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“One remains hungry, another gets drunk”

1 Corinthians 11:21
Cultural referenceWell-supportedPaul
For as you eat, each of you goes ahead without sharing his meal. While one remains hungry, another gets drunk. (1 Corinthians 11:21 BSB)

What it sounds like today

Bad table manners at a church potluck.

The cultural key

The Lord's Supper was an actual supper, hosted in a member's house, and Roman dinner culture came with the architecture: the host's triclinium seated the important few, who by custom could receive better food and wine than the overflow guests in the atrium (Pliny, Martial, and Juvenal all skewer hosts who ran two-tier menus). Add timing: the propertied arrived early and started; laborers and slaves came late to leftovers. The Corinthian assembly had imported the whole apparatus, which is why Paul says 'it is not the Lord's supper that you eat' and asks whether they 'despise the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing.'

Recovered meaning

The scandal is not gluttony but stratification: the one meal that proclaimed one body was being served in two classes. Paul's remedy ('wait for one another') is table logistics as theology.

Parallels: 1 Corinthians 11:33–34; James 2:2–4
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