The Most Neglected "One Another"?
Making Space in Our Life Together
Some innumerable number of sermons have been preached on the “one another” passages of the New Testament. I’ve heard a few of them. One passage among that famous list I’ve never heard much about, but it has become important to me: “So then, my brothers and sisters, when you come together to eat, wait for one another” (1 Cor 11:33).
What does it mean to wait for one another? What can it mean when our practice of the Lord’s Supper has become regimented, efficient, and, most importantly, disconnected from eating together?
Some, I suspect, will feel these evolutions are beneficial because they minimize the issues that afflicted the Corinthian churches. The challenges of class and social status matter little when bits of cracker and sips of juice are passed around on schedule. Or, at least, they are hidden. All are welcome, we say. And in many churches, it’s mostly true.
The thing about Christians eating together in the New Testament is that it’s part of a kind of life together. That life together is what makes waiting for one another possible. It makes many other “one anothers” possible, too, but this one is uniquely embedded in a practice that demands a way of life incompatible with most contemporary observances of the Eucharist. When the disparities of abundance and hunger no longer figure in the church’s remembrance of Jesus, something has gone awry.
The practice of waiting for one another demands that we seek to live life with those who have neither abundance nor freedom to be “punctual.” The Corinthian churches represented in Paul’s letters are often taken as the chief example of how first-century Christianity could be outlandishly problematic. Christians who chuckle today at those misguided brothers and sisters ought to ask themselves why the Corinthians, at least, had church members who made the command to wait for one another necessary. They may have failed to treat one another rightly, but at least they lived in communion with those who needed Paul to issue the command. The same cannot be said of most churches I’m familiar with today.
What, then, does waiting for one another require? At a basic level, it requires the decision to be together. The word “to come together” (sunerchomai) is programmatic for 1 Cor 11:17–34. It occurs twice in the verses about waiting for one another (vv. 33–34) and three more times at the beginning of the passage (vv. 17, 18, 20). Of course, read through the lens of contemporary church practice, “coming together” would mean nothing more than attending a Sunday service. But that way of life is not in view in 1 Corinthians. Rather, a life of radical togetherness is at stake.
Sunerchomai only appears twice more in the letter (14:23, 26). But a wider set of “together” words signals the meaning of “coming together” in Paul’s imagination:
sunergos (3:9) - coworker
sunagō (5:4) - gather
sunanamignumi (5:9, 11) - associate with
sunesthiō (5:11) - eat together
summerizō (9:13) - share with
sugkoinōnos (9:23) - participant
sumpaschō (12:26) - suffer together
sugchairō (12:26; 13:6) - rejoice together
sunergeō (16:16) - collaborate
Moreover, this vision of life together is the subject of the letter as a whole, identified by Paul’s opening exhortation: “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” (1:10; NRSV). “Divisions” are not, in other words, one topic among many to be addressed in 1 Corinthians but Paul’s overarching concern. They are antithetical to “the fellowship (koinōnia) of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord” into which they were called (1:9). More than merely thinking the same thing, being “united in the same mind and the same purpose” is the way of life that emerges from receiving grace, every kind of instruction (logos) and knowledge (gnosis), spiritual gifts, and strength (1:4–8). It is the “mind of Christ” (2:16), incompatible with a merely human way of life (peripateō; walking about—journeying!) characterized by jealously and strife (3:3).
“So then, my brothers and sisters, when you come together to eat, wait for one another” (11:33) The assumption that the Corinthian churches regularly eat together repeatedly appears in the letter: eating together as the most fundamental act of fellowship (5:11); eating food sacrificed to idols in the presence of others (chs. 8 and 10); ministers and missionaries sharing the food of the church (ch. 9), and, of course, the Lord’s table itself (chs. 10 and 11). Eating together is integral to the way of life Paul envisions. But why wouldn’t it be? At least some of the Corinthian congregations meet in homes (16:19). The home—a gathering around a table—is the setting in which welcome is extended, meat is served, ministers are fed, and the Lord’s Supper is shared.
Am I saying, then, that this “one another” requires a church gathered around a table (or a serving dish, a fire pit, a floor mat, or whatever)? Well, yes. But of course, I know how impractical that is for many churches, especially large ones. And I know how improbable it is for most churches to reorient the practice of the Lord’s Supper, much less the whole notion of “coming together,” around a shared meal. Still, if I’m being forthright, I believe that is what it takes to live the Christian life envisioned in 1 Corinthians. So what, if such life together is neither practical nor probable for your community?
On the one hand, to continue being frank, there is a lot about Christian faith that is neither practical nor probable. But sadly, many church leaders are unwilling to call excuses what they are. There is too much at stake simply to shrug and carry on. “For all who eat and drink without discerning the body, eat and drink judgment against themselves” (1 Cor 11:29). I wonder whether it is possible to discern the body of Christ when we detach the practice of the Eucharist from life together. How many of us drink judgment against ourselves week in and week out because our practice does not afford the opportunity to discern the body? Yes, there are many interpretations of what this verse means, and we can be quite creative in our “applications.” For my part, I see little daylight between waiting for one another and discerning the body, and I’ve not yet experienced a version of the Lord’s Supper that comes close to table communion in its fulfillment of these obligations.
Still, my remarks about a way of life together refer to more than the Eucharist, which stands at its center. And I believe the Lord’s table is more than those fleeting Sunday moments. Waiting for one another means making space—in the hours of our days, at our tables, in our hearts. So, how will you make space? Whom will you wait for? What will remembering the Lord look like at your table?