that we would be one with one
another (John 17). The teaching remains,
discern the Body. Give thought to those
around you and understand that because you participate in the Body, and I participate
in the Body, that we are inextricably connected. How can that mindset change the way we live,
move, and grow as a congregation – as the Body?
I’ve written a brief survey based on the biblical concepts
of the Table. If you haven’t already
done so, check it out: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/radecki_table_survey
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