Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!sun-barr!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: mls@cbnewsm.ATT.COM (mike.siemon) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: Alcohol: /Open communion Summary: and what happens to grape juice, once pressed? Message-ID: Date: 12 Feb 90 10:09:45 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories Lines: 89 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu There has been some discussion that boggles my mind about whether the liquid used at the last suppper was wine or not. It really does not depend on identifying this meal as a Passover seder (note that in John's account it is *not* -- Jesus *dies* at the time of the sacrifice of the paschal lamb, thus the meal on the preceding Thursday was not a seder, if you accept John's gospel). The modern use of grape juice in small individual containers is in fact modern. This usage is reasonable -- especially for those congregants who wish to avoid alcohol. I was very perturbed to see in these discussions a sort of macho theology that assumed it good to expose anyone at all to the dangers of alcohol. That is a danger that some of us know we *should* not risk -- so that the smugness of pro-alcohol propaganda is offensive. It is, truly, a logistical problem to provide at Communion both a common chalice and a tray of individual "servings" of grape juice. But that is not really a major problem. I cannot speak for those in my own parishes who *did* take the individual cups, but for my part I do not see that as cutting them off from the communion in which I am partaking. But this usage, which I *will* defend, depends on a *modern* ability to keep grape juice from fermenting, either into wine or into vinegar. In the ancient world, grape juice _a la_ Welches was essentially impossible. Yeasts were omnipresent (as they still are) and as sweet a substance as grape juice (the sweetest of all natural fruit juices) would require protections unavailable to people in those days to *prevent* fermentation. Even "unleavened" bread probably had *some* yeast and some of the yeast-induced leavening -- just because the yeast spores were in the air and no adequate protection existed against them. What "unleavened" bread meant was *absence* of specifically introduced leaven, no use of your favorite sour-dough starter. For bread, this is enough to prevent signficant rising. For wine, the matter is more complex. Wine takes a month at the least before it is drinkable. If you press grapes for their juice, you can use it instantly (i.e. in September or October) or else it *will* go off -- either into wine or vinegar. There is no way in ancient technology to prevent this. Wine is, in fact, the *only* way to preserve grape juice to be drinkable months after the harvest. The anti-alcohol lobby would like to have this fact ignored -- they invent insane scenarios in which Jesus did *not* use wine. But it is just as absurd to say that Jesus would have forbidden the use of unfermented grape juice -- that was just not an option in his time, and to rule it out is a historicism that refuses to come to terms with *what* Jesus was doing. It wasn't a magical rite that would be "invalid" without (alcoholic) wine -- it was a rite of union in which we drink of the same cup, in order to accept that we have flowing in our veins the "same" blood that flowed in his. The cup we drink is the new covenant in his blood. It is *important* that we drink this; it is much less important that we have a neat and tidy theory pigeonholing the substances involved. If what you drink is for you the same wine that God pressed out in the agony of His Son, then we are drinking the same communion cup -- regardless of whether the liquid derives from Napa Valley, the New York concord grape vine- yards, or whatever else may be seriously offered by human hands for the divine mandate that we *ourselves* make the oblation. What He did in the Last Supper was to take the product of human labor, of the fields in which most of his hearers labored, and to *redirect* that as the vehicle of communion with God. Wine, and its alcoholic penumbra, has an ancient lineage in Jesus' world. He clearly used that realm of symbolic association in calling forth the wine of his Last Supper chalice. But to dwell on alcohol -- pro or con -- misses the point. The "bread" of communion is *whatever* we produce from wheat (and maybe also from other grains) as an edible staple of our lives. The "wine" is also a staple. It is the common drink of a land where water may be a problem, if it is not the "living water" of a spring. Jesus is, for us, the living water. Equally homely, he is the wine and bread of our daily sustenance. To try to constrain this (as Catholic theology does in requiring communion hosts to be only [wheat]flour and water) as to the specific materials involved misses the point that the materials are *ordinary* -- they are *whatever* we poor Christians have around. If we start making other logistical requirements, we are trying to make it *hard* for the ordinary Christian to have on hand the materials Christ assumed we *all* have, and all need. If you seriously pray that God grant you your daily bread, you can not (I think) at the same time place barriers that would prevent other Christians from taking *their* daily, ordinary materials into the liturgy -- the service -- of God. In Palestine 2000 years ago, that meant wheatbread (leavened or not) and wine; in modern American it *can* mean the same, but to *restrict* the meaning to that must be a barrier between men and God. I cannot believe that such a barrier is the intent of the institution of Holy Thursday. -- Michael L. Siemon As grain once scattered on the hillside cucard!dasys1!mls Was in this broken break made one, att!sfbat!mls So from all lands thy church be gathered standard disclaimer Into thy kingdom by thy son.