Did Jesus Turn Water into Wine or Grape Juice?

The issue of alcohol and the Christian is an incredibly volatile subject causing great division and stern judgments upon both sides. I have been deeply affected by this issue myself as there are many of my friends and family members who are controlled by alcohol. I am not a teetotaler, but I rarely drink. I don’t like wine. Some beers are pretty good. I like Tequila. But if the comsumption of alcohol were made illegal, I would not even really notice.

There are so many different positions out there with regard to this issue. Let me try to name a few:

1. Those who abstain from alcohol and believe that this is the biblical position for everyone.
2. Those who abstain from alcohol but don’t believe that this is a biblical mandate to enforce on others.
3. Those who drink alcohol only for “celebratory” purposes (i.e. Lord’s table), but don’t get drunk.
4. Those who casually drink wine or beer, but abstain from “hard liquor” and don’t get drunk.
5. Those who casually drink alcohol in order to feel “merry” or “tipsy” but don’t get drunk.
6. Those who drink alcohol and get drunk occasionally but are not “drunkards” (i.e. addicted).

Outside of this, all Christians would (or should) agree that being addicted to alcohol is expressly forbidden in the Scripture as it relinquishes control of our faculties to the alcohol rather than to the Holy Spirit (Eph. 5:18). Paul warns Timothy about such abuses with regard to the qualifications of a deacons (1 Tim. 3:8) and elders (1 Tim. 3:3).

Concerning the above positions and which is correct, I am not going to directly discuss here. However, I do want to discuss one passage of Scripture that vexes the problem of alcohol with great passion. It is the subject of Christ and his relation to alcohol while here on the earth. Most specifically, I want to ask the question of whether Christ, during the miracle at the Wedding of Cana in John 2, turned the water into wine, unfermented grape juice, or something else. Here is the text:    Continue at C Michael Patton

Pizza and Coke for Communion?

After my post on children taking communion (Kiddies Menu: Children at the Lord’s Table) I received some great questions. I wanted to address them more fully than in a crammed comment cage.

Have you ever thought of these provocative variables in the form and substance of the Lord’s Supper:

• Should we not emulate the NT church’s practice of sharing an entire, sit-down meal?
• Must the bread be unleavened?
• Must the wine be alcoholic?
• Must the wine be red or can we use Champagne instead?
• Where does one draw the line? For example, can pizza and Coke count as communion? I.e. can the bread be sweetened, or have a topping? What about milk and cookies?

Makes the blood boil a bit, doesn’t it? You may have got stuck on the milk & cookies on, and you would probably say: “Obviously not, don’t be dumb.” And you’d be right to say that…but why?

Here are some principles by which we can make these decisions.

   1. Jesus instituted a practice of breaking and sharing bread and wine, therefore the substance of the meal must correlate with his intention.

Thus breaking bread is essential, as it represents the breaking of Christ’s body.

The bread represents the body. It was the symbol Jesus selected, perhaps because he also called himself the Bread of Life (John 6:35).

This is why he said “Do this in remembrance of me” as he broke the bread. He clearly meant “Break bread.” Not, break a cookie, or cut some pepperoni pizza slices.  Continue at Clint Archer

Kiddies Menu: Children at the Lord’s Supper

If you are a young, single, seminoid dude who loves theoretical theological debates on blogs, I’d like to share a tidbit of coaching corner sagacity a mentor of mine graciously offered me: It’s ok to have the topic of pedo-communion on your radar screen, just don’t follow it off course. Focus your energy on completing your education, getting a job, staying pure, and finding a godly lady who will consent to marry you. At some point after that God will give you nine months’ warning to sort out your views on which age children can partake in the Lord’s Supper. Til then, get back to work.

But for parents of precocious pre-pubescent Protestants, your church will expect you to have given this some forethought before letting your kid’s appetite near the Lord’s Table.

Footnote: Protestants call it a table, not an altar, we call it the supper, not the Mass, an ordinance, not a sacrament, and the bread, not the eucharist. Why this distinction? Because we are not re-sacrificing anyone. Anyway, I digress.

First, some churches practice “closed communion” which means that only members can take communion. In this case it is simple: according to the church’s membership process and definition, is the child a member or not? Case closed.

Other churches practice “open communion” which means that anyone who professes to be a believer in good standing with their local church may participate in communion with your church.

Verses used to support this include 1 Corinthians 11:28-29 where Paul adjured each one to examine himself and determine his own worthiness to partake of the Lord’s Supper. Well and good, but when it comes to children, are we really to leave it up to the individual child to determine his/her spiritual fitness?  Continue at Clint Archer

Table Manners

First of all, open communion usually rests on the all-too-typical Evangelical presumption that the Lord’s Supper really isn’t that important. Communion is, as Flannery O’Connor’s infamous socialite conversation-partner once put it, “a wonderful symbol” but that’s about it. The issue isn’t the event itself, but the insult of the exclusion, in the same way that 1950s and 1960s civil disobedience wasn’t about how great the food was at the Woolworth’s lunch-counter.

Too often in our contemporary Evangelical church culture, the act of barring a member from the table seems quaint or even meaningless. After all, who really cares if he is deprived of a wafer and a splash of grape juice?

Sometimes Christians in other traditions assume that all low-church Protestants take this kind of view, but that’s simply not the case. While disagreeing with the sacerdotal theologies of many of the older traditions, Baptists (before we were to this extent washed up in the riptide of parachurch Evangelicalism) shared with other Christians a common conviction that the Lord’s Table is a place of profound gravity—much more than the kind of “communion” we might have with the Lord and with one another while talking about the Holy Spirit over coffee and doughnuts.   Read it all HERE

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