The Lord's Supper as an Agape Feast?

 

It is my understanding that we really don't know what the Passover meal practices were in Jesus' day, but that the Jewish writings of a few centuries later described the Seder (Passover meal) as we basically know it today, and said these were ancient practices at that time. But I'm far from an expert, so I could be far off the mark.

 

It is interesting that Luke refers to a cup before Jesus breaks the bread, and then refers to "the cup after supper", as if was a thing then, like unto what we now know about the Four Cups of the Seder meal, one to open the Seder, one just before the main meal, one just after the main meal, and one to close the Seder. But that could just be coincidental wording.

 

Regardless, the meal in 1 Cor 11 *appears* to not be a yearly meal, as was the Passover Seder; it appears to be often enough to help feed the poor of the assembly (v. 22). We know that scripture mentions:

• eating meals daily as being a function of the earliest church (Acts 2:46),
• and a "sub-Jewish" class of widows being neglected in the daily serving of meals (Acts 6:1),
• and certain church shepherds who only fed themselves during "love [agape] feasts, when they feast with you" (Jude 1:12),
• and false teachers who "revel in their deceit while they feast with you" (2 Peter 2:1, 13).

It does not seem a stretch to assume (while remembering it's only an assumption) that the Lord's Supper in Corinth was one of these "agape feasts", which incorporated within a larger meal a segment dedicated to "showing the Lord's death until he come", just as the Passover was a full-blown meal with segments dedicated to certain remembrances (such as the modern-day Seder practice of taking the middle bread from the middle of a three-pocket bread-holder pouch, breaking it in half, wrapping half in a white linen cloth and hiding it for the kids to find, with the finder "redeeming" it for some little prize), which Jesus explained had always pointed to him ("This is my body, which is broken for you. Do this in memory of me." - 1 Cor 11:24).

 

Like in the 2 Peter and Jude references, some in the church, particularly the [deceitful] shepherds and teachers, were using this meal as a "Feed Me" opportunity, rather than as a "Let's feed Jesus' sheep" opportunity. It wasn't the feast that Paul condemned or canceled; it was the selfishness attached thereto.