Solemnity of Corpus Christi           Dr. Dale B. Martin,

                                                  Yale Religious Studies Department

                     June 10, 2007

 

“Whoever eats the bread and drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be liable 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 judgment against themselves.”

 

I'm a little boy in church. As many of you may know from hearing me preach before, I grew up in a very conservative church and heard my share of hellfire and brimstone sermons. In my church, we observed communion, the Lord's Supper, every Sunday. In fact, we were taught that if we did not take communion on Sunday, it was a sin unless the failure was unavoidable. The communion came right in the middle of the service, after singing and prayers, but before the sermon. We took it very seriously. It was taken usually in complete silence, with only the crackling of the crackers being broken in the metal plates or the clanking of the little shot glasses of grape juice in their metal holders as the trays first of the bread and then of the grape juice were passed around the church slowly. Taking the elements of the communion in anything but the most serious, concentrated manner invited severe condemnation by God, not to mention our much more fierce elders.

 

They repeated to us these lines from Paul's letter to the Corinthians: “Anyone who eats the body and drinks the blood unworthily—in any kind of unworthy state—will be liable for the body and blood.” Yes, that meant that if you took the elements in the wrong state, it was as if you had driven the nails into the Lord yourself, and you would be held liable for his death. “All who eat without correctly discerning the body, eat and drink their own judgment.” Yes, the materials that may function as the medicine of immortality instead become poison in your body if you are not “correctly discerning the body.”

 

So I'm a little boy in church. Not too sure what “discerning” meant, I took the words “discerning the body,” to mean “seeing the body.” I thought it meant I was supposed to see the bleeding crucified body of Jesus in my mind. I shut my eyes and concentrate. Concentrate! See the body hanging in front of you. Keep the image in your mind. But my mind wanders. I think of how pretty Vicki Barker is in her red leotards. I think of where Jimmy Godwin and I will go swimming later that afternoon. I think of the fried chicken waiting for us at home. But no! I'm not “discerning the body” any more! I forgot to “discern the body”! I'm going to hell!

 

I'm a biblical scholar for one thing because I later found out that a dose of exegesis could save your soul—or at least relieve a bit of guilt and confusion. See, I came later to believe that that's not what Paul is talking about in 1 Corinthians. “Discerning the body” doesn't here mean just screwing up your mind's eye to keep the picture of the bleeding body of Jesus before you. Let's put the passage into context.

 

The church at Corinth was divided and fighting among themselves. It seems that the church, actually a few house churches, was divided mostly into two groups, on the one side were people of a bit higher status. They had houses of their own, in some cases large enough to accommodate the meetings of the house churches. They had some access to education, perhaps even a bit of exposure to Greek philosophy. They owned slaves and could afford some leisure time and travel. On the other side were the majority of the believers, poor, uneducated, some slaves, others manual laborers or unemployed. Not surprisingly, the beliefs of people in these two groups and the ways they interpreted Christian teachings were also somewhat different, reflecting their different social positions and the ideologies that went along with higher or lower class situation and social status.

 

We can see this division in several of the issues Paul addresses in 1 Corinthians. In the first few chapters, we see that some of the Corinthians must have highly valued Greek education and rhetorical abilities. So Paul has to inform them that the gospel is not a matter of rhetorical or philosophical sophistication. In chapters 8 and 10, we see that some of the Corinthians aren't afraid of eating meat that has been sacrificed to idols; they probably had been influenced by philosophy to reject any fear of idols or demons as “superstition.” Others at Corinth , though, are still influenced by more popular, uneducated fears that eating such meat will cause the demon of the idol to invade and pollute your body. And this is all the more a problem because the only place most lower class people in a Greek city would have had a chance to eat meat, which was expensive, was in the context of Greek religious celebrations, when sacrificed meat was distributed to the city's poor. These poorer Corinthian Christians were giving up a lot when they gave up the popular practice of eating meat at a festival. Yet they did so because they believed in the existence and threat of those demons. Paul, to some extent, agrees with the higher status Christians that eating idol meat won't actually cause their pollution, but he urges those of higher status to give up that prerogative in order to accommodate themselves to the beliefs of the poor in their church.

 

To take another issue of 1 Corinthians that may surprise you, some Corinthians were speaking in tongues in church, apparently boasting about this special ability of theirs: the ability to speak in the languages of angels. Contrary to many modern assumptions, these were also probably the higher status members of the church. In non-modern societies, abilities to speak in such esoteric languages almost always correlate to other high status indicators, so I think it likely that this was one more issue in which those of higher status in the Corinthian churches were lording it over those of lower status.

 

And in an even worse case, some Christians in Corinth were taking their Christian brothers to court, suing them before Roman or Greek judges. This was probably another case when those of higher status were taking advantage of those of lower, since it was the higher class person who could expect to find preferential treatment in any court in the Roman Empire . The Corinthian church was split along class lines.

 

This division came to a head when the entire church met for the Lord's Supper. At this early date of the Christian movement, the Lord's Supper wasn't just a bit of cracker and wine. It was like a pot luck meal. People brought food and wine and had a full meal. During the course of the meal, or perhaps at its beginning or end, the words of the institution and prayers would be said, but that was just one part of the celebration. It was actually a banquet. Now, of course, those with more money could afford to bring more and better food and wine. They also could arrive earlier than those who were slaves and those who had to work until sundown, then washup, and make their way to the church service well after dark. So, as we can tell from 1 Corinthians 11, some Christians were arriving earlier, with better food and drink, and getting all the good stuff with their buddies, and the poorer Christians, arriving later, got the leftovers or nothing at all. That's why Paul says, “Wait for one another. If you are so hungry that you can't stand it, have something at home before coming to church. But wait for one another so that the communion meal can be truly a communal meal.”

 

And it is toward the close of those instructions that Paul rehearses the words of institution we read this morning, and then says, “discern the body.” Clearly, the “body” Paul is talking about is the body of Christ. But it is mainly the body of Christ made up of all the Christian brothers and sisters. “Discerning the body” means here, paying attention to the needs of other members of that body, making sure they get food and drink, and the best not the worst food and drink. Discerning the body is not simply a matter of concentrating yourself individually so that your mind is focused on the hanging body of Jesus. It means practicing the social justice and fairness and love of looking after one another, especially the weakest and the poor. “Discerning the body” means focusing on the community and justice and love.

 

This combination of communion with community is captured in our prayers from the Book of Common Prayer. In the words of institution, the priest prays, ““…that we, and all others who shall be partakers of this Holy Communion , may worthily receive the most precious Body and Blood of thy Son Jesus Christ, be filled with thy grace and heavenly benediction, and made one body with him …” (Words of Institution, Rite I, Book of Common Prayer, p. 336).

 

And think about that prayer we all pray after receiving. Many of you have it memorized. And I urge us all to commit it to memory because it is a beautiful prayer. Have you really paid carefully attention to it?

 

“Almighty and everliving God, we most heartily thank thee for that thou dost feed us, in these holy mysteries , with the spiritual food of the most precious Body and Blood of thy Son our Savior Jesus Christ ; and dost assure us thereby of thy favor and goodness towards us; and that we are very members incorporate in the mystical body of thy Son, the blessed company of all faithful people ; and are also heirs, through hope, of thy everlasting kingdom. And we humbly beseech thee, O heavenly Father, so to assist us with thy grace, that we may continue in that holy fellowship , and do all such good works as thou hast prepared for us to walk in; through Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom, with thee and the Holy Ghost, be all honor and glory, world without end. Amen.” (Prayer after Communion, Rite I, p. 339)

 

Notice how the prayer pulls together several different aspects of “body”:

 

1. The “literal” body of Jesus (Body of Jesus)

 

2. The physical food (bread and wine)

 

3. The church (members incorporate , that is, “in-bodied”; company of all faithful people)

 

4. And what is meant by “mystical”? It is to remind us that the full body is not identifiable with anything we can see or delineate. We believe the body of Christ really exists and is shown in actual social insitutions such as this church, but we cannot limit that body to any particular visible social institution. The full body is a “mystery.”

 

What is meant by “spiritual”? it is not the denial of the physical. It includes the physical food, just as the “mystical body” does not represent something separable from us as physical, embodied persons. It these words, “spiritual” and “mystical” take into themselves the physical and particular. They just show that the true body, food, and community cannot be limited to what we can ourselves see and touch.

 

5. All these wrapped up in one fellowship (that, coming toward the end of the prayer, wraps up all these above meanings: the body of Jesus, the communion with the elements, the church, the mystical body)

 

The prayer correctly reflects the theology of the Lord's Supper in 1 Corinthians. We are urged to discern, to correctly assess the value, not of just the body of Jesus, but also of the bodies of one another and the entire body of Christ. It is not either/or, but both/and. We correctly discern the body of Christ when we love and care for one another. That is the true meaning of Corpus Christi .