I look down into my wine glass at the end of the meal. There is a bit of sediment at the bottom of the goblet. After my last swallow, I see these “dregs”—the fine powder and remnant of the fermentation process. They are concentrated bits of the smooth wine I’ve just tasted. When I have drained the cup to the dregs, nothing remains. It is finished.
When Jesus drank the cup of God’s wrath (Mark 14:36, ESV) for us, His people, He left nothing behind. There were no remaining bits at the bottom of His goblet. “He humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” (Philippians 2:8, ESV) There, He emptied the debt that remained between God and man, and He drank deeply, to the dregs. When He cried out from the cross that “it is finished” (John 19:30), He spoke truthfully. Nothing remained in the cup.
Now we who are in Christ are offered a different cup: the cup of mercy. As we sit shoulder-to-shoulder at the table, we are joyful debtors made free. God’s mercy having been poured out for us, we now have nothing to do but drink. Christians, we ought to drink deeply from the cup of mercy, leaving nothing behind. We must drink it to the dregs.
Look around the table. Behold your company.
See the needy and unlovable and many enemies.
I know that peace has never worked before,
but this feast satisfies the thirst for war
for justice has been won and mercy’s made us new. [1]
As I reflected on the word merriment, I kept coming back to instances in stories where a character is laid low until he knows he doesn’t have a leg to stand on. All pretense, all arrogance, is left aside, and the character is exposed in his need. It is a serious thing to be humbled in such a way. A man finds himself to be in want at certain times in his life, and if he is honest in the way he takes stock of himself, he will recognize this to be a spiritual good. When he sees the humbling lack within himself, it reveals his need for grace.
We can bear witness to this kind of humbling in two of my favorite Christmas stories, A Christmas Carol and It’s a Wonderful Life. Ebenezer Scrooge, upon seeing the destruction that his selfishness has done to his fellow man, is left grasping at his bed curtains in desperation, pleading for a second chance. George Bailey, through no fault of his own, is distraught and desperate, unable to pay back the debt he owes. They have both come to the end of themselves, utterly humbled.
At this moment, both of them choose to welcome the grace offered. Instead of shying away, they press in to the mercy presented through their lowly state. We see the newly-humbled Ebenezer Scrooge, merry as a schoolboy on Christmas morning, dancing a jig and struggling to get dressed. We think of George Bailey entering 320 Sycamore Street and letting fly with a ridiculous, “Isn’t it wonderful?! I’m going to jail!”
Likewise, when we reach these humbling times, what will we do? Shy away or enter in? We are encouraged by the author of Hebrews to “draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.” (Hebrews 10:22, ESV) If we believe the words and the love of Christ to be true, we may be laid low, utterly humbled, and yet as we draw near, we can take up our lives anew again, in gratitude and merriment.
Men and women become merry when they recognize the grace that has befallen them, and rather than standing off, rather than continuing to try to earn, they enter in. They drink the cup of mercy deeply, to the dregs, and call it good.
In a section in The Weight of Glory on the eternal nature of humans, C. S. Lewis tells us that we ought to play, but
“. . . our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously—no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption.” [2]
The moment superiority enters the room, the moment one of us wants a leg up on another, we are not so much together anymore. We don’t have space for merriment anymore. We must protect ourselves; we are no longer free to laugh. “No flippancy,” says Lewis above, and “no superiority.” We must see one another as fellow partakers of the grace that has been offered to us. We must sit side by side at the table, coheirs. We must take each other seriously—then, and only then, we may rejoice together.
We sit side by side at the communion feast, on “level ground” at the foot of the cross, as the adage goes. Because Jesus drained the cup of wrath, we drink deeply of the cup of mercy together. There is no superiority. We rejoice side by side as we partake of the feast of the Lord.
Joyfully we join You at Your table
Pleading not our righteousness
By Your wealth of mercy, we are able
Now to feast in confidence
Take this bread and eat
Take this cup and drink
Remember how He loved us
Rejoice and keep the feast [3]
[1] Slaten, Christopher. “The Meal We Could Not Make.” Son of Laughter, 2018.
[2] Lewis, C. S. The Weight of Glory: And Other Essays. Macmillan, 1949.
[3] Peterson, Skye & Shive, Ben. “Keep the Feast.” Getty Music Publishing, 2024.
The featured image is courtesy of Jordan Durbin and is used with her kind permission for Cultivating.
Kelly Keller writes the weekly substack On the Common, encouraging Christians to labor for the flourishing of their homes, churches, and communities. She’s a contributor at Story Warren, The Rabbit Room, The Gospel Coalition, and Risen Motherhood. She has her BS in Elementary Education from Messiah University and has taught various ages, but her favorite was worldview and literature with high school students. The “gap” in her resume is actually a window of eighteen years of homeschooling, which she recommends as an effective, though demanding, way of expanding one’s home library.
When she’s not behind her laptop, Kelly enjoys live music, baseball, reading great books, and traveling with her husband, David. Kelly hails from beautiful snowy New England, but after nearly two decades in North Carolina, she feels right at home.
Truth! 🙂A wonderful reminder and reflection. So well said. Suggest you repost at Christmas too.