A Twilight Musing

            Jesus’ last discourse with his disciples (as presented in John 14-17) is permeated with references to His Father--as is his whole life.  He makes it clear that the Father is the source of everything that the Son is bringing to the world, and that the Son has no significance except as an interpreter of and an avenue to the Father.  From the Father Jesus proceeded, and to Him He was to return (Jn. 16:28).  Paul says that in the consummation of all things, Christ will “hand over the kingdom to God the Father,” so that “the Son himself will be made subject to him,” and “God may be all in all” (I Cor. 15:24-28).  In the account of the Last Supper in Matthew 26, Jesus noted that this last partaking of the wine with them looked forward to the time when He would “drink it anew with [them] in [His] Father’s kingdom.”  What is to be made of the complete focus of Jesus on His Father as it relates to the institution of the Lord’s Supper?

            Perhaps the key to answering this question lies in Jesus’ emphasis in His last discourse to His disciples on the oneness of Himself and His Father, and the corresponding oneness He prays that His disciples will have after He leaves them (Jn. 17:11, 20-23).  The identification between Father and Son is so close that Jesus can tell His disciples that “He who has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9).  So when Jesus, in instituting the Lord’s Supper, told His disciples to “do this in remembrance of me,” He was inviting them (and us) to remember also that through Jesus’ sacrifice, His Father has become our Father, too.  Consequently, we have received “the spirit of sonship,” whereby the Holy Spirit “cries out with our spirits, “Abba, Father!” (Rom. 8:15-16).

            So when we partake of the Lord’s Supper, it is a remembrance not only of what Christ did for us, but of the new and ongoing relationship with the Father which His death and resurrection restored.  Jesus is not only our Savior, but our elder Brother, the exemplar of submission to the will of our Father.  Moreover, just as people were able to see the Father in the Son, so we are, through the Spirit of the crucified and risen Christ within us, to reflect the Father and the Son.

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.