Comments on: Fruit of the Vine

By: Bread and Wine | The Wandering Shepherd

Bread and Wine | The Wandering Shepherd — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 04:06:45 +0000

[...] the next few days. We also just talked. I think this is how it was when Jesus share bread and wine (not grape juice) with his friend. We finished off our time together pray and singing. It was very good! – [...]

By: anon

anon — Sun, 23 Jan 2011 17:17:12 +0000

the teetotaler view doesn’t handle other cultures very well — what do they do with the larger Body of Christ? immigrants? in Europe? in Asia?

By: shepherd

shepherd — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 17:26:17 +0000

I know, I know. I was once young, foolish and horribly legalistic.

By: Vernon

Vernon — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 03:01:05 +0000

Oh this whole conversation cracks me up!

By: shepherd

shepherd — Sat, 15 Jan 2011 06:38:01 +0000

One of the sad, sad things is we make rules that are not there and ignore the commands that are there.

At some point, we get confused and can’t remember what we are supposed to do and what doesn’t matter.

By: shepherd

shepherd — Sat, 15 Jan 2011 06:36:30 +0000

My layman understanding is that all grapes contain the yeast to begin the fermentation. Impossible to have grape juice for long in the ancient world!

By: sjb

sjb — Sat, 15 Jan 2011 00:36:52 +0000

Some years ago, after moving to southern California, I mixed up a pitcher of Welch’s concentrated grape juice, and for some reason got distracted and left it on the kitchen counter. It was a warm day, and we had no air conditioning. It wasn’t until that evening that I noticed the pitcher still sitting on the counter. When I checked it, I noticed that the grape juice was a bit bubbly, and had a distinct bite to it! In only a few hours, in a Mediterranean climate, the sterile Welch’s grape juice had begun to ferment from the local bacteria in the air.

Having grown up in a church which believed as your elder above believes, I realized that we had a problem: in first century Palestine, with no refrigeration, and no concept of pasteurization, it was physically impossible for them to have non-fermented grape juice more than an hour or so from squeezing the grapes. And by then, the fermentation process would already have begun.

The difference between new wine and old wine is only aging – both are fermented, and the difference in alcohol content is minimal. No wine is “hard” ( i.e., liquor) unless it has been distilled (brandy) or had brandy added to it (port). Neither of these were used in Jesus’ day and locale.

American evangelicals’ antipathy to alcoholic drinks is not Biblical; it is cultural and stems from the Prohibition movement of the early 1900s. Attempts to support it from Biblical sources only show a distinct lack of understanding of Biblical culture and times.

Your last paragraph sums up the point about the Eucharist – or “communion”, as it was called in the church of my youth. It’s Christ’s body and blood, it’s his table, and how dare we draw peoples’ focus on that away with stupid arguments about non-alcoholism? After all, wasn’t Jesus’ first miracle turning water into wine?

Sorry for the long rant – but this is an issue that still bugs me!