At some large Indian weddings there are, quietly, two dinners. The important guests are shown to a hall with tablecloths and waiters carrying fresh rotis; the drivers, the cooks' helpers and the late-arriving poorer relatives eat later, from what is left, standing at the back. Nobody announces the arrangement. Everyone understands it. Paul has heard that the Lord's Supper in Corinth looks like that: the better-off arrive early and eat well, while those who come after a day's labour find little left, and some go home hungry. He will call it contempt for the church of God. Before that, though, he takes up a quite different matter — what men and women wear on their heads when they pray.
Where it sits in the story: Act 5 — the church gathering as one body across status lines. Chapters 11–14 deal with the Corinthians' worship. Paul first addresses head coverings in prayer and prophecy, then the Lord's Supper, which he roots in the tradition of Jesus' last night. The meal that Jesus gave as a sign of his death for all has become, in Corinth, a display of social rank, and Paul insists it must proclaim the Lord's death by showing his body united.
What this chapter is doing: To correct disorder in worship: to keep gender distinctions in dress while women and men both pray and prophesy, and to restore the Lord's Supper as a shared meal that honours the whole body rather than mirroring the city's hierarchies.
- 11:1–3 — Imitate me, Paul says, as I imitate Christ. He praises them for holding to the traditions, then states a chain: Christ is the head of every man, the man is the head of the woman, and God is the head of Christ.
- 11:4–16 — A man who prays or prophesies with his head covered dishonours his head; a woman who prays or prophesies uncovered dishonours hers. Paul argues from creation, "because of the angels", from nature and from church custom, while insisting that in the Lord woman and man are not independent of each other, and both come from God.
- 11:17–22 — When they gather, there are divisions. Each goes ahead with his own supper, so one is hungry and another drunk. Do they not have houses to eat in? Paul will not praise them for humiliating those who have nothing.
- 11:23–26 — He hands on what he received from the Lord: on the night Jesus was betrayed he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and called it his body; and the cup, the new covenant in his blood. Doing this proclaims the Lord's death until he comes.
- 11:27–34 — Eating unworthily means sinning against the Lord's body and blood, so let each examine himself and discern the body. Paul links sickness and deaths among them to this. So wait for one another; anyone hungry should eat at home.
- An enduring practice: women should cover their heads in worship, as many churches — including many in India — still do.
- A lasting principle of gender distinction and male headship, expressed through a first-century custom that can take other forms today.
- A cultural ruling about honour and shame in Corinth, with the chapter's own stress on mutuality and women's public ministry as the lasting core.
Key verse: 1 Corinthians 11:26 · So what: Christians still disagree about head coverings, as the note below shows. They agree far more on the second half: a church meal that reproduces society's pecking order has lost its meaning. "Discerning the body" in this chapter includes noticing who went hungry. That is a searching test for any congregation where caste, class or seniority quietly decides who sits where.