1 Corinthians 10

First Communion

Posted on by Betsy

Different faith systems have varying opinions on when the time is right for a young person to receive their first communion. In United Methodism, we believe that the table is open to all, and so we serve all people of all ages. There is no prerequisite for receiving communion in our church. We pay very close attention to educating and training our children in Sunday School and eventually confirmation classes about what communion means, but the table is a shared opportunity to receive the sacrament even if you don’t fully understand the sacrament. Jesus seemed to be cognizant of the fact that you have to catch the fish before you clean the fish, and Methodists like that idea.

I had a unique opportunity to serve communion to two of my grandchildren a few weeks ago. My niece’s baby shower brought my Florida daughter, my Atlanta daughter, and me together for the weekend and we attended the church where they grew up. This is the church that I served for 16 years. The opportunity to serve communion to the children’s workers arose and my dear friend Barbara and I took the bread and juice downstairs after the service to do just that. My five-year-old grandson spotted us as he was coming out of KidMin and my eight-year old granddaughter was with him. She was visiting from Florida and had spent the hour with him in his class.

They immediately tagged along as Barbara and I visited the classrooms and nursery, offering the elements through the pass through windows and over the half-doors. We met the children’s director and her amazing lay volunteer in the hallway and served them there. Then we headed down to the youth wing to find the youth director and served him in front of a pool table. Along the way, my grandchildren simultaneously asked if they could help and also could they be served. So right there in the hall in front of the youth room, I served communion to them both.

My granddaughter has received communion on a few Christmas Eves, but this was my grandson’s first time. Usually they are in the children’s programming during worship services. Both of them assured me they had never had communion before. I think they may have said that so that they could have some that morning. This was my first time to serve them, and it left me in tears.

1 Corinthians 10 (Common English Bible)

16 Isn’t the cup of blessing that we bless a sharing in the blood of Christ? Isn’t the loaf of bread that we break a sharing in the body of Christ? 17 Since there is one loaf of bread, we who are many are one body, because we all share the one loaf of bread.

Paul asks a beautiful and poignant question in this passage. Isn’t this blessing a sharing of Christ? Isn’t this loaf a sharing of his body? How many loaves are there? One. In our diversity, we are still one body because we share the one loaf.

So whether first communion is a formal process in your faith system or an automatic response to God’s grace that happens once a month, whether you receive it at the altar or in a downstairs hallway, this cup and this loaf unite us in our love and understanding of the sacrifice that is marked every time we break bread together.

I asked my five-year old grandson what he thought about receiving his first communion. His response: “Well, the bread was better than the juice.” Fair point, young man. The bread is home baked by a church volunteer who specializes in creating a delicate, fragrant sourdough.

I would say it is to die for, but Jesus already did that.

One Loaf by Becca Ziegler

King Tides

Posted on by Betsy

I got a phone call from my oldest daughter last night asking if I was in a hurricane. The question surprised me, as yesterday’s weather was stunning, It was perfect example of how gorgeous fall is on the Outer Banks. The temperatures were in the 70’s, the sun shone brightly but wasn’t scorching, there was a gentle breeze all day, etc. My running partner and I met at the Wright Memorial for a pleasant five-mile run and truly the day couldn’t have been nicer. I assured my daughter that I was fine, and she explained that a friend had just seen a news report of houses falling into the ocean due to a storm here.

Indeed, houses have recently been reclaimed by the sea on the beaches south of us. These fragile homes have been the victim of beach erosion over the years. The two hurricanes that recently swept past the east coast brought winds and waves close enough to destroy ten unoccupied beach houses. The damage is horrific, and now the rest of the nearby homes are threatened with floating debris as the county workers and volunteers scramble to clean up the remains of these once beloved homes. But even more threatening is the effect of the destructive power of an incoming King Tide.

“King Tide” is a term people in coastal areas use to describe exceptionally high tides. Tides are long-period waves that roll around the planet as the ocean is “pulled” back and forth by the gravitational force of the moon and the sun as they interact with the Earth in their monthly and yearly orbits. Higher than normal tides typically occur during a new or full moon (such as this week’s stunning Harvest moon),  and when the moon is at its “perigee”, meaning when it is nearest to the earth. We are in King Tide season in the Outer Banks.

In our passage today, Paul warns of a different type of destructive power.

Ephesians 2 (Common English Bible)

2 At one time you were like a dead person because of the things you did wrong and your offenses against God. 2 You used to live like people of this world. You followed the rule of a destructive spiritual power. This is the spirit of disobedience to God’s will that is now at work in persons whose lives are characterized by disobedience.

Disobedience is a soul-destroying force that we all contend with. Pulled to and fro by the destructive spiritual power of Satan, we are tempted and beguiled to turn away from God as we succumb to the pleasures of this world. Paul warns us that these offenses turn us into dead people.

The pull on us is as forceful as a King Tide, but we know where to go to resist it.

1 Corinthians 10 (Common English Bible)

13 No temptation has seized you that isn’t common for people. But God is faithful. He won’t allow you to be tempted beyond your abilities. Instead, with the temptation, God will also supply a way out so that you will be able to endure it.

Is something tempting you today? Are you about to give in to something you shouldn’t ? Lord, lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil this day! Amen.

Harvest Moon Over Avalon Pier by Michelle Robertson

The Sincerest Form

Posted on by Betsy

What is the sincerest form of flattery? Imitation. When someone is trying to copy you, it is because they admire you and want to be like you. Unless it’s your sibling playing the copy-cat game where they repeat everything you say. That’s just annoying.

In our passage today, Paul advises that we should do what we can to imitate the life of Christ. Now that’s a copy game worth participating in! Living, loving, giving, and serving in the manner of Christ is the goal for every believer.

To that end, he wrote to the Corinthians that they should look out for each other and do things for the advantage of promoting the Good News of Christ to the unbeliever. If that meant eating meat that might have been sacrificed at the pagan temples and then sold in the market, something Jewish Christians did not do, then simply accept the dinner invitation and don’t worry about it.

1 Corinthians 10-11 (Common English Bible)

23 Everything is permitted, but everything isn’t beneficial. Everything is permitted, but everything doesn’t build others up.24 No one should look out for their own advantage, but they should look out for each other. 25 Eat everything that is sold in the marketplace, without asking questions about it because of your conscience. 26 The earth and all that is in it belong to the Lord. 27 If an unbeliever invites you to eat with them and you want to go, eat whatever is served, without asking questions because of your conscience. 28 But if someone says to you, “This meat was sacrificed in a temple,” then don’t eat it for the sake of the one who told you and for the sake of conscience. 

Verse 26 offers more support for his argument. This reference from Psalm 24:1 is a bold reminder that everything that is in the earth belong to the Lord. Thus the meat sacrificed to idols cannot have any power. It’s just meat. The “gods” to whom the meat was sacrificed cannot have any power. They are just false idols. So the food is not the issue here: It’s a matter of conscience.

29 Now when I say “conscience” I don’t mean yours but the other person’s. Why should my freedom be judged by someone else’s conscience? 30 If I participate with gratitude, why should I be blamed for food I thank God for? 31 So, whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, you should do it all for God’s glory. 32 Don’t offend either Jews or Greeks, or God’s church. 33 This is the same thing that I do. I please everyone in everything I do. I don’t look out for my own advantage, but I look out for many people so that they can be saved. 

Paul’s primary goal in Corinth was to save people. He longed to save all people. So if someone was disturbed by the idea of meat that had been in the temple before it made it to the market, he advised his people not to eat it: Not because it is bad, but in regard and out of respect for the conscience of the one who is objecting to it.

11 1 Follow my example, just like I follow Christ’s.

We remember that Christ ate with the sinners. We remember that he gave his very life as a sacrifice for all sinners. So what would Jesus do in this case? He would give thanks to God for the meal and eat.



All That Is in it Belongs to the Lord by Kathy Schumacher

Warnings

Posted on by Betsy

I confess that I have always loved apocalyptic stories. I have a weird fascination with the way the end-times are depicted in these fictional accounts. If you consume a lot of these kinds of stories, you realize that it is not the zombies, walking dead, aliens, monsters, robots, or spaceships that defeat humankind … it is humankind itself. People eventually turn on one another, much to the delight of the enemy.

Our Scripture today reads like a scary scene from a dystopian future. There are warnings. There are consequences for ignoring those warnings. There is death. There are epidemics. There is danger.

There are snakes. (Why did it have to be snakes??)

Paul starts out innocently enough, recalling the history of Israel and the blessings of God’s deliverance from slavery through the Red Sea to the Promised Land. God provided all of their daily needs, and they ate spiritual food and drank from the living waters.

But then the unthinkable happened:

1 Corinthians 10 (The Message)

10 1-5 Remember our history, friends, and be warned. All our ancestors were led by the providential Cloud and taken miraculously through the Sea. They went through the waters, in a baptism like ours, as Moses led them from enslaving death to salvation life. They all ate and drank identical food and drink, meals provided daily by God. They drank from the Rock, God’s fountain for them that stayed with them wherever they were. And the Rock was Christ.

But just experiencing God’s wonder and grace didn’t seem to mean much—most of them were defeated by temptation during the hard times in the desert, and God was not pleased.

Yes, temptation, that death-eater of all satanic forces, came upon them with laser-beam accuracy and they all fell, one by one.

6-10 The same thing could happen to us. We must be on guard so that we never get caught up in wanting our own way as they did. And we must not turn our religion into a circus as they did—“First the people partied, then they threw a dance.” We must not be sexually promiscuous—they paid for that, remember, with 23,000 deaths in one day! We must never try to get Christ to serve us instead of us serving him; they tried it, and God launched an epidemic of poisonous snakes. We must be careful not to stir up discontent; discontent destroyed them.

Sexual promiscuity, discontent, the party-culture, the disobedience to God’s will … it all came down on the people until the people all came down.

11-12 These are all warning markers—danger!—in our history books, written down so that we don’t repeat their mistakes. Our positions in the story are parallel—they at the beginning, we at the end—and we are just as capable of messing it up as they were. Don’t be so naive and self-confident. You’re not exempt. You could fall flat on your face as easily as anyone else. Forget about self-confidence; it’s useless. Cultivate God-confidence.

Paul pulls no punches. We are just as capable of falling as the Israelites. We will fall flat on our religions if we don’t listen to the warnings. We need to drop our self-confidence and immerse ourselves in a culture of God-confidence.

Where is God warning you about your behavior and temptations? Are you listening?

13 No test or temptation that comes your way is beyond the course of what others have had to face. All you need to remember is that God will never let you down; he’ll never let you be pushed past your limit; he’ll always be there to help you come through it.

Lent is a time to confront our temptation to stray, be lazy, lie, covet, cheat, and participate in all the destructive things that separate us from God. The good news is that he will help us overcome those temptations IF we turn to him for help and strength. That is a big IF. Too often we are so beguiled by the temptation that we end up running away from God.

Where is God calling you to trust him to help you?

God will never let you down.

Bright Hope for Tomorrow by Michelle Robertson