The greatest thing that Jesus ever did in His life was actually the sum total of His life, and the effect was to manifest the Father. He did various particular wonders, true enough, but in the cosmic scheme of things, they were little more than attention-getters. When we get distracted by them, we are missing the whole point. Jesus said that a wicked and adulterous generation seeks after a sign. We are not to chase after God, looking for a magic show.
When we come to this Table, we are not supposed to be looking for a particular marvel, or a particular miracle. We are to look for, and see, God’s work in the world. When Philip asked to see the Father, Jesus told Him that if he had seen Jesus, he had seen the Father. Jesus was the point of access to the Father. But Jesus is now gone, and He has sent a Comforter to indwell His people, so that when people see the Church, they see Jesus.
Now that does not seem like a good plan. We see immediately that the vision of the Father was not obscured in Jesus by any sin or blemish or foibles on His part. But when people look to the Church, to the body of Christ, in order to see Christ, sometimes sin and blemishes are all they can see.
But God is telling the world to wait. The picture is going to become increasingly clear as history unfolds. As Christians are increasingly sanctified by the Spirit, as the Word takes deeper and deeper root in our lives, as we are knit together more completely, the end of the process will be a Bride, the body of Christ, and that body will be without spot or blemish.
And we will say to the remaining unbelievers, “Have I been with you so long, and you still say, ‘Show us Jesus’? If you have seen me, you have seen Jesus. And if you have seen Jesus, you have seen the Father.”
Of course, it seems semi-blasphemous to talk like this, and so we shrink back. But we are told repeatedly to present the body of Christ to the world, declaring the death and resurrection of Jesus as we do. And we have three ways of presenting that body—first in the proclamation of the Word, in the preaching of the gospel. Second, in the love we display for one another. And third, as we come to this Table to eat that body, and drink that blood.