Remember as Re-membering: The Eucharist, 1 Corinthians 11:17-34, and Profound Intellectual Disability

Abstract

In 1 Cor 11:17-34 Paul reprimands the Corinthians for the way in which they gather for worship, and addresses the Corinthians’ situation with the words of institution. This paper, exploring how the Lord’s Supper is importantly related to discerning the body of Christ and the church’s response to people on the social margins, pursues a question of the contemporary church: are we eating rightly? An examination of 1 Cor 11:17-34 reveals that the Lord’s Supper criticizes developments in society that have come to base the worth of bodies on their ability to meet society’s prized values of achievement, consumption, and production. Bodies that do not meet these aims are positioned as problems. This paper argues that people with profound intellectual disabilities, who often are placed on the social margins of both church and society, have much to teach about what it means to gather and be with one another as the church.