1 Corinthians 11:33–34

1 Corinthians 11:33 — "Wait for one another"

The Greek verb ekdéchesthe (ἐκδέχεσθε), translated "wait for," carries the connotation of active, expectant reception — not merely pausing, but welcoming. Paul has spent the preceding verses (11:17–32) cataloguing the scandal of the Corinthian eucharistic assembly: wealthy members were eating and drinking ahead of the poor, some were gorging while others went hungry, and the result was a gathering that "did more harm than good" (v. 17). Verse 33 is therefore not a polite suggestion but a corrective command addressed to the entire community ("my brothers," adelphoi mou), restoring mutuality to the assembly. The act of waiting is itself a form of charity — the recognition that no member arrives at the table in isolation. The Lord's Supper is constitutively communal; one cannot truly receive it alone or in indifference to one's neighbor. This is why Paul uses the language of "coming together" (synerchoménoi) repeatedly in this section (vv. 17, 18, 20, 33, 34) — the assembly itself is the context in which the Eucharist has meaning. To wait is to acknowledge that the Body of Christ gathered is inseparable from the Body of Christ broken.

Verse 34a — "If anyone is hungry, let him eat at home"

Paul draws a sharp distinction between the eucharistic assembly and a private meal taken to relieve hunger. He is not denigrating bodily hunger — he is relocating it. The agape meal shared in the community had become, for the wealthy, a vehicle for conspicuous consumption at the expense of the poor. Paul's remedy is surgical: if physical hunger is the concern, address it before you arrive. This preserves the integrity of the eucharistic gathering, which has a single, irreducible purpose — the proclamation and participation in the death of the Lord (v. 26). The phrase "eat at home" (en oíko esthiéto) draws a categorical line between what belongs to domestic life and what belongs to the liturgical assembly. It anticipates what would become, over the early centuries of the Church, the gradual separation of the agape meal from the strictly eucharistic celebration.

Verse 34b — "Lest your coming together be for judgment"

The word kríma (judgment) echoes v. 29, where Paul warns that eating and drinking "without discerning the body" brings judgment upon oneself. The threat of judgment is not merely spiritual inconvenience but the same divine reckoning Paul has already associated (v. 30) with the illness and death among the Corinthians. The assembly that should be a foretaste of the eschatological banquet becomes, when disordered by selfishness, an anticipation of judgment instead of salvation. The stakes are nothing less than whether the community's gathering participates in the saving event of the Eucharist or acts against it.

Verse 34c — "The rest I will set in order when I come"

Paul reserves certain further regulations for a future, in-person visit. This remark signals that eucharistic order is not fully reducible to written instruction alone but requires the living authority of the apostle — a principle that points toward the Church's ongoing magisterial role in governing liturgical practice. The phrase also grounds eucharistic discipline in apostolic authority, not congregational preference.