We know that the Lord’s Supper is a remembrance.  We often narrow it down to the cross of Christ.  We should be focussed on union with Christ.  I like how J. Todd Billings puts it in his recent book, “Remembrance, Communion, and Hope: Rediscovering the Gospel at the Lord’s Table.”  You’ll notice he uses the language of “drama.”  This can be used well or not so well. If we understand by this that we are called to apply the lessons of Biblical history to our lives and so continue to apply the work of the Cross of Christ in the World, we are on a good path and that is where Billings is leading us.  The person he got this from, N.T. Wright, doesn’t always use the idea of drama so well.  He ends up using it in a way that undermines the truth of scripture.  Billings, however, is careful to use what is useful in Wright’s understanding of the drama of scripture. Here is the quote.:

“If our identity is to be transformed in the triune drama of salvation [Billings means by this that we desire to move from the family of Satan to the family of God, which is accomplished with ever greater union with the church of history and the God of history, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit], then we need a robust and multifaceted remembrance of God’s promises.  This will be inseparably connected with a present communion with our Lord Jesus Christ mediated by the Spirit.  This will also involve a hope for the return of the same Christ, and the final consummation of creation giving way to the promised kingdom.  Though all this, dwelling upon and receiving God’s word in Scripture, we are given words of life to direct our path, reveal our script in the drama, and show us the identity to which the Spirit is conforming us in Christ.

Why is this threefold approach necessary?  N.T. Wright claims that the story of Jesus is incomplete without the story of Israel in the past, and also without the story of God’s future, which frames the church in the present.  In parallel to this, Wright speaks about the Lord’s Supper as a place where “past and present come together.  Events from long ago are fused with the meal we are sharing here and now.” Moreover, if the bread-breaking is one of the key moments when the thin partition between heaven and earth becomes transparent, it is also one of the key moments when God’s future comes rushing into the present.”  For “Jesus—the real Jesus, the living Jesus, the Jesus who dwells in heaven and rules over the earth as well, the Jesus who has brought God’s future in the present—wants no just to influence us, but to rescue us; not just to inform us, but to heal us; not just to give us something to think about, but to feed us, and to feed us himself.  That’s what this meal is all about.”  The Supper—like the gospel itself—involves a convergence of God’s mighty acts and promises in the past, the in-breaking and anticipation of God’s future, and nourishment upon Christ in the present.  Anything less is a reduction, something other  than living before the face of the triune God.”

One more thing should be explained.  What does Wright mean about bringing the future into the present?  He is talking about justification.  God takes something that he would give us at the end of time, and by the righteousness of Christ allows us to share in his justification.  Because Christ lived a righteous life, we too may share in that righteousness.  Wright has some suspect thoughts on justification, but on this he is absolutely right.