a Twilight Musing

          The Lord’s Supper is a meal of acceptance, the supreme symbol of divine hospitality.  In gathering around the table, we are the guests of Jesus.  We have not invited Him to join us; rather, we sit at the feast He has prepared.  Whenever we are invited to dinner, we expect the host or hostess to welcome us warmly when we enter, to make us comfortable, to put himself or herself to some trouble to help us overcome the strangeness of being for a while a part of another family.  But how astonished we would be if the host, in addition to giving us the comforts of his home and the nourishment of his food, said to us, “In order to make it possible for you to eat this meal—indeed, in order for you to continue to live at all—I must offer up my life.”  That was Jesus’ message to His disciples at the Last Supper, and He continues to serve as the ultimately self-sacrificing host at each observance of it.  He serves us not with the fruits of a few hours’ cooking, but with Himself. 

          How can Jesus be both the host and that which is eaten?  There is the mystery which draws us together.  The Lord took the form of our human bodies for a time to assure that we, His handiwork, would not come to an end.  The wonder of it is that in leaving His divine invulnerability, in sacrificing His human body and all the human desires that went with it, in giving so excruciatingly much, He was not diminished.  That truth is the eternal substance behind the Eucharistic symbols of His body and blood.  It takes the shocking image of guests solemnly eating the flesh of their host and drinking his blood, while he yet lives, to make us realize the inexhaustible intimacy of God’s gift through Christ.  The Son reaches out His hands to us, as we must to each other, and every occasion at His table opens the door into the heart of God.

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.