Judas Iscariot (right), retiring from the Last Supper, painting by Carl Bloch, late 19th century

A Twilight Musing

1 Cor. 11:23 (NIV)

For I have received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you, That the Lord Jesus the same night in which he was betrayed took bread . . . .

29 For anyone who eats and drinks without recognizing the body of the Lord eats and drinks judgment on himself.

How strange it is that Paul's account of the institution of the Lord's Supper is introduced by saying it was "on the night in which [Jesus] was betrayed." Why not say "during the last Passover meal with His disciples"? or "on the night before He died"? Perhaps it is because the context of the account has to do with the integrity of fellowship in the Body of Christ, the church. Just as Jesus was being betrayed during an intimate moment with His disciples, so the Corinthians were "sinning against the body and blood of the Lord" at the very moment when they should have been closest to Him and to each other. They were in a sense betraying the Lord just as Judas had, because they failed to recognize the meaning of Jesus' death. Their affections were elsewhere. We, like Judas, miss the whole point of the Incarnation of the Son of God when our hearts are not committed to the communion which He offers us.

The self-examination called for in this passage does not primarily concern the most common sins, but rather cautions us against the particular danger of focusing on our differences, rather than on the body and blood which draw us together in Christ. The spiritual blessing of partaking of the Lord's Supper comes from our discerning that Christian fellowship is made real only when we give Jesus our undivided attention. To do otherwise is to betray our Master, along with Judas, whose heart was not in the room of fellowship with Jesus, but outside, where he finally went to satisfy his own individual desires.

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.

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