A Twilight Musing

A symbol is something to which we react intellectually and emotionally because it evokes certain memories, ideas, and experiences.  The value of a symbol, therefore, lies not only in its appropriateness to the complex of ideas which it is designed to recall, but also in the individual’s experience of those ideas.  In the Lord’s Supper, God has provided for Christians a symbolic feast which is capable of bearing a range and richness of interpretation limited only by the depth and breadth of the communicant’s experience of the Lord Christ. 

Part of the beauty of the Lord’s Supper consists of its ability to unify all the varying degrees of Christian maturity.  One person may see in the bread only an uncomplicated reminder that Christ came in the flesh and suffered for our sake, and no more in the wine than that He shed His blood in sacrifice for all mankind; another may find these symbols arousing within himself a deep surge of spiritual strength and thanksgiving because he associates them with a whole range of personal experiences of the presence of Christ in his or her life.  As in any other act of worship or fellowship we are drawn together not merely by an artificial unanimity of form, nor by intellectual agreement, nor even by the same degree of Christian maturity, but by the Divine Love toward which all our hearts are turned. 

So the symbolism of the Lord’s Supper is just as significant to the infant in Christ as to the spiritually grown man; and yet the purity of its simplicity is as awe-inspiring to the adult as to the infant.  The response that the Communion evokes from us is a measure of our intimacy with God through Christ; but even in the most sophisticated response there is no room for pride, for the symbolism of this feast is larger than us all.

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.