Scripture Introduction
[Teri’s and Shelley’s stories from the chapter, “The Crisis of Loneliness,” in Anderson, Signs of Warning, Signs of Hope.] Teri and Shelley are typical 30-something adults. Teri was surrounded by friends in high school and college, but her network of friends began to unravel when she entered the work force. She always imagined herself married, but as her career developed, the number of eligible men dwindled. Even more disconcerting was the loss of female friends. Some married and moved on; others were busy with their own careers; still others seemed to distance themselves from her, maybe because her beauty was seen as a threat to their chance of getting a man. One day Teri realized she was isolated and lonely.
One of Teri’s college roommates, Shelley, had married right after college and had kids. But after two moves for her husband’s job, staying home with the kids isolated her, though she was rarely by herself. Shelley and Teri had different circumstances, but when they ate lunch together one Friday, they both realized how terribly alone they felt.
Some sociologists call them “The Three D’s”: death, divorce, and deferred marriage. These three D’s mean that about one in every four households is a single person household. And the numbers are increasing because people today marry less, marry later, and stay married for a shorter period of time.
Some people have tried to overcome feelings of loneliness through co-habitation. But this only exacerbates the problem, leading those like psychologist Dan Kiley to describe LTL, “living-together loneliness.” Without the commitments and benefits of the marriage covenant, those who live together end up more disappointed, more isolated, more hurt — more lonely.
I find it interesting that the sense of loneliness is not limited to certain groups. Roberta Hestenes coined the phrase, “crowded loneliness,” to describe the fact that we are physically closer to more people than ever before, yet further away in our relationships. Ralph Keyes (We The Lonely People) notes that Americans value, above all else, mobility, privacy, and convenience. But that triad powerfully mitigates against community and closeness. And, when we add to these relationship damaging values, the fact that we move often, we have very different work schedules, and we are more likely to chose to be entertained than to develop a friendship, we have become isolated and (maybe) unable or unwilling to pursue intimacy with people.
Before we consider how the Lord’s Supper relates to the crisis of loneliness, let me remind you of the big picture in this study. It is the conviction of many that the church is becoming obsolete and irrelevant. I agree with that assessment, though not for the common reasons. We should not conform to the entertainment culture to draw a crowd. Our value to society is in creating an alternative culture, not a copied one.
At the same time, the answer is not to return to the good old days. Whether your fantasy of the glory days comes from 5 years ago, 50 years ago, or 500 years ago, those dreams never will materialize. We must seek God anew, by devotion to the Bible, in order to be the people God would have us be and to do the work which glorifies the Father in heaven.
In order to accomplish that, we are studying the beginning of the New Testament church when God the Holy Spirit came in power, so that we might see what it is to be a dynamic church. In Acts 2.42, we find four commitments flowing out of the life of vital believers: they were devoted:
* to the apostles’ teaching (to learning and teaching the Bible);
* to fellowship (to caring for one another in the multitude of ways God describes);
* to the breaking of bread (to intense relationships together characterized by both meals and the meal);
* to the prayers (kingdom-centered worship and intercession).
We are considering the third today, the Lord’s Supper. The meals early Christians shared, culminating in a reenactment of the last meal with Jesus, offers a profound antidote to the loneliness of our day. May God use his word and the breaking of bread to begin something new in our midst. We are studying the implications of the Lord’s Supper for intimacy and loneliness from 1Corinthians 10. [Read 1Corinthians 10.14-22. Pray.]
Introduction
The Christians in the Corinthian church were, apparently, a rambunctious, even out of control, bunch. They had some folks getting drunk at the fellowship meals, they had some problems with immorality, and their worship services were filled with the babble of a multitude of strange tongues. They were (this is not meant to be offensive) a charismatic church, the “Pentecostals” of their day.
Their enthusiasm spilled over into their relationships with family and neighbors. Either because they enjoyed the parties, or because they sincerely sought evangelistic opportunities, many Corinthian Christians attended pagan worship services with friends. Now that they were converted, they knew that the idols in the Greek temples were not real — there is only one true and living God — the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ. So they reasoned: “Why give up the feasts and fun when an idol is nothing, and the food sacrificed to idols has no sinful taint?”
The Apostle Paul, however, saw a danger they overlooked. And though our situation is far different, the theology of the Lord’s Supper taught in this paragraph has profound implications for our church today. We begin with the theology then move to implications. Paul tells us that there are two very real “fellowships” which come from the Lord’s Supper: the fellowship we have with God and with each other.
1. Eating a Meal with Christ Preaches and Produces Intimate Fellowship With God (1Corinthians 10.14-16a)
The word, “participation” in verse 16 is koinonia, the same word translated “fellowship,” in Acts 2.42. It means communion, or a sharing together, or a close, mutual relationship. Paul reminds the Corinthians that when they drink the wine in memory of Jesus, there is a real, spiritual fellowship, a sharing, a communion, a participation with the death and resurrection of Christ. Because this truth is so often hidden by false teaching, let me remind you of what koinonia with the blood of Christ does not mean.
1.1. The Fellowship is Not Physical
Roman Catholic and Lutheran churches claim that the Lord’s Supper is a new sacrifice of Christ which changes the wine into physical blood. There is, however, no reason to accept such a convoluted view of this ceremony.
1) At the first Lord’s Supper, the blood of Jesus was safely inside his body. “This is my blood,” clearly was a metaphor, just as when he said, “I am the door,” and “I am the vine.”
2) There is nothing in either the language or the grammar of this passage, nor in the example of Israel or of pagan worship (context), which supports such a view.
At the same time…
1.2. The Fellowship is Not Unreal
In reaction to those false views, others make the Lord’s Supper a mere remembrance. The Corinthians did just that. They imagined nothing special in eating a meal with Jesus: “We eat with the Christians on Sunday and with the Aphroditians on Monday. It’s just a meal.”
God disagrees. There is no such thing as “just a meal.” Every meal is a sharing, a fellowship, a participation in the life of the table host. When Christians eat and drink in the name of Jesus, we proclaim our solidarity with him and God produces spiritual fellowship with the living Christ!
1.3. Christ in You, the Profession and the Supernatural Reality
One of the most important phrases in the Bible is “in Christ,” used seventy-six times in the New Testament. Those who are “in Christ” are a new creation (which we affirmed as our promise of forgiveness earlier in the worship service). All the blessings given God’s people are from being “in Christ.” You were created “in Christ” for good works. Your redemption is “in Christ”; your salvation is “in Christ”; your hope is “in Christ”; your eternal life is “in Christ”; your sanctification is “in Christ.” Everything depends on Jesus; everything depends on your being in him. In him we live and move and have our being. “As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Christ. He is the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in him, and he in them, bears much fruit, for apart from Jesus we can do nothing” (John 15.4-5).
This explains how the Lord’s Supper is a participation in the blood of Christ. A true Christian is united to Christ by faith, and at the fellowship meal, we proclaim Christ’s death as our hope and victory. If Christ is alive (and he is), and if Christ is with us when we worship in his name (and he is), and if this meal is an expression of our faith in Christ’s death in our place (which it is), then when we drink the wine representing his blood, we receive the benefits of his death by faith. Thus Jesus said in John 6, “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of God and drink his blood, you have no life in you.”
Pastor John MacArthur: “When we remember Christ’s death for us, His becoming sin for us, His taking our penalty upon Himself, His redeeming us — we participate in the most intimate and real communion with Him.”
This happens through the presence of the Holy Spirit.
Gordon Fee: Explains what Paul was saying to the Corinthians: The Lord’s Supper is a “fellowship meal where, in the presence of the Holy Spirit they were, by faith, looking back to the singular sacrifice that had been made and were thus realizing again its benefits in their lives. In this way they shared in the blood of Christ.”
The first Lord’s Supper was hosted by Jesus himself. Now that he is with the Father, he sends his Holy Spirit to be with us and among us and in us, uniting us to the living Christ.
In summary: going into someone’s home and eating dinner with them is one of the most intense relational events we experience. Similarly, when we eat with Jesus, we share in his life. And he fellowships with us, not through some strange change of wine into blood, but by God’s connecting the promise of the presence of the Holy Spirit to the practice of professing our faith in his death as our hope. Thus the cup is a participation in the blood of Christ.
2. Eating a Meal with Christ Preaches and Produces Intimate Fellowship With God’s People (1Corinthians 10.16b-22)
So far in Paul’s reasoning the Corinthians might have agreed that they participated in the blood of Christ. “But an idol is nothing,” they said. “We cannot have fellowship with the pagan gods, even if we eat their meals, because they are not real, Paul.”
Note well Paul’s answer. He agrees that the idols are nothing; but those who offer to idols believe they are real! When your neighbor worships at the pagan temple, they fellowship with demons, and you, by participation with them, share in their idolatry.
“After all,” says Paul, “the bread we break, is koinonia with the body, the other people who are at meal with you when you eat the supper with Christ. We who are many are actually one body, for we all partake of one loaf. If your pagan neighbor is worshipping a demon, and you are fellowshipping with them, then you are brought into relationship with the same demon.”
Most of us have difficulty understanding this because we have been taught to think of religion and the Lord’s Supper in purely vertical terms — me and my relationship with God. The Bible is not content with that. Christianity is not simply an individual’s relationship with God. When Jesus invites us to a meal with him, we necessarily are dining with the others he has invited.
Suppose that on Friday, you were trying to complete a business deal with another guy. You put in all the extra effort; you gave up your bonus to make the deal happen; you went out on a limb with your boss to get a discount approved on the promise of future business. Then at the last minute, the guy reveals that he was using you as leverage with your competitor — he never intended to buy from you. You lost thousands of dollars and weeks of effort, in addition to your reputation with your own boss. You are angry. Then on Saturday you and your family are invited by your neighbor for a picnic. You like your neighbor, he serves good beer and great brats, so you decide to forget your troubles and enjoy yourself. But when you show up, the guy who ruined your week was also invited by your neighbor. You will not enjoy the meal and the fellowship you would have had with your host is diminished by the company.
The horizontal relationships affect the vertical. The meal is not simply a sharing with the host, Jesus, it is a fellowship with those who attend, namely, Jesus’ friends.
3. Those Who Would Eat Rightly Must Desire Intimacy With God and His People
The alienation and loneliness we feel is not the way God created the world. These are effects of the fall, the terrible results of sin. In and of itself, that is bad news. But there is good news, for the Son of God has come to redeem the world, to restore what was lost, to reconcile you back to God and us to one another. Therefore, the church can be the place where the darkness of loneliness is constantly being banished by the light of true fellowship.
That fellowship begins with intimacy with God, and therefore many will reject it. Countless millions want a religion of dead formalism and traditional practices so they never face the living God. God is a consuming fire, and there are few places safer from him than in cold, dead churches. Every act of religion is in danger of the appearance of godliness without its power, but none more so than when we act out ceremonies like the Lord’s Supper. We take the Lord’s Supper weekly, and that is appropriate. But just as we can sit in the pew and never apply the sermons to ourselves and never truly seek God, so we can eat the bread and drink the wine and never commune with God. This is not magic, it’s not mystical, it is not mechanical. It is God’s means to give grace, but that only through faith.
Are you praying during the week? Are you opening your life before the Scriptures and to the power of the Spirit? Are you seeking to know God through study and outward ministry? A week of remoteness and detachment cannot be cured by one meal. Sharing in a meal is an additional act of intimacy with God, not a replacement for a life lived separate from him.
And the fellowship also involves intimacy with other Christians. Do you know the people with whom you eat? Do you care for them during the week? Are we practicing the “one anothers” on one another? This meal preaches that we have a unity and fellowship that overcomes loneliness. Are we laboring for that? If we long for and work for that, then God will produce more than we can imagine, when combined with the grace and promise of the Lord’s Supper! But we must act in faith on what the Lord’s Supper preaches if we are to have God’s power.
4. Conclusion
Some ideas and dreams for the way forward:
* For the New Testament church, the Lord’s Supper was a meal culminating with sharing a loaf of bread and a cup of wine. For the church in America, it feels like a rote ceremony tacked onto a lecture. I think we may be missing the significance because we eliminated the reality.
* The way we perform the ceremony seems formal and stiff. I think we could eat this bread and drink this cup in a variety of formats and forums where the reality would be preached more significantly. I’m concerned that we think the physical forms of receiving the meal are irrelevant; all that matters is the content. I do not believe that.
* We had a controversy over wine in communion that split the church and split the cups in the tray. I’m wondering what God would have us do about that. Have we resolved the issue? Do we, as a body, need to do more work there?
* The Lord’s Supper should celebrate the fellowship we have with God and his people. But for some it seems more about fear than faith, maybe even be a burden rather than a delight. I think we have work to do there.
* Most importantly for today’s topic, the Lord’s Supper says that we have relationships with one another that are better and deeper than others can imagine. Because we have been reconciled to God, we are full of love for one another. This intimacy is the solution to the loneliness so many experience. But is what we profess in the meal actually true? Or are we content to remain distant from one another, strangers in the same building, protecting ourselves from the messiness of coming too close to those who are different than we are?
You think about that.
