Forming a Community of the Spirit: Hospitality, Fellowship, and Nurture, Part 1
Fellowship of the Spirit (koinonia) was a key characteristic of the Early Church after the outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost (Acts 2:42). As a part of this Spirit-enabled fellowship, believers shared their worldly goods with each other, met regularly, and had meals together (Acts 2:44–46). These are all important activities for creating strong connections, relationships of meaning and depth. Perhaps koinonia might be better translated “to share in” or “to be involved in partnership with one another”26 through various kinds of community activities. These fellowship activities also resulted in others joining their community as new believers (Acts 2:47). Spirit-enabled fellowship resulted in a kind of successful community evangelism. Volf noted the evangelistic dynamic of fellowship:
The church is the fellowship of siblings who are friends, and the fellowship of friends who are siblings. Of course, these two metaphors describe the relationships within the interior ecclesial sphere and suggest that the church is an intimate group. Other metaphors must complement these to make it clear that the church is an “open” fellowship of friends and siblings who are called to summon enemies and strangers to become friends and children of God and to accept them as friends and siblings. Only such open fellowship is commensurate with the ultimate vision of the church as the eschatological gathering of the entire people of God from all tribes and nations.27
It is important to remember 1 Corinthians and the various difficulties in the Corinthian church that Paul addressed. The believers could hardly experience Spirit-enabled fellowship with one another when they had broken into factions: I follow Paul; I follow Apollos; I follow Peter; I follow Christ (1 Cor 1:10–12). They could hardly share Spirit-enabled fellowship when some still ate food offered to idols (1 Cor 10:14–22) and others were preoccupied with charismatic gifts without love (1 Cor 14:18–20). Instead of loving and supporting one another through Spirit-enabled fellowship, wealthy believers had shut out fellow believers who were marginalized by that society because of their poverty. In fact, in all of the problems Paul mentioned in 1 Corinthians, divisions created in the community have resulted in hardship and dissension rather than peace and a sense of community. Paul rightfully claimed that such an atmosphere is not in keeping with the work of the spirit of God.
Early Christians often took a meal together called the Love Feast. This feast involved people bringing what they could to eat (potluck!) to be shared with the community. William Barclay pointed out that this was practiced during the main meal of the day when all were supposed to eat slowly and enjoy each other’s company.28 As a part of that Love Feast, the faith community would also have partaken of the Lord’s Supper. However, instead of being a time when all are nourished by both the meal and the remembrance of Christ’s death, the Corinthian believers made their gatherings occasions when some were humiliated (1 Cor 11:21–22).
The humiliation involved the wealthier people (in whose homes such meals would have been provided since these homes were large enough to accommodate the believers) who were eating the best food and wine and leaving little or no food or drink for their poorer brethren. In first-century Greek homes there was a special dining room for honored (and presumably wealthy) guests to sit and eat. Lesser (and presumably poorer) guests would have been asked to stand in the larger room adjoining the dining room.29 In other words, the wealthy Corinthian believers were observing social or status distinctions in clear violation of the spirit of the gospel—all were to share equally of the provisions of the community. How disgraceful, then, for the rich Corinthian believers to be eating and drinking to excess while their poorer brethren go without! What kind of gospel witness was that?
An interesting wordplay is found in Paul’s use of the Greek verb, synerchesthai, “to come together” (1 Cor 11:17,18, 20, 33, 34). When they “come together” they do not “come together.” It means that when they come together for worship and fellowship they are not united in their witness to the gospel. They try to maintain social status rather than try to remove all class distinctions and freely share what they have with one another. This division is damaging to everyone. The problem here is not in the way they performed the ritual of the Lord’s Supper; it is that they do not recognize the Body of Christ, the people of the faith community (1 Cor 11:29). Already, Paul hints of judgment in verse 19. Paul noted a certain difference as necessary for a distinction to be made; however, the difference Paul had in mind was not the difference between rich and poor (social status), but between those who were “approved by God” (dokimoi) and those who were not! In other words, what brought God’s judgment in the Lord’s Supper were actions that caused harm to one another. As Barclay put it, “A church is no true church if the art of sharing is forgotten.”30
Category: Ministry, Winter 2012
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