Communion, also known as the Eucharist and the Lord’s Supper, is the most central Christian sacrament, yet it is celebrated quite differently in our churches. Setting aside theological debates about its meaning and the matter of frequency, we might examine the different beverages we consume: Some of our church traditions use wine, and others use grape juice (or a nonalcoholic wine).
Rather than seeking uniformity in practice, let’s more deeply reflect on this difference. If Communion is significant to the Sunday gathering, what is a good theological framework that accounts for the diversity in our common practice?
The presence or absence of wine in Communion does not simply reflect a church’s attitudes to drinking alcohol generally. Instead, I find it more helpful to think about this difference in terms of eschatology (or the “end times”). When Jesus instituted the Lord’s Supper, he did so by directly linking it to a time of feasting in the coming kingdom when he will drink wine anew (Matt. 26:29; Luke 22:15–16, 18). If Communion is a foretaste of that future messianic banquet, then it is like an appetizer before the main course arrives.
Communion, as a present experience of the future banquet, occurs in a context mired with sin, evil, and death. Although the coming feast will celebrate the end of those things, the Lord’s Supper is a practice that communicates the tension between the two ages—what theologians call “inaugurated eschatology,” or “the already and the not yet.” The messianic banquet is already experienced in the present, but the celebration is not yet in full swing.
Jesus Did Not Serve Grape Juice
In this sense, both wine and grape juice are important aspects of our common practice as Christians, because together, in their discrete ways, they are witnesses to the promised banquet to come. When some traditions use wine in Communion, they are participating in the foretaste of the wine stored away for us all when God restores all things (Isa. 25:6; Amos 9:13–14; Joel 3:18). To do this is to lean into the “already” of the banquet.
When other traditions use grape juice, by contrast, they are saving up their appetites. They are compelled by the “not yet” of the banquet as reflected in the enduring brokenness of our world. Things are not as they should be (and will be), and so the forces of corruption continue to drag us toward death by way of addiction, abuse, and alcoholism.
Through this lens, one of these Christian practices is not better than the other, since the kingdom is both here and not yet fully here. Indeed, both practices together can offer us a balanced perspective so that we don’t mistakenly err on one side or the other. In both practices, we can see elements of celebration and lament when we come to the table amid our broken world and in anticipation of the one to come.
A dual posture toward the kingdom’s presence and absence is even mirrored in the diets of Jesus and John the Baptist. The crowds perceived both to be approaching food and drink inappropriately. They thought John was demon-possessed because he didn’t eat and drink like Jesus, but they also thought Jesus overdid it and so called him a glutton and a drunkard (Matt. 11:18–19; Luke 7:33–35).
Yet Jesus doesn’t say that his way was better than John’s. Instead, he says, “Wisdom is proved right by her deeds” (Matt. 11:19). In other words, there is wisdom in both approaches, and what demonstrates the wisdom of their respective approaches, even though they’re not identical, is the results that come from them (the “deeds,” or “children” in Luke). Both can be legitimate positions to hold with respect to alcohol.
But the wisdom of abstinence and the wisdom of moderation are not an inherent given. Both can be folly, if folly results from their approach. In context, these two positions also suggest an attitude toward the future messianic kingdom. John the Baptist abstained because the kingdom was near; Jesus feasted because the kingdom was here. They demonstrate the already-and-not-yet tension.
Although John the Baptist is not divine, the diverging choices of John and Jesus suggest that we should expect and allow for a similar diversity of expression when it comes to wine consumption in the light of the kingdom’s simultaneous presence and absence. And so, why wouldn’t that also apply to the use of wine in the Christian ritual that calls for it?
How the Lord’s Supper Heals Church Hurt
Some might protest that we should all try to imitate the earliest Christian practice, but the problem is that just about every contemporary Communion cup contains something very different from the earliest ones that Christians passed around.
Neither of our Communion practices precisely replicates the earliest Christian practices, because “grape juice” could only be made once a year at harvest in late summer and it would ferment very quickly. Nor was ancient Communion wine like the fortified wines deployed today by traditions that practice a common cup, because distilling spirits hadn’t been developed yet. In other words, we must acknowledge that our Communion practices do not precisely replicate the past (for more on the historical development of wine, see Paul Lukacs, Inventing Wine; Patrick McGovern, Ancient Wine; Hugh Johnson, The Story of Wine).
Wine was the primary Communion practice until pasteurization was invented in the 19th century, but even so, some early Christians used water or refrained from a cup altogether.
Andrew McGowan of Berkeley Divinity School at Yale University has written the best treatment of this phenomenon in his book Ascetic Eucharists. Most of the groups known for wineless Communions were deemed heretical on other theological grounds, but they share the impulse against using an intoxicant in Communion with many contemporary Christians. Presumably, if those early Christians had access to today’s grape juice, they may have been happy to make use of it in Communion like many churches do today.
As we more deeply consider the practices of the cup, we can look toward Christ’s return. The fact that we practice Communion diversely as the global church with respect to wine and grape juice can be seen as two sides of our witness to each other and our common witness to the world.
John Anthony Dunne (PhD, University of St Andrews) is associate professor of New Testament at Bethel Seminary (Saint Paul, MN) and the author of The Mountains Shall Drip Sweet Wine: A Biblical Theology of Alcohol.
