The Sacraments and the Church
Three years ago, I was a new PhD student and very new to blogging. In fact (believe it or not), I only wrote a few blog posts each month. During the fall of 2006, I started reading a book by Jim Peterson called em>Church Without Walls. Later that I year I would write that that book was the “Best Book of the Year” that I had read.
In a post from three years ago called “The Sacraments and the Church,” I interacted with a statement from Peterson’s book concerning one of the reformational “marks” of the church: the sacraments (ordinances, whatever). Here is that post:
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I have been greatly challenged by Jim Peterson’s book Church Without Walls. In chapter nine, “New Boundaries for the Church,” he states, “One lesson that comes through in our discussion of history and of form and function is that the church has constantly tended toward narrowing.” What he means by this is that historical periods (i.e. the church fathers, the reformation), theological systems, denominational distinctives, and culture add limitations to our understanding of Scripture and, therefore, our understaning of the church. Here is one example:
One example is the Reformers’ treatment of the sacraments. Previously the pope had served as the unifying factor for the church. He defined the church. Since all the Reformers rejected the authority of the pope, a replacement symbol was needed. It is significant that the sacraments-particularly baptism and the Lord’s Supper-are included in virtually all of their definitions. But do they belong at all? Is that why the sacraments were given to God’s people? Is it baptism that makes a church a church? Is that why the Lord’s Supper was instituted? The sacraments were not given to define the church for us. And whenever we impose a second meaning on something in this manner, its true significance is diminished or even lost.
For the past few months, I have been pondering a definition of the church. I even had a series of blog posts about the definition of the church (Final post with links to previous posts). My definition did not include the sacraments. I believe the sacraments are very important, but I do not see where Scripture uses the sacraments to define the church. Are the sacraments something that the church does? Yes. Do the sacraments define the church? No. Is a church still a church if it does not practice the sacraments? Yes. Does a group become a church because they practice the sacraments? No.
Am I correct? If not, why not? If so, then what is the purpose of the sacraments (or ordinances, if you prefer)? Also, if I am correct, have we diminished the true significance of the sacraments?
Reminder: 21st Century Church Blogging/Essay Contest
If you haven’t started writing your entry for Energion Publication’s Blogging/Essay Contest, why not start today? The topic of the essay/blog post should be “What should a congregation following Jesus Christ in ministry look like?.” The deadline is November 2.
I’m one of the judges, and each entry will be judged in these 5 areas:
- Biblically rooted
- Historically aware
- Complete
- Clear and Concise
- Overall impression, including appearance, discussion generated, and anything one of the judges wants to include
Winners will receive free books and gift cards.
So, again, if you haven’t started writing your essay/post yet, why not start today? And, hop over to the publisher’s book site to let them know that you’ll be taking part.
Peterson’s concluding remarks on edification
One of my favorite books is David Peterson’s Engaging with God: A Biblical Theology of Worship. This book was very influential in my decision to continue my eduction toward a PhD. Peterson was able to present a biblical theology on a topic (my own area of interest) in a manner that is both scholarly and accessible. Also, this book intersects my own interests because Peterson includes a chapter called “Serving God in the Assembly of His People.” One section of this chapter even deals with edification, the topic of my dissertation.
Peterson calls the conclusion of that section “Concluding remarks on edification.” You could say that Peterson’s concluding remarks are the jumping off point for my own studies. When I read through this section again as I was working on my prospectus, I decided that I would share these few paragraphs with my reader. I hope this except is an encouragement to those who already agree that edification is the purpose of the church assembly, and a challenge to those who disagree:
The apostle regularly, but not exclusively, employs the terminology of edification to oppose individualism, either in the ethical sphere or in the sphere of congregational ministry. Edification is first and foremost the work of Christ, ‘fashioning the whole life of the Church in its members in faith, hope and love’. (G. Delling, Worship in the New Testament, London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1962, 40) As Christians utilize Christ’s gifts, made available through the Spirit, they participate in this divine activity and further God’s purpose for his people collectively. Although the edification of the church is a principle that should govern the thinking and behaviour of Christians in all circumstances, Paul normally employs this notion with reference to the activities of Christian assembly. When Christians gather together to minister to one another the truth of God in love, the church is manifested, maintained and advanced in God’s way.
The apostle’s teaching calls into question the validity and helpfulness of much contemporary thinking and practice in relation to church services. Mention has been made of the inappropriateness of designing out gatherings primarily to facilitate private communion with God. This can happen in Catholic, evangelical and charismatic traditions alike. Paul would urge us to meet in dependency on one another as the vehicles of God’s grace and to view the well-being and strengthening of the whole church as the primary aim of the gathering. There ought to be a real engagement with other believers in the context of mutual ministry, shared prayer and praise, not simply a friendly chat over a cup of coffee after church!
Again, 1 Corinthians 14 challenges the tendency of many Christian traditions to undervalue spontaneity and variety of input in the congregational gathering. Paul expected that members of the congregation would come with some contribution prepared for the occasion or that individuals might be prompted by the Spirit to offer prayer or praise or some other ministry on the spot. Ephesians 4 certainly indicates the importance of pastor-teachers in the equipment of God’s people for their work of building up the body of Christ, and the pastoral epistles highlight the teaching role of those identified as leaders in the congregation. However, as noted previously, there should be some public opportunity for spontaneous and informal ministries as well as for the ordered and prepared.
It is sometimes said that the size of our gatherings or the physical context makes it impossible to put such New Testament teaching into practice. People who argue this way show little imagination or willingness to reassess their traditions, even though others in the contemporary scene have found helpful solutions to these problems. It may be a matter of finding appropriate spots in the regular pattern of Sunday services where contributions can be made. It may be a matter of rearranging the furniture or encouraging people to gather together differently so that those who contribute can be more easily seen and heard.
Of course, it is equally possible to lose the vertical dimension and consider congregational meetings as little more than an occasion for human fellowship. The balance of Paul’s teaching suggests that we view mutual ministry as the context in which to engage with God. Edification and worship are different sides of the same coin. (pg 213-215)
To continue Peterson’s last paragraph (in my own words, not his), we worship God in our church gatherings when we mutually build up one another toward maturity in Christ. And what if we are not involved in mutual edification when the church assembles? What if we are not given that opportunity or if we do not take advantage of the opportunities that we are given? Are we worshiping?
Review of When the Church Was a Family – Decision Making and Leadership
Joseph H. Hellerman’s book When the Church Was a Family: Recapturing Jesus’ Vision for Authentic Christian Community is more than a book about the church, but it is certainly not less than a book about the church. Given the importance I place on the church identifying and living as a family, I am going to review this book in three parts: Strong Group Identity, Sharing Life Together, and Decision Making and Leadership. This post contains the third part of my review: Decision Making and Leadership.
Of the three parts of my review, this one will probably be the most difficult for Western thinkers. Why? Because aside from our personal times, individualistic thinkers pride themselves on making their own decisions.
But, according to Hellerman, one of the aspects of strong group thinking is shared decision making, both decisions that affect the group and decisions that seemingly only affect the individual. Why? Because all decisions actually affect the group. This includes life decisions such as occupation, marriage, and place to live.
Hellerman writes:
[B]ig decisions are best made in community, in the context of the church family – especially big family decisions. (pg 168)
More than advice-seeking is at work here. It will not do simply to challenge American evangelicals, who otherwise live life as isolated individuals, to seek counsel from others only when they come to a defining fork in the road of life. In the strong-group church family model, input from others is a way of life, not a resource to occasionally draw on as one of several items on a checklist that purports to tell us how to find God’s will for our lives…
This is quite important because what I am advocating here is not an institutional program… More often than not, input comes in a less structured, more organic way, as long-term relationships with brothers and sisters in the church family provide the natural context for speaking wisdom into one another’s lives in a variety of settings. (pg 170-171)
Hellerman recognizes that Christian leaders can be helpful in making decisions, but he says that most decisions should be made in the context of the whole church. Unfortunately, I think Hellerman’s examples fail him at this point. All of his examples (unless I missed some) were of church leaders (pastors) instructing individuals about decisions they should make. I wish he would have included many examples of community-wide decision making that affected individuals. (I’ll touch on this point again later in this review and interaction.)
Hellerman suggests several methods of helping a church organization transition to a “family-oriented church model” – recognizing that this is not a model to be implemented but a different way of understanding and living life. He says that the content of teaching and reconsidering the social context can be very beneficial.
What does he mean by “reconsider the social context”? He says:
But teaching our people about the church as a family will not suffice to alter deeply ingrained patterns of behavior. We must also reevaluate the social contexts of church life, the ways in which our ministries are executed. The priority most churches place upon the success of the Sunday service subtly but powerfully communicates the message that this impersonal, once-a-week social environment is quintessentially what “church” is all about… [S]o it is essential to provide for our people the kind of social settings in which church family relations can be experienced firsthand. (pg 177-178)
I think Hellerman is correct that we (that is, all believers) should recognize that all interactions with other believers are important. (This is one of the reasons that I started my “Church Life” series.) I would add that it is also possible to make the Sunday (or weekly) meeting of the church less of an “impersonal, once-a-week social environment.” The church meeting can be very personal and interactive, but we must be willing to change from our current models and ways of meeting together.
Finally, in a strong group community such as Hellerman describes (that is, the type of community that he finds in the New Testament), he recognizes that there exists the danger of abuse, especially from leaders. Hellerman says that following the biblical mandates of plural leaders and servant leaders will help to balance this danger.
I would also add that removing the decision-making authority from leaders will also balance this danger. Remember that when Jesus spoke to his disciples about the way worldly leaders exercised authority, he said, “It shall not be so among you.” That is pretty clear to me. In the church, leaders are servants, not decision makers. Decision making is the responsibility of the whole church together.
I would hope that the church would recognize mature, serving people as their leaders, and that those leaders would offer godly guidance and wisdom. But, the responsibility to make decisions should remain the function of the church, not the leaders.
In the last few years, my thinking about the church has changed drastically. Primarily, my understanding of the church has changed because I recognize that the church is a family – not that the church should become a family, but that the church is a family. Thus, many of the statements in this book are familiar to me. However, Hellerman brings up many aspects of family and strong group life that remain difficult for me to consider. But, I must consider these aspects of family life as well.
I would recommend this book to any Christian. For many, this book will help them along a journey that they have already started (like me). For others, this book may begin to put some pieces into place. For still others, what Hellerman writes will sound strange, impossible, and undesirable. But, for all of us, I think Hellerman can help us understand more clearly what the New Testament authors wrote. It remains to be seen what our response to that understanding will be.
Blogging/Essay Contest – 21st Century Church
This information is copied from The Jesus Paradigm site:
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Energion Publications will host a blogging/essay contest. Entries are open immediately and will close November 2, 2009 when Dr. David Alan Black’s new book Christian Archy is released. Judging will take place during the first week of November, and winners will be announced by November 16.
To enter, simply write an essay in answer to the question: What should a congregation following Jesus Christ in ministry look like?
If you are a blogger, post the essay on your blog and link back to this post, then also e-mail pubs@energion.com just to make sure. We will add your post to the list of those participating. If you are not a blogger, e-mail your essay in either Word document or Open Document Text (OpenOffice) format to pubs@energion.com and indicate in the e-mail that you are entering the 21st century church contest.
Entries will be judged in the following areas, with each area receiving a score of from one to ten:
- Biblically rooted
- Historically aware
- Complete
- Clear and Concise
- Overall impression, including appearance, discussion generated, and anything one of the judges wants to include
Note that 1 & 2 and 3 & 4 may conflict in the approach of some people. That is why there will be three judges, who come from different theological traditions:
Alan Knox (The Assembling of the Church), a doctoral candidate at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary
Geoffrey Lentz (GeoffreyLentz.com), associate pastor of First United Methodist Church in Pensacola, FL, doctoral student at Drew University, and author of The Gospel According to Saint Luke: A Participatory Study Guide.
Elgin Hushbeck, Jr., author of Evidence for the Bible, Christianity and Secularism, and Preserving Democracy, (all from Energion Publications), and owner of Aletheia Consulting, Inc. Elgin is a member of a Christian Reformed congregation.
Each judge will rate the entries independently. One of our copy editors will also rate the essays, but that rating will only be used to break a tie. Judges will not consider whether or not you use or quote from Energion Publications products or web sites in your post.
The prizes are:
First prize – Free copy of The Jesus Paradigm + two other Energion Publications books, with a $25 gift card for Barnes & Noble
Second prize – Free copy of The Jesus Paradigm + one other Energion Publications book, with a $15 gift card for Barnes & Noble
Third prize – Free copy of The Jesus Paradigm with a $10 gift card for Barnes & Noble
(If you have previously received and reviewed a copy of The Jesus Paradigm you may choose any other book in our catalog as an alternative.)
All other participants get the joy of participating in the discussion, and hopefully a fair amount of link love. All posts regarding this contest will be cross-posted to JesusParadigm.com, and you can comment/link there to enter as well. Feel free to participate in the discussion even if you don’t want to enter the contest.
Note: All prizes will be awarded. Prize winners have no obligation to Energion Publications other than the necessary steps to enter the contest. Judges will be instructed to disregard use or non-use of Energion Publications books and web sites in judging the entries.
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I will not be participating in this contest, since I’ll be judging. However, I encourage all of my readers and fellow bloggers to participate!
(NOTE: When you post your essay, make sure to link back to The Jesus Paradigm post and send an email to pubs@energion.com.)
Review of When the Church Was a Family – Sharing Life Together
Joseph H. Hellerman’s book When the Church Was a Family: Recapturing Jesus’ Vision for Authentic Christian Community is more than a book about the church, but it is certainly not less than a book about the church. Given the importance I place on the church identifying and living as a family, I am going to review this book in three parts: Strong Group Identity, Sharing Life Together, and Decision Making and Leadership. This post contains the second part of my review: Sharing Life Together.
As I mentioned in the first part of this review (Strong Group Identity), Hellerman demonstrates in this book that the early church saw itself as a new group – God’s new family – with a strong group identity in which the group becomes more important than the individual and more important than any other group. This type of group identity affected the way these early Christians lived.
The problem in Western culture is that our individualized way of thinking has left us unable to contemplate sharing life with other people. As Hellerman states:
As cultural analysts will tell us, people in our relationally fragmented, increasingly isolated, techno-culture are highly sensitive to the need for healthy relationships with their fellow human beings. We long for community, but our own family experiences have often left us painfully aware of the tremendous difficulties involved in cultivating such relationships with the resources the secular world has to offer. We are left wholly unequipped to satisfy our deepest relational longings and needs. (pg 138-139)
Thus, the images in Scripture of early Christians sharing not just the gospel but their lives with one another is very appealing, but also very confusing to modern readers. While many would love to share in that type of community, few realize or are willing to sacrifice what it takes to get there.
For example, Hellerman covers four “New Testament family values”: 1) We share our stuff with one another, 2) We share our hearts with one another, 3) We stay, embrace the pain, and grow up with one another, and 4) Family is about more than me, the wife, and the kids. (pg 145)
Even these four family values demonstrate that community life begins by giving, not getting. It begins with pain, not comfort. Although life in a New Testament community can be encouraging, beneficial, comforting, caring, etc., there will also be friction and disagreement, especially as believers learn to shift from an individualistic mindset to a group mindset. (Of course, there would have been some friction among those first Christians as well, but they would not require a paradigm shift, only a group shift – which can still be painful!)
Sharing material possessions, time, hopes, dreams, tears, decisions, etc. does not come readily for modern Western thinkers. We’ve been taught to demand our own rights and to strike out on our own if necessary. Thus, we never move through the pain of giving in order to live in a real community. (I wrote about this previously in a post called “The depths of community.”)
Another difficulty for modern believers is the lack of example. There are very few people willing to live in and demonstrate community for us. Even many leaders are more interested in making decisions than in being part of a community. Then, once we find a community, we find that it looks nothing like our community. Believe it or not, this is natural. Hellerman says:
What would Christianity look like if we truly recaptured Jesus’ vision for authentic Christian community? It would likely vary considerably from person to person and from church to church, since the surrogate family values we observed among the early Christians would manifest themselves in different ways in different church environments. The values themselves – group loyalty and sharing of material resources, for example – would remain much the same. But these fundamental expressions of social solidarity would surely express themselves in our churches in a myriad of ways. (pg 144)
So, as we share our lives together – beginning with each person sacrificing their own rights for the benefit of the group – the community that forms would probably look different than another Christian community. Each community is made of people (obviously) and all the people are different (obviously), so we should expect the communities to look different, although they will share common values as directed by the Holy Spirit who indwells both the individuals and the community.
Two particular ways that we share life together as a community are in the areas of decision making and leadership. I will discuss these community/family concepts in the next part of my review and interaction of When the Church Was a Family.
Review of When the Church Was a Family – Strong Group Identity
Joseph H. Hellerman’s book When the Church Was a Family: Recapturing Jesus’ Vision for Authentic Christian Community is more than a book about the church, but it is certainly not less than a book about the church. Given the importance I place on the church identifying and living as a family, I am going to review this book in three parts: Strong Group Identity, Sharing Life Together, and Decision Making and Leadership. This post contains the first part of my review: Strong Group Identity.
(This book is a more popularized, readable, and accessible version of Hellerman’s academic book The Ancient Church as Family.)
Hellerman begins this book by describing the strong group identity of the ancient Mediterranean region. From Old Testament, New Testament, and other sources, he demonstrates that the needs of the groups was more important than the needs of the individual. Through various scriptural and historical accounts, Hellerman shows that people often made decisions for the good of the group instead of making decisions for the good of the individual.
Next, Hellerman goes a step further to describe the type of strong group identity that is found in that time and region. The people did not form their own groups, but they instead found their identity in their father’s family – that is, it was a partrilineal group. Thus, father, brothers, and sisters were more important than the spouse or the spouse’s family.
This sounds very strange to our Western, individualistic minds. In fact, it sounds wrong. But, this is not a matter of right and wrong. Instead, if we wish to understand the significance of familial language in the New Testament, we must approach the Scriptures from this point of view.
Thus, when the first Christians began following Christ, they were not just accepting a new God, they were joining a new family – a family that immediately took precedence over all other group bonds and relationships, and a family that immediately became more important than the individual.
How important? Well, to the extent that the new family would make decisions for one another – life decisions such as where a person would live, who a person would marry, what a person would do for a living. Again, this sounds very strange to our mindsets, but that is only because we have bought into an individualistic mindset. Since the new family affected both a person’s life and decisions, I will cover those aspects of the book in separate posts in the review.
Hellerman successfully describes the strong group identity of the first Christians, and he successfully places the New Testament teachings within that cultural milieu. More importantly, Hellerman recognizes how different this way of thinking is to modern American (and other Western) ways of thinking.
For those who recognize the benefit of this kind of life – that is, a life that is focused on the group instead of the individual – it should also become immediately apparent that adding a program or an activity will not affect this type of change. Instead, moving toward “church as family” requires a paradigm shift – a different way of thinking.
While the author covers several aspects of this different way of thinking, two stand out to me: 1) Sharing Life Together, and 2) Leadership and Decision Making. I will examine each of these different ways of thinking in the next two parts of this post as I continue to review and interact with When the Church Was a Family.
Re-defining Worship
A few days ago, in a post called “Sabbath and Synagogue and Church,” I quoted from a book called Sabbath and Synagogue: The Question of Sabbath Worship in Ancient Judaism by Heather A. McKay (Leiden: Brill, 1994). In that book,McKay concludes, based on archaeological and manuscript evidence, that the Jews did not consider their synagogue meetings to be “worship,” at least, not around the time that the New Testament was written.
In yesterday’s post “Eating Together,” I quoted from the book Witness to the Gospel: The Theology of Acts (edited by I. Howard Marshall and David Peterson). In his chapter “The Influence of Jewish Worship on Luke’s Presentation of the Early Church,” Brad Blue concludes that the early church acted as a Jewish synagogue in most respects.
However, he does not think that McKay’s conclusion concerning worship carries over to the church. He says:
McKay contends that the Jewish community did not worship in the synagogue… Reading, studying and explaining sacred texts, according to her argument, did not constitute worship… [Next, Blue lists several activities that coincide between the early church meetings and synagogue meetings.] The church, then, was a Christian synagogue.
This takes us back to McKay’s assessment of the Jewish material since she argues that the practices of the synagogue community do not constitute worship. Must we infer that the early Christians did not worship or is McKay’s definition wanting? According to our study the latter is the case provided that our understanding of worship incorporates the activities of the early community including God’s communication with his people. (pg 496-497)
Thus, Blue concludes that the early church did meet to worship, if in our definition of worship we include the church meeting or the activities that took place during the church meeting.
But, I think Blue’s argument misses the main point. In McKay’s research, she found that neither Jews nor others writing about the Jewish practices described their synagogue meetings as times of worship. They did not use worship language for these meetings. They used worship language to describe other aspects of their lives, but not synagogue meetings.
I’ve found the same to be true when the New Testament authors discussed church meetings. They did not use worship terminology.
There is another problem, however. Blue sets up a false dilemma when he asks, “Must we infer that the early Christians did not worship or is McKay’s definition wanting?” In fact, the answer to both of these questions is, “No.”
McKay’s “definition” is simply a description of what she found in her research. So, her findings that the Jewish synagogues were not described as time or places of “worship” is not lacking.
Similarly, the early Christians did worship, but they did not consider their church meetings (the times when they gathered together with other believers) to be a special type or kind or place or time of worship. Instead, they recognized that their entire life was lived as worship to God. Certainly this included the times they met with other believers. But, it also included other activities as well.
Certainly, reading and discussing Scripture can be worship. Certainly, sharing a meal together can be worship. Certainly, praying for or with someone can be worship.
But, in the same way, the early Christians could also say that going to the marketplace can be worship. Reading Scripture alone can be worship. Praying or singing alone can be worship. Preparing and eating a meal for your family can be worship. Working to earn support for your family can be worship.
The New Testament authors were consistent in writing that the early Christians gathered together as the church in order to edify, encourage, comfort, etc. one another. I think they recognized that as they served their brothers and sisters in this way, they worshiped God.
But, they did not use worship terminology to distinguish their times of meeting together from other times in their lives. Perhaps they recognized that doing so would have re-defined what it means to worship God.
I think the church is experiencing the ramifications of this type of re-definition today.
Introduction to When the Church Was a Family
As I continue to write a review of Joseph H. Hellerman’s book When the Church Was a Family: Recapturing Jesus’ Vision for Authentic Christian Community, I thought I would share a few quotes from the Introduction:
Spiritual formation occurs primarily in the context of a community. (pg 1 – the first sentence in the book)
It is a simple but profoundly biblical reality that we both grow and thrive together or we do not grow much at all. (pg 1)
I am hardly naive enough to suggest that modern Americans ought to return to the extended family systems of generations ago… But we must realize that we have paid a tremendous emotional and spiritual price to be released from the cultural shackles reflected in the strong-group values of our ancestors. (pg 6)
As church-going Americans, we have been socialized to believe that our individual fulfillment and our personal relationship with God are more important than any connection we might have with our fellow human beings, whether in the home or in the church. We have, in a most subtle and insidious way, been conformed to this world. (pg 7)
Contextualizing New Testament social values in our congregations requires us to significantly revise the way that we conceive the church. (pg 9)
Eating together
In Witness to the Gospel: The Theology of Acts (edited by I. Howard Marshall and David Peterson), Brad Blue writes a chapter called “The Influence of Jewish Worship on Luke’s Presentation of the Early Church.” Blue concludes that while there were a few changes, “[I]t is abundantly clear that the Jewish antecedents to Christian assembly… are felt throughout… The church, then, was a Christian synagogue.” (pg 497)
In one section, called “Eating Together,” Blue discusses the Jewish synagogue practice of “breaking bread”:
[T]he Jewish rite of ‘breaking the break’ or simply ‘the breaking’ was the coinage for the ritual for the opening of a meal. The ritual included the following elements: (1) the host (with bread in hands) would offer a prayer of thanksgiving to God; (2) those at the common table would respond with ‘Amen’; (3) the host would then break and distribute the bread; (4) the host would begin to eat and would be followed by the guests. Thus the ‘breaking (of the bread)’ is a metonym for the prayer of blessing and the distribution. With respects to the NT evidence, this meaning satisfies the contexts (cf. Luke 24:35; Acts 2:42, 46; 20:7, 11; 27:35).
It is clear that ‘the breaking’ is always, at this early date, a constituent of a meal scene: by its definition it necessitates a meal scene here. (pg 488-89)
The early Christians were Jewish. The people who wrote the New Testament manuscripts were Jewish. For the most part, early church practices were Jewish.
Even eating together was part of Jewish “religious” practices. This was not something new or inventive for the church (although it seems new and inventive today). It was as much a part of synagogue and church practices as reading and discussing Scripture (the idea of the sermon came along much later).
However, many things changed. Concerning the common meal, one thing in particular changed: the host. The head of the synagogue was no longer the host of the common meal. Jesus Christ was now the host. It was his meal, his table, and he served his family.
This is Paul’s point in 1 Corinthians 11:23-26:
For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “This is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way also he took the cup, 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. (1 Corinthians 11:23-26 ESV)
The Corinthians were eating and drinking (1 Corinthians 11:20-21), but they demonstrate by the way they eat and drink (that is, in the way they treat one another while they are eating and drinking) that they are not eating or drinking from the Lord’s table. The Lord is not their host. The people have become their own host.
When Paul quoted Jesus’ words, he was not given the church a formula to repeat. He was reminding them who instituted, who serves, and who hosts when they eat from the Lord’s table. That is, it is the Lord himself.
Paul told them to examine how they were treating one another when they dined together. Why? Because they were dining with the Lord.