The Body and Blood, Given for Y’all
GCD Newsletter – Monday, November 7, 2022
The Body and Blood, Given for Y’all
Most Sundays at our church we typically preach through books of the Bible, one passage at a time. But recently we’re going through the longest topical sermon series we’ve ever done: a 12-week series on the local church. Yesterday I preached 1 Corinthians 11:17–34, and we celebrated the Lord’s Supper.
In preparation for the sermon, I remembered a few lines from one of my favorite standup comedians. It felt too irreverent to mention, let alone show, a clip of the routine during the sermon, especially with all the gravity of the passage, but maybe I can share it here instead.
Bryan Regan has a long bit about “first-class people” and the way the culture of flying tends to reinforce a divide between social classes. We literally call the different parts of the plane “first class” and “business class.” Everyone else, which is most of us, rides in “coach.” You’ll have to see the way Regan draws out the humor of it all (the first 3:45 or so in this clip). But my favorite part is when he makes a special point to describe how when you sit at the end of the plane, you know the meal you get will be the worst leftovers. As he says, instead of a turkey sandwich or a chicken quesadilla, you get a cold fish head. Yummy, right?
Oddly enough, this relates to the passage about the Lord’s Supper. Apparently in Corinth the wealthy members of the church ate better food and feasted lavishly, even getting drunk. We might call them “first-class people.” Other members, however, had less wealth and had to eat leftovers. (Maybe cold fish heads? Corinth was a port city, after all.) Because they also took the Lord’s Supper at these meals, their eating and drinking actually preached the opposite message that God intends for his Supper to proclaim. Rather than proclaiming that the death of Christ was for any and all people, their meal proclaimed that the Lord loved rich people better than poor people. What a terrible, anti-gospel message. No wonder Paul says to them, “when you come together it is not for the better but for the worse” (1 Cor. 11:17).
I won’t try to re-preach my sermon here, but it was a sweet time of fellowship and joy in the Holy Spirit as we gathered.
I love that our Gospel-Centered Discipleship website sends good content out across the world wide web and that this content helps pastor the broader Christian community. However, we should never let supplemental pastoring supplant the place of the pastoring that can only happen in a local church among local pastors and local members.
Because his body and blood—represented in the bread and the cup—are given for all believers, then every believer should have a local family. In fact, that’s Paul’s main encouragement to that very dysfunctional church in Corinth. He tells them to wait for everyone before taking the Lord’s Supper (1 Cor. 11:33).
Perhaps today you need a little nudge to find a local church if you don’t already have one. And if you do have a local church, perhaps you need a nudge to value the corporate gathering of your congregation as much as God does.
Thanks for reading,
Benjamin Vrbicek
Managing Editor for Gospel-Centered Discipleship
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