16-6-4 Social Tensions in the Church

We have observed that the extraordinary unity between rich and poor in the ecclesias must have been something which arrested the attention of a divided and unhappy world. And yet 1 Cor. 11 shows how things went wrong here- the rich ate huge meals at the breaking of bread, whilst the poor brethren went hungry. Remember that the memorial services were usually held in the home of a wealthy brother. It was common for wealthy people to hold banquets which were occasions for the conspicuous display of social distances, even for the humiliation of the clients of the rich, by means of the quality and quantity of the food provided to different tables. Pliny describes such a banquet: “The best dishes were set in front of himself and a select few, and cheap scraps of food before the rest of the company. He had even put the wine into tiny little flasks, divided into three categories…”(1) . So we can imagine a person like Gaius, who hosted the meetings of the Corinth ecclesia, coming to be influenced by the world around him, with the result that the memorial feast became a time of drunkenness for the wealthy brethren and humiliation of the poorer majority. In Corinth, there were a number of households converted (Chloe, Stephanas, e.g.) who came together “in ekklesia” as “the whole church” for larger meetings (1 Cor. 11:20; 14:23). Yet there was tremendous potential here for disunity; each household could remain isolated from the others, even at the larger memorial meetings. And tragically, it seems that the separatist, household culture wasn’t broken down in the long term by ecclesial life as it should have been. The concept of “the household of God” being the all important unit wasn’t allowed to have the practical power which is latent within it. The exclusive nature of baptism should have meant that a totally new identity was formed; Christianity was exclusive in a way that none of the pagan cults were.

 

We have to ask whether the divided secular world in which we live is not having its effect upon us; whether there are not real divisions along social, gender and ethnic lines in our meetings; and whether the spirit of the world is affecting how we relate to each other in the ecclesia. Even if we feel this is not the case with us, the Christian community of the 21st century cannot comfortably face the question: Do we allow the memory of the Lord’s sacrifice to bind us together, or are we allowing the very thing which ought to unite us to disunite us? Do family and other groupings still persist amongst us even before the emblems of the Lord’s selfless, all-inclusive sacrifice?

 

Notes

(1) Betty Radice, The Letters Of The Younger Pliny   (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1969) p. 63.