CHOTTO MATTE! -- Devotional for October 27, from "Good Seeds"

Wait for one another. (I Corinthians 11:33)

Do you remember as a child walking with your mom or dad and trying to keep up? Adults walk faster than children not only because they have longer legs, but also because they are in a bigger hurry! If you were in Japan you might hear parents saying, “Isogei!” (ee-so-gay): “Hurry Up!” Running to catch up, their children might reply, “Chotto Matte!” (cho-toe-ma-tay): “Wait up! Just a minute!” It isn’t just age difference that causes one person to move along at a faster or slower pace than another. Some (adult types), thinking only of their destination, view the distance between where they are and where they want to be as a huge irritation. Others (child types), knowing how to relish the moment, stop and smell the roses along the way. Which type are you? Do you sit down at the table and dive right in, or do you wait patiently for others – and do you pause to pray? We think of the dinner table as a place to be waited on, but Paul reminded the Corinthians that it was a place to wait on – and wait for – others. Actually, he was referring to communion, which was not a time to indulge in food, but to revel in worship. Apparently a serious problem had formed in the church at Corinth, where members were using the Lord’s table as an excuse for gorging on food and guzzling down wine, to the point of gluttony and drunkenness! But was it only self-indulgence that Paul condemned, and that was incurring judgment for these Christians? No! There’s another sin here, far more subtle, but apparently just as lethal. Paul alludes to it twice in his first letter to the Corinthians: “What? Have you not houses in which to eat and drink?” (verse 22). “If anyone is hungry, let him eat at home, so that you may not incur judgment when you come together” (verse 34). The sin was not so much in their eating and drinking (otherwise Christians might properly fear God’s disapproval of any meal they might share together, down at the church, or over at the restaurant); nor was it their potential disregard for the sacred meaning of the communion elements. When Paul spoke of partaking of the bread and cup in an unworthy manner, and that those who did so were in jeopardy of literal judgment of the body (illness and death, verse 30), he was also referring to the way they disregarded one another! Their self-indulgence was not only a desecration of the worship of God, violating the first part of the great commandment, to “Love God with all your heart,” it was also a desecration of fellowship with one another, violating the second part, to “love your neighbor as yourself.” And so, may all the supposedly mature and spiritually driven Christians among us listen to our rose-smelling little brothers, and wait for them, and upon them – Chotto matte!