Week of Feb 24, 2019
Food for thought
#1
Did you ever feel excluded or exclude others from a table (e.g., grade school lunch or being invited to be with people you looked up to)? How did it make you feel?
#2
At the beginning of his first letter to the Corinthians (1:10), Paul wrote:
Now I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you be in agreement and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same purpose.
Also in Chapter 12:12–13, Paul wrote:
For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body — Jews or Greeks, slaves or free — and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.
But in today’s text (v. 19), Paul wrote,
Indeed, there have to be factions among you, for only so will it become clear who among you are genuine.
Why?
#3
We learned the context of today’s message in detail: about the practice of the Corinthian church’s communal meal and the inequitable sharing of food at the meal. With this context, read the following passages from 11:27–34.
What does it mean to eat the bread and drink the cup “in an unworthy manner”?
What does it mean to “examine ourselves” before eating the bread and drinking of the cup?
What does it mean to discern the body?
#4
What does it mean for us to use the table responsibly? How does that look like in our context and our life?
#5
How can our church — Commonwealth — use the table responsibly? What does that look like?
