Preached at Markham Baptist Church, February 4, 2001

"For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, 'This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.' In the same way he took the cup also, after supper, saying, 'This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.' For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be answerable 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. For this reason many of you are weak and ill, and some have died. But when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined so that we may not be condemned along with the world. So then, my brothers and sisters, when you come together to eat, wait for one another. If you are hungry, eat at home, so that when you come together, it will not be for your condemnation. &bnsp;About the other things I will give instructions when I come."
(I Corinthians 11:23-34) (NRSV)

It is our great privilege and joy to come together today around the table of our Lord. We join together with our Lord to share in the feast of bread and the cup. A feast paid for, prepared, set out, initiated and hosted by Jesus Christ our Saviour. Around this table each of us is invited to come to meet the one who says to us, "I gave up everything for you; I will go to any extent to win your love; I allowed my body to be broken and my blood to be spilt for you as the ultimate sacrifice for your sins." And so we are invited to come as the early Christians were invited to come.

So we come with a spirit of joy - for it is here that we meet Jesus Christ. We sometimes call this service a service of communion because we are coming together in union with our Lord Jesus. I love that communion hymn, "Here O my Lord I see thee face to face." For, that's exactly what we do; our Lord is present around this table with us. And as we take the broken bread, and bring the cup to our lips, we see the reflection of Jesus Christ, whose body was broken and whose blood was spilt. O the joy of communing with the one who gave his life for me!

But we also come to this table with quiet reverence. We would not rush to this table, like we would rush to an outdoor BBQ of steak and potato salad. No, we must approach with reverent awe.

This is the word of God to us today. You see there were troubles in the Corinthian Church. There were divisions. There were class divisions - between the rich and the poor. In verse 19, Paul apparently resigns himself to the fact that divisions are inevitable, as a means of testing, but he is vehemently opposed to the divisions that are caused by the Corinthian practice of the Lord's Supper. In fact, says Paul in verse 20, you aren't even eating the Lord's supper, instead you are eating your own.

What was happening was that the church in Corinth had the tradition of meeting together for a love-feast before worshipping around the Lord's Supper. This love-feast was like a huge pot luck dinner - where everyone would share what they had with the other. But there was no sharing going on in the Corinthian Church. The rich folk who were able to get to the feast early started first before the others arrived. They would eat and drink and have a great time, but by the time the poor folk arrived - many of them slaves who could not leave their workplace early - everything was eaten, and they were humiliated (verse 22). "Obviously they are slaves because they came late." There was no sharing. It caused divisions in the church. Bitterness and anger grew.

You can fill out the picture in your mind of the character and mood of this church. You can see it in your mind can't you? This family was angry with that family; that family over there wouldn't speak with this family over here. When they met in the hall, they would look to the ground, and grunt a hello to one another. This one over here would express their anger by ranting and raving, while this one over here would practice the silent treatment - it was horrible.

And Paul says in the last part of verse 22, "shall I commend you for this? Certainly not."

Then he says in verse 23, "let me remind you of the Supper that we celebrate," and he goes on to relate the word that he received directly from our Lord and Saviour. And Paul says that this is a table where we remember the cross of Christ. And where we remember that one thing, the Lord's death, until he comes. And when we remember that - for me a whole flood of feelings floods my mind - for me, it's like dominoes falling: I remember the cross of Christ; then I remember my sin that put him there; then I remember his love that he was willing to go to the cross for me; then I remember how I am forgiven; I remember how I have been put right in God's eyes; then I remember that he is coming again.

O the joy of it all!

But then Scripture says, "careful." After reminding us of the focus of the table, the passage continues in verse 27 and we read, "whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be answerable for the body and blood of the Lord." The NIV puts it like this, "whoever eats the bread and drinks the cup in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord."

Now note the wording. It doesn't say, "if you are unworthy and eat the bread and drink the cup you will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord." No, we are all unworthy. That's why we come to the table, to claim the one who alone is worthy. No, we aren't barred from this table because we are unworthy.

But, rather, "whoever eats this bread and drinks this cup in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord." They will be held answerable, they will be held accountable for the broken body and the spilt blood of the Lord. In other words, this table can be an instrument through which we joyfully celebrate the life and the love that is ours in Christ OR, if it is received in an unworthy manner, it can be an instrument of condemnation. Just turn the page and we see in verse 29 that this is what Paul says, "for all who eat and drink without discerning the body eat and drink judgement against themselves."

We could actually be sinning in the taking of the bread and the cup. This is pretty serious.

So, what is the unworthy manner? In the context of this passage, which is key to understanding this whole discussion, the unworthy manner is a spirit of division, of anger, of bitterness - being unwilling to forgive your brother or sister in Christ.

The body and blood of our Lord represent the forgiveness, reconciliation, mercy, and grace of our Lord. This Scripture is calling us to discern that, to understand that. That this is a meal of grace, celebrating the forgiveness given by Jesus Christ. And if you are sinning against the body and blood of the Lord, you are sinning against all that the body and blood stand for.

Do you see the picture then? It is of a Christian who is celebrating the forgiveness of Christ, celebrating the mercy of Christ around the table of our Lord, but in his heart he is unwilling to forgive his brother or sister in Christ - he refuses to speak to them. You harbour bitterness and anger against another person; you rejoice when they fail. Then, says our text, you are sinning against the body and blood of Christ. You are answerable to God for your attitude. It's incongruous. You can hear the question behind the text, "how can you celebrate the grace you have received from Christ while harbouring bitterness and anger and division in your heart?"

It is a staggering truth that there is a direct connection between our relationship with God and our relationship with one another. This is what Jesus says in his Sermon on the Mount, "if you forgive others when they sin against you, your heavenly father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins." (Matthew 5:14,15)

This has nothing to do with salvation. We cannot win salvation by forgiving others. But it has everything to do with the REALITY of salvation in your life and my life. How can you say you have been forgiven by God but do not forgive your brother or sister who has wronged you? If you do not forgive, maybe it's because you haven't experienced the forgiveness of God.

So our text continues in verse 28 with this exhortation, "examine yourselves, and only then eat and drink of the cup."

In other words, ask yourself, how is my heart toward my brother or sister in Christ? Do I harbour resentment? Do I still refuse to talk to that person who hurt me? Do I refuse to forgive? Do I refuse to do the hard work of saying those three little words, "I am sorry"?

In her memoir of a truly dysfunctional family, entitled "The Liar's Club", Mary Karr tells of a Texas uncle who remained married to his wife but did not speak to her for forty years after a fight over how much money she spent on sugar. One day he took out a chainsaw and sawed their house exactly in half. He nailed up planks to cover the raw sides and moved one of the halves behind a stand of scruffy pine trees on the same acre of ground. There the two, husband and wife, lived out the rest of their days in separate half-houses.

You know there are people in the church who act just like that man - they refuse to forgive and they sit on one side of the church and make sure that the person they resent sits on the other side of the church.

And the resentment just builds and people take sides, all because we refuse to say, "stop, this cannot go on. In the name of Jesus, who forgives me everything, I forgive you. Will you forgive me?"

What will happen if we don't forgive? The text continues in verse 30, from verse 29, "for all who eat and drink without discerning the body eat and drink judgement against themselves." That is, if you eat without recognizing the forgiveness you have received and the call to forgive those who have hurt you, the result will be that you will eat and drink judgement upon yourself.

Note, not THE judgement - no, we are saved from that - but judgement upon themselves.

So, what does this judgement look like? Paul continues, verse 30, "for this reason many of you are weak and ill, and some have died."

This doesn't mean physical death; you will notice that the note "Zed" in your Bible calls you to look down at the footnote at the bottom of the page, and there we read that in Greek it means, "fallen asleep." So it doesn't mean they have died physically, but spiritually. They have fallen asleep spiritually; they are at a spiritual standstill, no longer growing in their faith.

The result of not forgiving another is weakness, sickness, a spiritual stand still. So Phillip Yancey writes, "the only thing harder than forgiveness is the alternative."

This weakness, this sickness, this spiritual stand still, is discipline from God.

Now, we understand that the rain falls on the righteous and the unrighteous alike. We know that we live in a fallen world where little girls get cancer and great people of God, Joni Erickson: paralyzed, Billy Graham with Parkinson's, suffer horribly - for no reason apparent to us. But we must also understand that God will use sickness and weakness to get our attention, to discipline us.

We have to be careful, very careful, in saying to another Christian brother or sister, "you are sick because there is sin in your life." We have to be very careful.

But we also have to ask ourselves - when we are sick, when we have been weakened, when we desire to go forward in our Christian walk but seem to go no where - we have to ask ourselves, is God trying to get my attention? Is there a relationship that he is calling me to mend but I have simply refused? And because of my unwillingness to forgive another, I have grown weak, sick, and am now at a spiritual stand still.

We must examine ourselves. Don't think of the person beside you; don't think about the person behind you; don't think of the person you wish were here to hear this sermon, examine yourself.

Think, do you have this deep desire to go further in your walk with God, to go deeper, but you just can't seem to break through? Could it be that there is some hurt that you refuse to forgive? Examine yourself.

Think, are you suffering with a physical condition? Could it be that there is someone with whom you simply refuse to reconcile, and God is trying to get your attention, and is saying to you, "it's time to say I'm sorry?"

Let me stress: all sickness is not judgement from God. But it is also true that whom the Lord loves, he corrects. And if you refuse to forgive; if you refuse to be reconciled to your brother or sister in Christ, you can be sure that he will correct you.

And sometimes, sometimes, that may be through sickness and weakness. As you examine yourself, the Holy Spirit will make it plain if there is reconciliation that needs to happen in your life. If you submit to him, he will show you. He won't keep you in the dark.

A leading politician of our day recently said, "I could never be a Christian because I could never forgive." That's perceptive - because he understood that forgiveness really matters in Christianity. An awful lot of Christians have forgotten that. In all this stuff about going to church and worshipping, and fellowshipping, and doing all this wonderful vague stuff, the cutting edge is "do I forgive?" And the politician said, "I couldn't."

And of course we can't forgive the Christ way without Christ. And there is no way you can take seriously the concept of Christian forgiveness without the Christian experience. We need Jesus to forgive like Jesus.

The reality is that when the forgiveness of Christ comes home to us, and builds up within us, we have this marvelous confidence that bubbles over and spills out into our relationships, so that we are able to forgive those who hurt us, and are able to bear the brunt of the costs when we say, "forgive me."

That is why Paul is so forceful here - it is so incongruous that the people would be eating at the Lord's supper, a celebration of forgiveness, yet be so unwilling to forgive the very people who sat next to them.

How much better, Paul says, in verse 31, if we judged ourselves and examined ourselves, instead of being judged by the disciplining hand of the Lord.

To be sure, we can give thanks for the discipline of the Lord, Paul concludes in verse 32, for it keeps us from being like the world - but how much better it would be if we recognized our faults and mended our relationships before God had to get our attention.

My friends, never lose sight of the fact that this table is a table of joy; and we should come with a spirit of celebration - but come too, reverently, quietly, reflectively, willing to reconcile with those who have sinned against you, even as God has forgiven you for sinning against them.

This morning we are going to allow for a time of reflection as we come to this table. As Elaine/Howard comes to the piano, and the deacons come forward to the table, I would ask you to take the loose sheet out of your bulletin, and turn to the hymn there. Remain seated as we sing verse one which will be followed by a time of quiet reflection. Examine yourself; is there bitterness, a resentment, that you are harbouring? Is there someone God is calling you to reconcile with? Then do it.

Cleanse me, O God. Remain seated as we sing verse one.