Central Focus.

Thursday night is our Bible study night. There are about a dozen groups which meet centrally at St Helen's in the heart of London. We have a meal together and then have an hour or so studying a Bible passage. Isn't it interesting that so much of our church family activity starts with a meal?

This year we have been looking at 1 Corinthians which is a letter the apostle Paul wrote to a newly founded church in Greece during the first century. It was a port city with a racey reputation.

The thing which has struck me so far this year is how Corinthian we all are! The church at Corinth had a firm grasp of the liberty they had come in to now that they were in Christ, but they were so fixated on their 'rights' that they had lost sight of the fact that Jesus requires us to be prepared to forgo those 'rights' for the sake of our brother & sisters. Love is about putting the other person first.

As it happens last Thursday we were looking at 1 Cor 11 v17-34 which is about the shambles the Corinthian church made of the Lord's Supper! He reminds them that this meal is a means by which a disparate group of people come together to share a meal in remembrance of the Lord Jesus' death on the cross. These people from all social classes and racial groups are meant to come together for them to express their unity together as "the body of Christ" around a common meal - all these individuals come together to be one. Not unlike baptism when an individual publically proclaims their faith in Christ and is welcomed into the local church. Both sacraments are centred on the historical reality of the cross and are not about little "me".

We are called into a community defined as a people purely by the fact that we belong to Christ. So Paul takes a dim view of the factionalism and selfishness these Corinthian believers indulge in. Paul has to remind them, in all their self indulgence, that communion is about proclaiming together the Lord's death until he returns because they seem to have forgotten its true purpose - it should be approached with our minds and hearts engaged it is not primarily a sensory experience!

It's a timely reminder because we are having the Lord's Supper this Sunday.

The Corinthians were a fractious lot and we are not immune to being the same. Christians are not perfected beings but a 'work in progress'; we say and do stupid, selfish, insensitive things.... things which do not reflect well on the Lord we claim to follow. It would be great never to make a mistake but sadly that isn't realistic. The key is to make sure we judge ourselves aright - we need to have that capacity for critical self reflection which Paul urges. If we do that then we can remove the barriers in our communion with each other.