I’ve had a draft of this post for over a year now(is that a record?) and posts like the recent one at iMonk made me dig it out and finally finish it off. Hope that it’s of some benefit to you…

Joe over at Jungle Pop has a post which has me rethinking the standard interpretation of 1 Cor 11:27. To get the feel for it you need to read quite a bit of the surrounding verses. I’m just gonna quote the minimal amount here but you really should take a second and read all of 1Co 11:20-34

Therefore whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner, shall be guilty of the body and the blood of the Lord. (28) But a man must examine himself, and in so doing he is to eat of the bread and drink of the cup. (29) For he who eats and drinks, eats and drinks judgment to himself if he does not judge the body rightly. (30) For this reason many among you are weak and sick, and a number sleep. (31) But if we judged ourselves rightly, we would not be judged. (32) But when we are judged, we are disciplined by the Lord so that we will not be condemned along with the world. (1Co 11:27-32)

For the traditional interpretation of those verses I’m going to reference Eric Svendsen’s post on the same topic :

According to the standard reading of this passage, each participant of the Lord’s Supper should be engaged in introspective contemplation before and during the Supper lest he eat the Supper in an “unworthy manner” and thereby “be judged” for failing to “judge the body rightly.” This involves confession of any residual sin, quiet examination of the heart, and somber reflection on the sobriety of the event. Consequently, it seems to make good sense that the mood of the church during this event would mirror that of a wake.

Eric’s explanation of these verses are what I grew up with and what I hear almost every Sunday that we have communion so I assume that this reading is fairly common among evangelicals. But what Joe argues(and Eric in his post) is that the traditional meaning is not the one we should draw out of this passage. What they argue for is much less egocentric and much more concerned with the people we are communing with. Joe summarizes this quite nicely :

But this isn’t what Paul meant. The whole passage is referring to abuse and disregard for the poor while commemorating the Lord’s Supper at church. The more well-to-do were making a mockery of what Communion was supposed to represent - the ultimate selflessness. As believers (let’s give them the benefit of the doubt), they were worthy to partake of the Lord’s Supper, but they were doing so in an unworthy manner.

And here are some snippet’s from Eric’s post that flesh out the actual meaning of the passage a little more :

The very first thing to note here is that the Greek word translated “worthy manner” (a very good translation of the word, by the way) is literally “worthily.” This refers to the manner of eating not the state of the eater. In other words, Paul is not saying one comes under judgment for eating the Supper while in an unworthy state. He’s saying rather that one comes under judgment for eating the Supper in an unworthy way; in context, by illegitimately excluding the poor from the Supper—who were, after all, part of the “body” of Christ represented by the “one loaf” (1 Cor 10:16-17).
…
The point here is that no one in Corinth died for eating the Supper without first confessing residual sin. No one died for eating the Supper in an unworthy state. Indeed, lest there be any question in the mind of the reader concerning his state of worthiness at the Supper, let me see if I can put that to rest once and for all. You’re NOT worthy to partake of the Supper. I’m not worthy to partake of the Supper. No one is worthy to partake of the Supper. Thank God that Christ has called us to the Supper and accepted us in spite of our unworthy state.

The reason the Corinthians were dying was because they were excluding part of the body of Christ (the poor) from partaking of the body of Christ (the bread) for illegitimate reasons (Peter and the Jews were guilty of a similar offense when they excluded the Gentiles from table fellowship in Galatia, thereby failing to be “straightforward with the truth of the gospel,” Gal 2:11-13). That was the “unworthy manner” by which they partook of the Supper, and for which they were “eating and drinking judgment” to themselves.

To me, this interpretation just falls more in line with the whole of scripture. The purpose of the Lord’s supper is not to navel-gaze but to look to Christ as we somehow(don’t ask me how) participate with him at the table. And we do this in communion with the particular fellowship of believers we happen to part of. It might require some de-programming of the personal, how does it affect me gospel that we’re inundated with, but I believe that it’s the right way to go.