1 Corinthians 11:20-22

"When you come together, it is not the Lord's supper that you eat. For in eating, each one goes ahead with his own meal. One goes hungry, another gets drunk. What! Do you not have houses to eat and drink in? Or do you despise the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing? What shall I say to you? Shall I commend you in this? No, I will not."

The Corinthians’ way of observing the Lord’s Table was so far off that they were told that they weren’t actually observing the Lord’s Table at all. They were coming to church, and they were eating, but they were not honoring the Lord. Their error was two-fold: 1) they were simply eating. They weren’t properly remembering the Lord’s death, burial, and resurrection. 2) And they were selfishly eating their own meal without any thought of what other people had to eat.

How can you possibly remember the Lord and His sacrifice with a large meal that you eat around hungry believers who have nothing? How can you keep everything to yourself, when Jesus gave everything He had for you? To act this way is to "despise the church of God." You don’t love them, you despise them. Rather than edifying, the Corinthians’ aberrant behavior was humiliating the poorer believers in the congregation. And Paul had nothing positive to say to them about what they were doing.

So how might this apply to me? After all, all the churches I’ve ever attended observe the Lord’s Table with far less than you would eat at a meal. Furthermore, when we have a large meal, everyone almost always has access to the same amount. So are we without fault here? Have we corrected all the mistakes the Corinthians were making at the Lord’s Table? I think that we have both corrected the first mistake but made the second mistakes but in a more subtle (though slightly less damaging) way.

All churches I have attended treat Communion with great respect. Sometimes entire services are devoted to the Lord’s Table, and whenever we partake of the elements, we are careful to remember the Lord’s death. So in this matter, I believe that we have corrected the Corinthians’ mistake.

But our obedience is less complete in the irradiation of our selfishness. Today if we have meals at church in America, we don’t eat in front of hungry people. But this may be partially due to the fact that our churches tend to be divided along economic lines. Many wealthy churches have no one who lacks in their congregation. I say that this is slightly less damaging because you are not humiliating those who are less privileged. In fact, if someone came into a church who lacked, he would probably be able to eat like everyone else. However, some of our churches have become so economically divided from one another, that the poor person wouldn’t even consider going to the church in the first place. This is a problem.