"Discerning the Body" - April 17, 2025 (Maundy Thursday)

 

I Corinthians 11:23-29
Maundy Thursday
April 17, 2025

 

“For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, ‘This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’ In the same way he took the cup also, after supper, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.’ For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.

Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be answerable for the body and blood of the Lord. Examine yourselves, and only then eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For all who eat and drink without discerning the body, eat and drink judgement against themselves.”

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            I don’t know whether you’ve ever read in the First Letter of Wesley to the Church in Manavon where it says,

“Wherever two or three are gathered in the Lord’s name, there will be a casserole in their midst.”

Seriously, if you look back at the New Testament, Jesus’ followers have from the very beginning made a point of eating together, and seeing the spiritual side of that.  If you look at the accounts of Jesus’ resurrection appearances you’ll see the pattern there.  He met two disciples on the road to Emmaus who didn’t recognize him all day long until they sat down to supper together, and Jesus took bread, blessed it and broke it, and suddenly they saw him for who he is – and then he vanished.  A few days later, Peter and some others were out fishing when around sun-up they spotted a curiously familiar figure on the beach who had built a fire and, it turned out, was cooking them breakfast.

            There are accounts in Acts and in Galatians about how the early and suddenly expanding fellowship of believers struggled with questions about food.  They were sharing meals in Jerusalem, but so many people were coming to them that the apostles who were waiting on them didn’t have time to share the word about Jesus, so they appointed servers (the Greek word they used was ¶iakvνοi - deacons) to free them up to do that.  Then they got into discussions about whether the gentiles who were coming had to keep kosher and who could sit with whom.  “Discussions” is a polite description.

            These meals, however, came to include a focused moment when someone would retell the story of Jesus’ last meal before his crucifixion, and they would use either whatever bread and wine were left at the end of the meal or maybe some that had been set aside at the start, as an illustration. It was what Jesus himself had done, breaking bread apart and saying, “Look!  This is me,” and pouring out some wine, saying, “and this is my blood,” to show what would happen to him a few long hours from that moment.  When Paul wrote to the Corinthians he told them that this was something they all did together that was central to everything. 

“For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.” [I Corinthians 11:26]

It was – and is – an action that makes sure we do not forget.

            But it’s more than remembrance or re-enactment. It is, as it was in Emmaus, and on the beach beside the Sea of Galilee, a recognition of Jesus himself and his ongoing presence beyond the Last Supper and Gethsemane and Calvary and the borrowed grave. 

            As with so many points of life together, it’s something that we learned by getting it wrong.  The Corinthians were the ones whose confusion is recorded in the Bible, but there were probably others.  What happened there was that people who could get there early were eating all the bread and drinking all the wine, leaving nothing for the people who came later (probably the poor who had to work longer days).  That church was known for splitting up into factions or cliques, and here was another division opening up – and in an honestly embarrassing way.  Paul scolded them:

“For, to begin with, when you come together as a church, I hear that there are divisions among you; and to some extent I believe it. Indeed, there have to be factions among you, for only so will it become clear who among you are genuine. When you come together, it is not really to eat the Lord’s supper. For when the time comes to eat, each of you goes ahead with your own supper, and one goes hungry and another becomes drunk. What! Do you not have homes to eat and drink in? Or do you show contempt for the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing?”  [I Corinthians 11:18-22]

He would go on to compare their behavior with what had been passed on to him about that Last Supper, where Jesus prepared himself and his followers for his death, and to observe,

“Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be answerable for the body and blood of the Lord. Examine yourselves, and only then eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For all who eat and drink without discerning the body, eat and drink judgement against themselves.” [I Corinthians 11:27-29]

Discern the Body of Christ, which is more than the loaf and the cup, but is also the people who share that food with one another.  That includes rich and poor alike and goes across all the other divisions the Corinthians knew or that we have come up with since then.  “Give me this day my daily bread”?  No. 

“Give us this day our daily bread.”

Discern the body: look at one another and see Jesus.

            More than that, discern the body, when you look beyond the people gathered at the table, because Jesus taught us to look beyond our circle so that in welcoming the stranger we would welcome him and in sharing our everyday food we would share it with him; in visiting the imprisoned and the sick we would visit him. We pray,

“Pour out your Spirit upon us gathered here,

and on these gifts. 

Make them be for us the body and blood of Christ

that we may be for the world the body of Christ,

redeemed by his blood. 

By your Spirit make us one with Christ,

one with each other, and one in service to all the world,

until Christ comes in final victory,

and we feast at his heavenly banquet.”

 Doing that, by his grace in us and among us and through us, we show forth both his death and his life until his coming.

            So now, discerning him in each person gathered here, as we come to remember and to proclaim, let us stand up and reach out to one another in reconciliation and peace as a witness to the world for whose life Jesus’ life has been given.