In Honesty and Truth

photo credit: the.dugger

1 Corinthians 5:6-8 (CEB)

Your bragging isn’t good! Don’t you know that a tiny grain of yeast makes a whole batch of dough rise?  Clean out the old yeast so you can be a new batch of dough, given that you’re supposed to be unleavened bread. Christ our Passover lamb has been sacrificed,  so let’s celebrate the feast with the unleavened bread of honesty and truth, not with old yeast or with the yeast of evil and wickedness.

Corinthians has a lot to say about Communion doesn’t it? For some reason, someone in the Corinthian church was having sex with his step mom, and then bragging about it.

bleah…

During the Passover weak, all of the leaven (yeast) is removed from the home. This is to ensure that the bread made for the Passover meal is “unleavened” bread. So Paul then makes a correlation to this Passover practice when speaking of this rogue church member.

Paul says, “Clean house! This kind of practice is not even done in pagan circles, why are you allowing it?” I think all too often today, churches are too afraid to “get in each other’s business” in fear that we offend someone.

“It’s no business of mine what people do when they are in the privacy of their own home.”

Really?

Paul pretty much says, “throw this guy out into the street.” How can you celebrate a Passover in “honesty and truth” if you allow yeast in your home?

Wouldn’t that make you a hypocrite?

I know I have been talking about Communion this week, so where is the connection?

I’m glad you asked.

In much the same way, I think the ritual of “purging one’s home” of yeast could be done in our personal lives. Yesterday we talked about “testing” yourself and I think this passage touches on that as well.

Can we really be “proud” and “boastful” of the sin in our lives – AND come to the Lord’s table in honesty? How much immorality do we allow “in our homes” and still feel we can come to the table in truth?

Is there old yeast still “growing” in our lives that we have not purged?

Of course I know we can’t be perfect, none of us can. None of us can be a lamb without blemish. But the freedom to come to the table should not be the same freedom to willfully and openly live in sin.

I like how the CEB uses the words “honesty and truth” when talking about the Lord’s table. I think it’s very possible to take the elements in deceit. I think we can lie, not only to others, but to ourselves when we take communion while we allow “old yeast” in our lives.