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.  All things are bound up in the Father, for 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 . . . so that 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 you in my Father’s kingdom.“  In view of this complete focus of Jesus on His Father, how should we understand the focus on Jesus and His death (“Do this in remembrance of me”) in our observances of the Lord’s Supper?

            First, our only link with the Father is through the incarnate Son of God, that form in which He was most distinct from God the Father, and the only form in which He could experience the redemptive death necessary for the deliverance of humankind.  Secondly, God, the Father, was in Christ, reconciling Himself through the death of His Son to the world of fallen humans.  So in partaking of the Lord’s Supper, we receive both the Father and the Son, and if the Supper is properly observed, we depart having received anew the grace of the Holy Spirit that enables us to walk in newness of life.

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.