Communion Meditation: Discerning the Body and Blood of Christ
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A Twilight Musing
“For every time you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the death of the Lord, until he comes. It follows that anyone who eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily will be guilty of desecrating the body and blood of the Lord. A man must test himself before eating his share of the bread and drinking from the cup. For he who eats and drinks eats and drinks judgment on himself if he does not discern the body.” (I Cor. 12:26-29, NEB)
People sometimes fearfully abstain from partaking of the Lord’s Supper because they feel themselves unworthy. But it is not these people who are most likely to desecrate the body and blood of the Lord; rather, it is those who partake of the elements with hardly a second thought as to what it means who stand in danger of eating and drinking judgment on themselves. When Paul warns of the consequences of partaking unworthily (“That is why many of you are feeble and sick”), he may be speaking of physical illness, but he is certainly speaking of spiritual infirmity. The experience of the Lord’s Supper is so vital and so full of power that one cannot encounter it—any more than he can encounter Christ—in a spirit of mere neutrality. If he fails to see the body and blood of Christ in the bread and wine in a way that strengthens faith, hope, and love within him, he is hardened to the Blessed Presence of his Savior in a corresponding degree to the benefit he might have received.
Being confronted with Christ demands a decision, and one cannot ignore Him without endangering his spiritual health. To fail repeatedly to “discern the Body” in Christ’s memorial feast is progressively to commit spiritual suicide.
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.
