Wine

Again, I am confessing I am not a very good Baptist boy.  I'm just saying.

One of the outcomes of helping my friend Syd with this year's grape/wine harvest is an appreciation for the care and work it takes for grape juice to be transformed into drinkable wine. As I mentioned in a previous post, my wife and I helped with the harvest and crush a couple weeks ago.  A week ago last Friday we helped with squeezing out the skins, seed and occasional stem from the crush. It was remarkable to taste the very new wine at various stages of the press, there is a difference from that which flows easily and that which comes from pressing hard the solids of the crush. When we were finished that evening there was about 50 gallons of Barbera and 35 gallons of Zinfandel.  Unfortunately Syd's Sirah was not ready and he told me Sunday at church he'd had to toss it as it had gone bad before he had the time to press it. As before, it was interesting to reflect on the work, the process little changed from wine making in the days Jesus physically walked the earth.

Syd mentioned his awe at how much was produced, how his five rows of each variety gave such abundance. The God-spoken soil is so full of life.

Of course this past Sunday was the first Sunday of the month and like most Baptist churches we celebrated Communion. I'm not writing out of criticism of our process - the tiny bit of unleavened cracker or the miniscule plastic cup of grape juice - it is what it is and we are reminded adequately of the tremendous price paid by our Elder Brother for us to have access to Abba's heart.

What did strike me was the contents of the tiny plastic cup. As we partook of the elements our choir sang a song inviting us to come taste the bread, come taste the wine. My thought was, especially after my recent work with my friend Syd, "This is not wine. Are we missing something here?"

I know well the symbolism we're taught with the bread representing Jesus' body and the "wine" representing His shed blood, but I wonder if we've missed something else as well. Wine is grape juiced transformed from something innocuous into something different, stronger. Perhaps in our false sense of religious propriety we've  missed the symbolism of transformation that real wine might represent.

We are not called to be sweet and innocuous but rather something strong and powerful for the Kingdom; Jesus' words, "You are salt, you are light", come to mind. I am wondering if we have missed a powerful reminder of Jesus' transformational power by substituting grape juice for a taste of powerful wine. His very presence, as He said to His disciples in the upper room that night, "I am in you, you are in Me", is a deeply significant and transformative reality that we desperately need to be reminded of. Yes, that monthly tiny plastic cup does represent His shed blood but it also needs to remind us of His transformative power as well.

I'm just saying.