Saturday: The Relation of the Koinonia to the Church
WEEK 18
SATURDAY
THE RELATION OF THE KOINONIA TO THE CHURCH
Ephesians 5:25-27
The fellowship, or koinonia, was antecedent to and formed the soul of the church. Out of it the church grew. The soul secreted its skeleton. The fellowship was the organism that produced the organization, the church. The first act of that organism into organization was the choosing of the “seven.”
This brings an important truth to light: Where there is the fellowship, the koinonia, there is the church. But where the fellowship is absent, there we have an organization but no organism. We have a body but no soul—we have a corpse.
Where the Holy Spirit is, there is the fellowship—the fellowship of the Spirit—and where there is the fellowship, there is the church. In other words, where the Holy Spirit is, there is the church; and conversely, where the Holy Spirit is not, there is not the church. The symbol of this unity was the loaf—“the breaking of the loaf.” This is not the Eucharist, or the Lord’s Supper, as some have thought. The “Fellowship of the Loaf” meant that just as the grains from scattered hills and valleys had been brought into one loaf, so these diverse and scattered peoples had been brought into the one loaf, the one bread, the one body.
This Fellowship of the Loaf had another significance; it signified their unity in not only spiritual things but material things as well. They ate one bread. Hitherto they had been eating many breads; each one was on his or her own economically. Now the fellowship included the responsibility for the bread of each. It fulfilled the prayer of Jesus: “Give us this day our daily bread”—not “give me” but “give us.”
This Fellowship of the Loaf, the Love Feast, dropped out; and the Lord’s Supper became the sole rite connected with the breaking of one bread. Was that symptomatic of what had happened? Did they find it easier and less demanding to eat the Lord’s bread—what he did for us—than to eat the bread of the Love Feast—what we should do for one another? It seems so.
O Lord, we thank you for this fellowship that came into being; help us to recapture it and reincarnate it, for our togetherness has been broken. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: I belong to the Fellowship of the Loaf, scattered humanity gathered into one.