The experts tell us that 90% of the instruction that you give to children should be in the form of praise. The idea being that if you affirm them for the good things they do, they will be motivated to higher and better things. If on the other hand you major on criticisms, the effect will be to discourage and alienate.

Of course there are occasions when a rebuke is appropriate, but generally it is good to affirm and encourage. Well, Paul was aware of the importance of praise, so he begins this section with a word of praise. He praises the Corinthians for remembering the teachings about worship that he had passed on to them. Not only does he praise them for remembering it, but also for holding to that teaching.

It’s an important for any church to remain true to the apostolic teaching, which of course is based on Jesus and what God revealed to mankind in him. But there are a couple of areas of concern that Paul has about what went on when the church at Corinth met for worship.

The first is in relationship to the distinctive between men and women. Paul regards it as important that women should have their heads covered when they participate in worship. Of course traditionally here in Britain we interpreted that to mean that women should come to church wearing a hat. As Paul expounds the teaching here on the subject it is really quite clear that for women the wearing of some form of head covering was symbolic of deeper, more important truths. I suspect that for the hat wearing, church going ladies of the 1950’s, the symbol had become rather more important that the truths behind the symbol.

I don’t expect all the ladies to come to church wearing hats next week, but it will be good if we manage to grasp the truth that is symbolized by women covering the head. The women’s rights movement has tended to look at such teachings as just another instance of women being repressed by men. What the feminist movement sometimes fails to recognise, is that women and men are distinctly different from each other.

Men and women have different roles to play in life. One feature that Christianity brought to the ancient world was an elevation in the status of women. Paul says in verse 11 ‘In the Lord, woman is not independent of man, nor is man independent of woman. For as woman came from man, so also man is born of woman’. Men and women need each other. Woman was created from man’s rib, but all men, even Jesus himself are born of woman. Of course Paul also teaches that God loves men and women equally. ‘There is neither male nor female, all are one in Christ’.

In Jewish synagogue worship, women had little or no part to play. They were not even counted towards the number needed for a quorum to form a synagogue. It had to be ten men. In the church however, women could both pray and prophesy. As foretold by the prophet Joel the last days had come and sons and daughters could and did prophesy.

But Paul teaches that it is appropriate that women should wear a head covering. The first reason he gives has to do with creation. In creation, God brought order out of chaos. Our world is ordered so there is a time and place for everything. One aspect of the creation order is that the creation has respect for the creator. The creation starts first with the creator God. Then there is divine son who honours and obeys the father. Then there is man who honours and respects the Son. Woman, who is created from man respect her husband. We could go on to mention the fifth commandment for children to honour their father and mother.

There is a rightness and appropriateness in that order. We perceive inappropriateness when the created object wants to dominate its creator. In the OT Jeremiah talks about the impudence of a clay pot trying to tell the potter his job. Or in more recent times we have the horror story of Frankenstein’s monster turning on its creator. The story of the fall is another example of the created rebelling against his creator, with all the resultant sin and destruction.

One characteristic of fallen human nature is that people are rebellious. But the attitude of rebellion is not appropriate in our worship. The church is made up of people who have accepted Jesus as Lord. That means accepting order. It means submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ. The woman who covered her head in worship was showing that respect.

There is a second thing that covering the head signified for Paul. Societies always have had their dress codes. In the world of the first century respectable women covered their heads. On the other hand, women who were in disgrace would have their head shaved as a punishment and a way of being publicly disgraced. In that context Paul is saying that if women refuse to cover their heads in church, then they bring disgrace both on themselves and on the church.

It is the Christian’s calling by the way we dress, the way we speak, the way we behave to attract people to Christ. God may not want ladies to wear hats in church in the 21^st century; but he does want us all by our attitudes and by the way we dress to send a message of who we are and what we believe to society. We are called us to reflect God’s purity and love to the world around.

Then Paul moves onto the next thing that he is concerned about. He has heard how some of the Corinthians behave at the Lord’s Supper. He doesn’t mince his words. He says your meetings do more harm than good. I heard once of a man whose doctor had advised him to leave his church because it was bad for his health. It’s a sad state of affairs when church is doing more harm than good, especially when that is happening at the service, which is at the heart of church life.

And the communion service is that. In the last chapter of this letter we looked at Paul was reminding the Corinthians of the importance of the sharing the bread and wine and how it not only identifies us with Jesus, but with other Christians too. Paul talks about the fact that all Christians are one, because we all share in the same loaf. But this sharing communion was something that was emphasising the divisions at Corinth rather than affirming their unity in Christ.

From the book of Acts, we learn that when the church was born, back in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost there was a spontaneous sort of fellowship created. A community was born whose life was characterised by joy and by generosity. They were generous to each other with their possessions. They shared meals in each-others homes and these meals were also the occasions on which they celebrated the Lord’s Supper.

In fact it seems that the early communion service took the form of a full meal. Scholars tell us that at the start of the meal the bread was broken, as Jesus had broken the bread at the last supper. At the end of the meal the wine was blessed and shared as Jesus had done with it in the upper room. Communion in the early church was known as the love feast.

But at Corinth things had sadly deteriorated. There was a decided lack of love at their communion feast. Paul describes what was going on in verse 21. People were bringing their own food, but were not sharing it with each other. Some people couldn’t wait for others to arrive before they started eating. Some were getting drunk while others were starving. And at the very meal that was supposed to remind them of Christ’s love and sacrifice for them. At the very meal where Christ had given the new commandment to his disciples that they should love one-another, there was no love. There was no generosity towards the poor people who had little or nothing to bring to the meal.

Others were getting drunk, and in doing so were just showing how little they understood of what it meant to be a follower of Jesus. Paul first of all reminds them of what the communion service is all about. In fact Paul’s words here are the earliest written account that we have of the Lord’s Supper. This is the passage that is most commonly read at communion services across the world today.

Paul reminds the Corinthians, and he reminds us that in communion, we do as Jesus did on the night he was betrayed. And we do it because Jesus asked us to do it in remembrance of him. In fact when we do it, it’s a reminder of his death for us. A reminder of the fact that he loved us so much that he was willing to die for us.

Paul also warns that it is a sin against Christ to eat and drink communion in an unworthy way. In fact some of the Christians at Corinth were suffering, they were under the Lord’s discipline because they hadn’t grasped what it meant to be a disciple of Jesus. Some were ill; some had even died.

Paul says that the vital thing we should do, the thing that some were failing to do at Corinth was to recognise the body of the Lord. What does that mean? What is the body of the Lord? Paul had learned. On the road to Damascus he had met Jesus. Jesus had spoken to him. ‘Saul why do you persecute me?’ But he wasn’t actually persecuting Jesus. Jesus was in heaven at God’s right hand. What Paul had been persecuting was the church of Jesus. Paul had come to understand that the church is the body of Christ.

Before we share in communion, we need to discern the body. We need to be in love and charity with our fellow believers. We need to have forgiven them as Christ has forgiven us. We need to be committed in love and truth to them, as Christ commands us to.

Like the Corinthians, Christ sometimes disciplines us. But it’s in order to restore us to fellowship with himself and with each other. May God grant that here, along with the church everywhere that meets in the name of Jesus, men and women might not be harmed, but find the reconciling, healing power of the gospel sustaining and transforming their lives.

Amen.

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