Sacrament - 1 Corinthians 11:16-34

When I first started reading verse 16 for today’s study, the first part says, “But if any man seem to be contentious, we have no such custom, neither the churches of God.” This was really a punch in the gut to me because I have been pretty irritable and contentious lately. I got hurt pretty badly while on vacation last month and I’ve been experiencing a range of emotions that are not necessarily new to me, but have been extreme in their intensity. First, I’ve been in excruciating pain, and I haven’t had significant pain since I gave birth to my children, which was different because with that I knew what to expect as far as recovery. With this I have had no idea when things will get better, and the unknown has really plagued me. I have relied heavily on a blessing that I got from my brother, which promised no permanent injury and an expedited recovery. And while it seems to have taken forever, it’s only been a month and I’m almost back to everything normal.

The other thing that I was irritated about was that my vacation was ruined. I don’t go on vacation very often, and I had spent a lot of time and energy on this one and there was so much that I still wanted to do that I didn’t get to do because I was too injured. So I have been pretty bummed about that, which hasn’t helped. Plus, I haven’t been able to go to jiu jitsu, which I love so much and the physical activity really makes me happy and it’s everything that I’ve always hoped and dreamed. Not being able to do that has not helped my mental health, so I’ve been pretty depressed. Plus a lot of other stuff has happened, like family and baby daddy drama, my basement flooded again at 11pm on Christmas eve. And my brother and his family have been gone for a few weeks, and I didn’t realize how much I rely on them to socialization.

I spent all day yesterday super irritated, and maybe my reasons were valid, but I really had to talk myself down because I can’t control anyone else’s actions, I can only control what I do and how I react. I had to talk myself back from the edge, and really pray and work with Jesus to get my emotions under control. I’m still struggling with it today, but I’m doing a lot better, especially after I read and felt chastised by verse 16. The way of the believer isn’t contention, it isn’t fighting with someone until it’s acknowledged that you’re right, it isn’t being rude and abrasive so that people don’t even want to interact with you. The way of God is friendliness, the way of God is being pleasant to be around, to be accommodating. This is how I need to focus on myself and modify my own behaviors so that I can be a good ambassador for the Church and a good disciple of Christ. Plus I don’t need that drama in my life, even if I am the one doing it to myself. I also saw this think that helped that said, “you’re anxiety is lying to you.” 

The ancient church apparently had a custom of eating large portions of bread and drinking large portions of wine for the sacrament. The gospeldoctrine.com article for this chapter says, “external history tells us that on occasion full meals, called ‘feasts of charity’ were provided in conjunction with the sacrament. While this odd practice may be surprising at first, one must remember that the Sacrament was originally instituted in association with the Passover feast. Hence, early Christs apparently had kept the practice of eating a full meal in conjunction with the sacrament.” This makes sense because we can remember that it was at the Last Supper that Christ instituted the sacrament, and the Last Supper was the Passover Feast that had been prepared for the Savior and his disciples to participate in. 

 It would make sense then that early saints might not have known exactly how to keep the ordinance completely, especially if they consider that Christ had fed his apostles large amounts of bread and wine during a full feast. It’s easy to see that providing a Passover-esque meal for a congregation every week would eventually cause problems. Imagine being expected to make a thanksgiving feast for church every Sunday, yeah, that would be pretty intense. Then let’s consider the patrons, how would they show up to the expected feast? Probably hungry, ready to gorge themselves, it could turn into a mess really quickly.

Apparently that’s exactly what happened, specifically that “some were coming to the meeting with the full expectation that they could fill up on the sacramental offering. They would eat to their hearts content but not leave enough for the other members. Hence, one member would be left hungry while another would be drunk with wine.” It must have been sort of a free range grazing type of sacrament, which is interesting to consider. I think this is really important to consider the structure of our own sacrament meeting. The sacrament is administered at one, set time with one standard set of equipment, used every week, with standard tap water, and standard bread.

I used to think, why not make the sacrament more interesting and use like skittles or cereal or something, but of course the reason what we do bread is to keep the focus off of the actual emblems and on the purpose of the ordinance. Even if we tried to all one up each other with the type of fancy bread that we brought, that would turn the attention of the patrons to the actual, physical bread and ultimately to the person who provided the bread. Instead, the only focus of our attention needs to be the Savior and renewing our covenants with him. It would be so easy to get caught up in social aspect of “who brought the best bread?” but it’s important to keep a proper focus. In fact, that’s going to be one of my New Year’s resolutions, to pay more attention during the sacrament. 

Paul reminds them that the whole reason that they are meeting together in the first place “is it not to eat the Lord’s supper?” Later in the chapter he gives the answer to this problem saying, “wherefore, my brethren, when ye come together to eat, tarry one for another. And if any man hunger, let him eat at home; that ye come not together unto condemnation.” Or as the article humorously paraphrases, “wherefore, my brethren, when you come together to eat, wait until everyone has had some food before you lick the serving plate clean!” 

Paul makes another point about the procedure of the sacrament by continuing, “wherefore whosoever shall eat this bread, and drink this cup of the Lord, unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord.” There have been many instances in the scriptures where this council has been given, so that begs the question, at what point are we considered unworthy? Because really, we are all sinners and all have need for constant repentance, so does that mean that we have to be perfect in order to partake of the sacrament worthily? And can we actually be perfect? No, of course not, so what does that mean?

He kind of answers that question in the next verse counseling, “but let a man examine himself.” So that really kind of leaves that up to the person, and really, except for blatant, public, sinning, there really aren’t a lot of other ways for one’s worthiness of the sacrament to be known, except through self-evaluation. During a self-evaluation, I think one of the biggest and most telling factors of worthiness is our intention. It starts with the question, if someone is unworthy of the sacrament, meaning that they have been guilty of some heinous sin, then why would they want to take the sacrament anyway? Wouldn’t they just think, “I don’t want to participate in the gospel any more,” and stay home? That makes the most sense to me.

So if someone has committed a serious sin but still comes to church and is presented with the opportunity to take the sacrament, why would they take it? Honestly, the only answer that I can think of is because other people might see them not take the sacrament and start to make assumptions, meaning that their motivation for taking the sacrament isn’t repentance but to preserve their righteous image in the eyes of others. Perhaps in our self-reflection we could ask ourselves if part of the reason we want to take the sacrament is to preserve our reputation among our fellow members. If that is the case, then maybe we need a little bit more soul searching.

The article quotes President Howard W. Hunter as teaching, “To make a covenant with the Lord to always keep His commandments is a serious obligation, and to renew that covenant by partaking of the sacrament is equally serious. The solemn moments of thought while the sacrament is being served have great significance. They are moments of self-examination, introspection, self-discernment- a time to reflect and to resolve.” I usually ask myself during the sacrament, “what could I have done better this week?” I’m fortunate in that I can usually self-reflect in a way that is not condemning, I can say, “I tried my best,” or “I’m doing what I can.” So it’s not a question of “how bad were you this week?” but more of the stance, “what can I do to do better this coming week?” When the water comes, I also sometimes ask myself, “is this how much blood Christ shed for me this week?” Kind of a morbid perspective, but it helps me put a physical understanding to my reflection.

If partaking of the sacrament unworthily is powerful enough to “eateth and drinketh damnation to” ourselves, then why would the Lord put us in charge of our own worthiness? Honestly, if the stakes are so high that we are talking damnation, then shouldn’t we get someone else to judge us? It’s like letting students grade their own SAT tests and score themselves. The stakes are so high, getting into college, etc, that you’d want an objective third party to determine the results. Logistically, that sounds like a nightmare, the bishop or his counselors wouldn’t have time to interview everyone every single week to determine worthiness before the sacrament. I also don’t think that such an approach would spur repentance either. People repent when they are ready to and the Lord works out the timing with that person. People won’t repent, usually, because they are cornered by an authority figure, they just lie.

The article quotes F. Enzio Busche as commenting, “Now and every day in our mortal lives, He wants to sharpen our awareness, that we may become our own judges, and (the Lord) calls us to a continuous process of repentance. After Alma had spoken about repentance and desires of righteousness until the end of life, he said, ‘They… are redeemed of the Lord;… for behold, they are their own judges.’ (Alma 41:7.)… It seems that we can only effectively go through the process of continuous repentance if we literally learn to become out own judges. We ourselves and the Lord and the only ones who really know us. We do not even know ourselves unless we have learned to walk the lonely and most challenging road toward self-honesty, as constantly prompted by the Spirit.”

There are a couple of points in this comment that are applicable. First is that our journey of continuous repentance is meant to be taken as “constantly prompted by the Spirit.” If someone else judges us every week and determines our worthiness, then we lose out on a valuable opportunity to review our lives with the Spirit, and we don’t get to build a relationship with Him. A truly profitable self-reflection must be undertaken with the Spirit and over time a beautiful relationship of honesty, trust, and compassion can result. 

The second thought that I had about this comment was that when we are going to stand before the judgment bar of God, all things will be called into our remembrance and we won’t be able to deny what we are guilty of, basically that we will condemn ourselves because we will have a perfect remembrance of all our misdeed that we haven’t repented of. If this is going to be the case for the last judgment day, then why wouldn’t it be an effective screening tool for us to use now. The only hinderance would be our inability to remember, but if we reflect often enough, we wouldn’t have to look back so far and would be able to recall things. It would be like our own individual judgment day every time we did. That sounds super dark and intimidating, but I think that the beauty of spending self-reflection time with the Spirit is that, at least for me, as long as I’m sincere in my desire to be better, I am able to see what I need to work on without negative feelings of shame or guilt or insufficiency.