From Me To We: Discerning the Lord's Body

Well, we are first gonna talk about communion, and then a little bit later today, we're gonna actually partake of the Lord's Supper.

But you need to realize that when we talk about this, I'm holding up a little communion cup in my hand, and we're gonna serve those in just a minute, but communion in the Bible was actually the celebration of a love feast, that people would come together around a meal in connect groups, essentially the same thing that we have, they would gather together, they would eat together, and then as part of the celebration, they would partake of the Lord's Supper together.

And so the first passage we're gonna look at is around the issue of the Lord's Supper.

What is it? What is it all about? How do we understand it? And this is why I'm calling this message From Me to We.

Can we go back to that? Discerning the Lord's body.

Because Jesus does something in the quote here that I believe we will all need to understand.

Now, first of all, remember the context.

He's saying, when you gather together, starting in verse 17, he says, when you gather together, there's some problems that are happening.

Okay, he's talking about our gatherings.

And he's saying, when you gather, there's division.

There's strife.

Some of you are coming early, eating up all the food.

Some of you are drinking the wine and getting drunk.

You're not thinking about the body.

You're thinking about your own self, your own needs, your own issues.

Now, we live in a culture, unfortunately, that is very, very me-centered.

And there's reasons for that.

I mean, part of it is that sort of American spirit, the ingenuity, the creative dynamics that we have, and it's very focused on me.

But also, I think there's just been enough pain and difficulty where we've had to figure things out for ourselves.

And most of us have been in this place where we've become very self-dependent rather than understanding the power of interdependence.

And so what happens is we build our life, we build our structure, we build our careers, we build our families around I can take care of this, I'm gonna look out for number one, I'm gonna focus on me.

But part of the challenge that Paul is addressing in every single chapter of 1 Corinthians is that ultimately, the errors that he is correcting are all errors that flow out of being me-centered.

See, we need to move from me to we.

We need to understand that ultimately the first we is this one, the vertical we, that I am not by myself.

I need Jesus in my life and that we need to be connected at a deeper level.