Jude talks about “love feasts.” I Corinthians 11 talks about where folks were getting stuffed and drunk. Of course, like a ton of other things, the Corinthians were doing it wrong, but Paul nevertheless called it “the Lord’s supper.” And what were they getting wrong? They were being selfish and overdoing it. It wasn’t the thing itself that was wrong; it was their particular practicing of it. Here’s a long quote:
20 When you come together, it is not the Lord’s supper that you eat.
21 For in eating, each one goes ahead with his own meal. One goes hungry, another gets drunk.
22 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.
23 For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread,
24 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.”
25 In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.”
26 For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.
27 Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord.
28 Let a person examine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup.
29 For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself.
30 That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died.
31 But if we judged ourselves truly, we would not be judged.
32 But when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined so that we may not be condemned along with the world.
33 So then, my brothers, when you come together to eat, wait for one another-
34 if anyone is hungry, let him eat at home-so that when you come together it will not be for judgment. About the other things I will give directions when I come.
Does it sound to you like communion was eating a bit of cracker and a shot of grape juice? And the point wasn’t that the Corinthians had the wrong idea entirely. It wasn’t like Paul said “Hey, you guys should really just be sitting in pews and eating a cracker and throwing back 1.5oz of Welch’s finest.”
Instead, he was saying they were being selfish and really just bad folks. It’s a potluck meal. Everyone’s bringing stuff, but some folks are too poor to bring a whole lot, and some folks are bringing, like, 2 KFC family meals. And they’re eating all of it. The point of the meal, of the Lord’s Supper, is to have communion with each other and thereby with Christ. If you’re ravenous before you meet with the church, you should pre-game: eat you some Lucky Charms in the a.m. so that you don’t just destroy the whole platter of fried chicken.
Know another thing that’s great about eating together? You talk. Sure, not everything you talk about is going to be “spiritual.” Football may be discussed. But you’re getting to know each other. You’re learning about who these other people are that Christ redeemed. You’re learning how to pray for them, where they’re weak, how you can help them, and how they can help you. I know that’s the kind of thing I need to know more of. And how are you going to get that if you don’t talk to people? And what’s more conducive to that than a shared meal? (And, on the negative side, what’s more visible for church discipline purposes than saying “No, you can’t eat with us”?)
Now, there are deeper and more significant insights into what the above text means for our observation of the Lord’s Supper. I personally think it means we should abandon the ritualistic grape juice and cracker thing. But that’s for another time. The main point here is that we need to eat together more, in big groups and small. And that’s because we need to know each other more.