Spiritual Hiccups - Discerning the Body

When I was in high school, I briefly dated a girl who attended a much more evangelical sort of church than I was used to.  They didn't speak in tongues, but they did lay on hands to heal people and expected you to feel the Spirit when you were there.  On one occasion I was there when the Lord's Supper was served, and it was not the sedate sit in your pew and have the bread and little cups passed to you affair that I knew.  You had to get up and come to the table where you were served which was novel to me at that time.  But that was not the part that really stood out.  We were instructed not to come to the table until we could feel Christ's presence, until we felt the Spirit drawing us to the table.

Well I tried.  I bowed my head, focused, and concentrated.  I waited and hoped for something to happen.  I really wanted it to happen.  But after long moments of nothing, I became more and more aware of the movement around me as others went forward.  Eventually I looked up to see that most everyone had already gone to the table.  I was 17 and not real keen on being the one lonely person still in my seat, and so I got up and received communion, feeling just a little guilty.

I thought of that experience reading Paul's words about eating and drinking the Lord's Supper "without discerning the body."  Many people, myself included at one time, hear these words a lot like I heard the pastor's instructions about not coming to the table until I felt Jesus' presence.  But I'm now pretty sure that's not what Paul was talking about.

Paul certainly claimed to have had much more vivid spiritual experiences than I ever have.  But I don't think he talking about anything happening to the bread and wine.  I don't think he talking about how Christ is or isn't present in the Supper.  He's talking about a different body of Christ, the Church.

Paul is addressing a Corinthian church that is experiencing conflict and division, and he is calling them to be one in Christ.  He will develop the image of Church as the body of Christ in great detail a few verses on, but he has already said it here.  "Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body."  Paul is calling the Corinthians, who are eating all the bread and drinking all the wine before the poorer members arrive, to wait for them and share with them.  For if they eat without discerning the body, the gathered body of Christ...

Presbyterians don't do private communion.  We can't serve communion only to the bride and groom at a wedding.  We have to serve the entire congregation.  And when we take communion to people in nursing homes, pastors are required to take an officer of the church with them, to in some small way to bring the congregation to the person. 

I once heard a story about a pastor and elder taking communion to an elderly lady who had been very active in her congregation, but who could no longer attend.  They read some scripture, prayed with the woman, and then the pastor began the familiar "words of institution" which come from this letter of Paul to the Corinthian church.  "The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took a loaf of bread..."  As they served this woman, she closed her eyes and said, "I can see Mabel and Sue sitting in the choir, and I can see the Andersons where they always sit."  And for a moment, she was back in the sanctuary, joined to those people with whom she had worshiped and learned and served for all those years.

Now that's discerning the body!

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