Lord's Supper Meditation: Death and Renewal
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A Twilight Musing
The Catholic doctrine of the Lord's Supper holds that it re-enacts the sacrifice of Christ on the cross each time it is observed, even to the point of the substance of the bread and wine being turned into the actual body and blood of Christ. Protestants have correctly rejected that doctrine in its most literal form, but the idea has relevance to what we ought to experience in the observance of this symbolic feast. If we give ourselves over to the action of God's presence in our lives as we partake of the Lord's Supper, He will enable us repeatedly to sacrifice our bodies so that they are put to death and renewed in service to Him. Paul admonishes Christians to “present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship” (Rom. 12:1).
The Lord’s Supper, then, serves to focus our thoughts more effectively on what it means to die with Christ and to be raised to "newness of life." I think the most memorable scripture to encapsulate this concept is Gal. 2:20: "I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me." When we take the bread, we embrace the sacrifice of our sinful desires by applying to ourselves what Jesus did on the cross. Though we continue to exist in these fleshly shells in order to serve Him on this earth as long as He chooses, they are not the real "us." Paul goes on to say, "The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God." Imprisoned as we are by "this body of death" (Rom. 7:24), the only way that we can describe our existence on this earth as life is by faith that God has instilled His life in us through what Christ did on the cross. Thus, as we partake of the wine, we affirm anew that though we are dead, yet we live through the life-giving blood of Christ.
The transformation that occurs in our partaking of the Lord’s Supper is not in the elements of bread and wine, but in ourselves. Through the Holy Spirit within us, God empowers us to transcend these sinful and frail bodies and to complete joyfully and purposefully whatever He has set for us to do while we are yet in this world.
Dr. Elton Higgs was a faculty member in the English department of the University of Michigan-Dearborn from 1965-2001. Having retired from UM-D as Prof. of English in 2001, he now lives with his wife in Jackson, MI. He has published scholarly articles on Chaucer, Langland, the Pearl Poet, Shakespeare, and Milton. Recently, Dr. Higgs has self-published a collection of his poetry called Probing Eyes: Poems of a Lifetime, 1959-2019, as well as a book inspired by The Screwtape Letters, called The Ichabod Letters, available as an e-book from Moral Apologetics. (Ed.: Dr. Higgs was the most important mentor during undergrad for the creator of this website, and his influence was inestimable.
