Eucharistic meditation, September 11

Ephesians 5:18-20: “Do not get drunk with wine, for that is dissipation, but be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord; always giving thanks for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God, even the Father.”

Scripture issues a number of warnings against drunkenness. “Blessed are you, O land, whose king is of nobility and whose princes eat at the appropriate time—for strength and not for drunkenness,” Solomon says in Ecclesiastes (10:17). “Do not look on the wine when it is red, when it sparkles in the cup, when it goes down smoothly; at the last it bites like a serpent and stings like a viper,” he adds in

Proverbs (23:31-32). “It is not for kings, O Lemuel, it is not for kings to drink wine, or for rulers to desire strong drink,” says Proverbs 31.

In response to these warnings, some Christians have concluded that to be really, very, extra safe, they have to remove wine from the Lord’s Supper as well. If wine is so dangerous, it has to be avoided altogether. This is not a biblical conclusion. When Yahweh first set up a central sanctuary in Israel, part of its purpose was to provide a place for festivity, and that included a place for drinking wine and strong drink (Deut 12, 14-16). For the people of God, worship has always included wine.

I have no studies to back me up, but I dare say that removing wine from the Lord’s Supper has produced an increase rather than a decrease in drunkenness. If wine is merely excluded from the Christian diet, it takes on an aura of mystery, of transgression. When we drink wine at the Lord’s Table, we receive it as a gift of God, and give thanks for it. At the Lord’s table, we are not drunk with wine, but we receive wine while singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord.

The central solution to the sin of drunkenness is not tee-totalism. The central solution, the solution of Scripture, is to enjoy the wine of this table as a gift of God, and to come to this feast of wine not to be drunk with wine but to be filled – to be inebriated – with the Spirit.