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LONG HAIR AND SUBMISSION #5

A COMMUNION HANGOVER

There's a powerful and spiritually CHILLING cinematic portrayal that goes back nearly a quarter of a century. Perhaps you remember it. At the very end of the film, The Godfather, Michael Corleone (cor lee OWN) stands in a beautiful New York cathedral as his infant nephew and godson is christened. And as the priest asks this mafia chief, "The Don," if he renounces sin and the wickedness of the world, the film juxtaposes scenes of all of Michael Corleone's enemies being shot to death. In one afternoon the heads of the so-called "Five Families" are executed . . . and all the while, this gangster in a three-piece suit with a silk handkerchief in his lapel pocket is standing in the house of God, nodding yes to the priest's questions about his spiritual commitment to Jesus Christ.

Someone later asked one of his crime associates, one of his caporegimes, how Corleone could do such a thing. It was all a tactic, shrugged the lieutenant. A classical move to lull his enemies into a false sense of security. He had USED the baptism in the church for COMPLETELY unholy purposes.

Well, friend, we would normally shrink away from such a gritty portrayal here on the Voice of Prophecy, but today this old Godfather story actually sheds some light on a clear Bible warning. We're just today finishing up our study of First Corinthians chapter 11, and the second half of this passage talks about Christians celebrating the Lord's Supper in an UNWORTHY manner. Even 2,000 years ago, there were people who would go into the church and take part in a HOLY ceremony, something that ought to take a man's heart and conscience very close to the foot of the cross. "Remember Me," Jesus said, "when you eat and drink." But these people would USE that sacred, precious moment for all of the wrong reasons. The Christian church in Corinth was filled with Michael Corleones whose motives were less than pure.

Let's first of all examine exactly what Paul says in his warning. Here it is in verse 27:

"Whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord."

Now, a couple of questions come immediately into mind. What would make a person unworthy to take communion? This passage by the Apostle Paul quotes, of course, from the Gospels — Matthew, Mark, and Luke — where Jesus first celebrates it with His disciples at the Last Supper. Here are 12 men, all of them pride-filled, greedy, grasping, selfish sinners . . . and even Judas is still sitting right in the middle. Jesus offers THEM communion; were THEY worthy?

And today, in most Christian denominations, we would have to say that the high bar isn't really set very high. If my church family is typical, the pastor will announce on that particular Sabbath that we practice an OPEN communion; any person of any faith or background who confesses Jesus as their Savior can take part. No one asks questions about character or unconquered sins or personal lifestyle or what denomination you belong to. The deacons and deaconesses simply pass out the bread and the wine to any person who indicates the desire to participate.

So let's ask again: what makes a person unworthy? This same chapter, First Corinthians 11, actually gives us some of those answers.

Going back to verse 17 and reading from there, we find that in Corinth, several things were happening — and Paul wasn't in a mood to praise the new Christians for any of them.

"I hear that when you come together as a church," he writes, "there are divisions among you."

"Arguing that goes on in these meetings," it says in another version. People were coming together to celebrate the Lord's Supper, and they were arriving at church in tight little clusters, in cliques . . . and then leaving the same way! Whether doctrinal differences were slicing up the pie, or just old-fashioned grudges and gossip, it's plain that the emblems of communion, the reminders of Calvary, weren't bringing the unity that was intended by Jesus.

As we continue to read this part of Paul's letter, it's plain that it was the custom for the Christian church then to hold both a Communion service and also a kind of agape feast, a full-fledged fellowship meal. First the feast and then the bread and wine. Even today it's done that way sometimes.

The Adventist commentary for verse 20 adds some interesting insights. Here they are:

"The love feast was a meal to which each member made a contribution of food that was enjoyed in common with all the other believers, to demonstrate clearly the fellowship of love in the Christian church, a fellowship that knows no caste or class distinction, that places all on the same level. This meal, followed by the Lord's Supper, showed that all shared in the provisions God makes for His people, both material and spiritual, and that there is no partiality manifested toward any."

All right, so that's the ideal. However, what was happening in real practice? We read in amazement that people were coming to this agape feast, bringing whatever food they had chosen to provide — like today's potlucks — and then sitting down and literally scarfing down whatever they wanted . . . without regard for anyone else. The first people in line were getting stuffed, those at the back weren't getting ANYTHING, some were even getting DRUNK, and the whole thing was a scandal. There was NO WAY the Lord's Supper could be properly celebrated after this kind of disgraceful debauchery.

Keep in mind, too, that some of these new Christians had just come out of very religiously PAGAN backgrounds, where FEASTING and winebibbing were par for the course. "Church" had always been an alcoholic party at the old temple. So Christianity was being infected by the unconverted practices of some of its members.

It's also implied in verse 22 that the poor in the congregation were SUPPOSED to feel welcome simply to COME to the feast and enjoy the benefits. The more well-to-do were to provide food for the struggling families. But here in Corinth that wasn't happening! Those arriving in Cadillacs were having a feast, and the welfare families were both ARRIVING hungry and going back home hungry as well.

Which, of course, takes us right back to that word DIVISIONS. How was it possible, Paul asked, that there could be such walls between groups that some would actually humiliate others? Hadn't they learned to love one another, to accept each other, to GIVE to those less fortunate? By the time he gets down to verses 21 and 22, Paul really lets them have it right between the eyes.

"Don't you have HOMES 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 praise you for this? CERTAINLY NOT!"

"I praise you NOT," he writes in big, angry letters in his King James letter, and I imagine he put a big exclamation mark at the end of it, if there was such a thing in the Greek language. In the Tyndale New Testament Commentaries for this book, Dr. Leon Morris writes:

"HOME is the place to satisfy one's hunger and thirst. To behave like the Corinthians is to despise the church which is no less than the church of God. . . . There is no place whatever for praise."

Well, let's move down a few verses and try to salvage something. If you attend church regularly, you've probably heard verses 23-26 read many times, where Paul actually quotes the words of Jesus from that Thursday evening in the Upper Room, just hours before His crucifixion. "This is My body; this is My blood. Do this in remembrance of Me." And then these vital words:

"Whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until He comes."

So to partake in Communion is, first of all, a RE-proclaiming of the crucifixion. It's a way of affirming the truth of the fact that Jesus died, and also that He died for ME. "I ACCEPT it," I say every time I receive the emblems of communion. "What Jesus did counts for me; in fact, I'd be lost without it. My entire identity is wrapped up in the body and blood of Jesus Christ, my crucified Savior."

Can you immediately see what a shameful thing it would be to accept the Lord's Supper in a careless way? To just have it be a MEAL, a time to get full? Or as a political lever, a Michael Corleone godfather tactic? Friend, that's a precarious, dangerous, fatally foolish way to be. Let's pray to God to protect us from celebrating communion in an unworthy manner. The bread and the wine are REMINDERS; they're there to take us to Calvary. It's a tragedy when they don't, when our minds are elsewhere, when we ALLOW that mental drift into careless secular-ness at that awesome moment. One of my favorite quotes is this one by Steve Brown:

"The world drinks to forget; the CHRISTIAN drinks to remember."

But then in verse 28 Paul adds this:

"A man ought to EXAMINE himself before he eats of the bread and drinks of the cup."

That's a heavy challenge, and one we probably shrug off too casually. "Examine yourself!" the Bible tells us. "Don't sit at the communion table in an unworthy manner." And back in Matthew 5:23 and 24, in Jesus' own Sermon on the Mount, we find a parallel suggestion.

"If you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, LEAVE your gift there in front of the altar. First GO and be reconciled to your brother; THEN come and offer your gift."

Would we ever get up and LEAVE the communion table, saying to ourselves, "I've got something to fix first"? Friend, maybe we should. In their book, The Body, Chuck Colson and Ellen Santilli Vaughn write:

"Before participating in Holy Communion, every believer should examine his or her heart and take whatever steps are necessary to be reconciled with fellow believers."

Friend, the Lord's Supper is intended to be the most healing of Christian institutions. Please . . . don't ever let it NOT work for you.