Taste and See (Mystagogy, Part 4)

“O taste and see that the Lord is good.”

— Psalm 34:8

I remember the first time I received Holy Communion in an Anglican Church. It was after a long season of participation in non-denominational churches, for which communion was infrequent, instrumental to the point of a sermon, and individualized as a private devotional response to the pious atmosphere of the day. This was different from my childhood experience of Sunday mornings in a traditional and conservative Methodist church, at which communion was a regular movement of the liturgy. As I went searching in early adulthood for those Wesleyan roots, I entered a beautiful a-frame church near my college and knew that I had come home.

It was some time before I came forward to receive the sacrament, but when I did, it was a shock to the senses. It was the first time that the cup had contained consecrated wine. Further, as a result of having sojourned through high school as a member of a morally rigorist church, I had yet to experience the taste of wine or any alcohol for that matter. That first taste of wine was there with the Lord, by the hand of His ministers, to the sound of choral plainsong. It was strong and bracing, unlike anything else but itself; a bit disorienting, but filled me with warmth. I remember looking up above the altar to the crucifix at the image of our Lord, and in the unfamiliarity of the moment, I saw Him in a new way. I had tasted and seen.

Years later, the experience of tasting the consecrated wine of the chalice no longer shocks in the same way. It has become familiar and inviting. And although my experience of wine has expanded beyond the doors of the parish, there remains something singular to receiving it as an element of Holy Communion. As with the use of incense, wine is one of those things that newer members cite as a surprising feature of the liturgy, particularly if, like me, they came in from the broader Protestant world (and especially in America). The association of wine with worship is a sticking point for some. Historically, alcohol has been for American Christians one of those shibboleths that signify one’s faithfulness or libertinism. Yet for as much as Welch’s grape juice can please the palate or aid digestion, it cannot sufficiently replace wine as the sacramental matter of the Eucharist. And it is on the fittingness of wine and its relationship to the sense of taste that I’d like to meditate here.

Wine has a troubling beginning in the Scriptures. It first appears in the story of Noah. After the subsiding of the floodwaters, wine was made to serve mankind in renewing its commitment to corruption, just moments after they were delivered from destruction on the ark. As we read in Genesis, immediately after the covenant was ratified, Noah planted a vineyard and made wine with which he became drunk to the point of unconsciousness. In that state, one of his sons dishonored and shamed his father’s body, for which he was cursed by his father and made to flee. This introduction of wine in the Scriptures comes by the hand of the man who was brought out of the waters of the Flood. It was his first work in that ‘new’ creation, but still bore the marks of the sin that occasioned the judgment, becoming a source of shame and exiling the son from the father.

The second appearance of wine, though, comes in the hands of Melchizedek, the King and Priest of Salem, who brings bread and wine to Abraham after his successful victory against the five kings of Sodom. In the hands of this ancient priest, wine came to signify peace and the blessing of God on Abraham’s life. Wine signified the promise of God, who had called him from Ur of the Chaldees to be with him and to prosper him. The arrival of Melchizedek with bread and wine is followed immediately by God forming the second covenant of the Scriptures, this time with Abraham, promising that through the sign of a beloved son, all the peoples of the world would be likewise blessed.

The final appearance of wine in Genesis comes through the story of Joseph. It is the royal wine-taster, whose dream Joseph interprets while in prison, who remembers Joseph before Pharaoh, and brings him out of the jail to interpret Pharaoh’s dream of the famine to come. An extra portion of wine at dinner brings Joseph’s brothers together at a royal banquet in Egypt, relieving them from the famine of Canaan, and drawing them near through the hospitality of the brother they thought was dead, but who lives and dines and provides for them in their presence, but who is not yet ‘seen’ by them. It is after several of these meals that Joseph is revealed to his brothers and they are reunited. Their family communion is restored.

What we see of wine in Genesis is stamped on the subsequent Scriptural history of mankind. It serves as a sign of corruption and wrath, but also as a sign of deliverance from the toil of life. In the hands of Lot’s daughters, or the dissolute sons of Eli at Shiloh, wine became their undoing and a prophetic image of God’s wrath: His judgment on mankind’s turn to self-destruction. Yet in the wisdom literature, wine is the gift of God: a brief reprieve from the curse of toil, gladness to the heart of man in his travail, and a reminder that this was not the end of his existence. In the Tabernacle and Temple, of course, it became a participant in the offerings to reconcile brother to brother, and all the people together with God.

All that we see of wine in Genesis remains until it encounters its Lord, Jesus Christ. Consider the wedding at Cana of Galilee. The Lord changed water into the finest wine of the wedding feast, a living reminder of life beyond judgment, a fountain of festivity and joy. There, wine could no longer hurt, because it was given with thanks by Jesus to the end of revealing again how God had come to bring consolation and healing at last. Consider, too, how in the Last Supper He instituted the Eucharist by declaring the wine of the cup to be His own sacred Blood. Here, our Lord, the Melchizedek Priest, offers His own life for the life of the world. Here, we see what the sign of Joseph feeding the brothers who betrayed Him was anticipating all along. Here, we see the mystery and proclamation of our Lord’s death for our life, proclaimed in the wine of His Blood, that communicates the grace of God that, as Joseph told his repentant brothers, makes what they intended for evil to be for the salvation of many. The creature of wine that has now passed through the hands of our Lord and declared to be His Blood. In the Liturgy, then, it is ensconced as the element that is consecrated for Holy Communion. We are not at liberty to replace it or dispense with it. It is a fixed, sacramental remembrance by which we proclaim the Lord’s Death until His coming again. It is the meeting place of anamnesis, of remembrance (or better, of ‘making present again’), and of prolepsis, of anticipation (or better, of ‘making us present to what is to come.’).

It is for this reason that the wine that is consecrated on the altar by the prayers of the Church is set apart and prepared in a special way. We are not permitted to use just any wine for such a special purpose. Communion wine is prepared to be especially pure, free of any additives or impurities. It is prepared with great respect to the natural lifecycle of the grape, pressed when the grapes are fully mature. It is distinct from wines that are produced with an eye for marketability, consumer tastes, or efficiency. It is made strong enough to endure without spoiling, but not so strong that it cannot be received without moderation. It shocks and braces as we experience its strong flavor, yet it leaves us with sweetness and warmth. These properties offer to the senses an experience of what is happening inwardly. We are confronted and also consoled. The real presence of our Lord comes to visit and inspect, judging and driving out what does not belong in us. Yet with that confrontation comes consolation. As we are ‘made clean by His body, and our souls washed by His most Precious Blood,’ we are given the sweetness of God’s peace to attend to us. To taste in this way truthfully guides how we see God: as both the fearsome surgeon who orders our deep disorder, and as our good shepherd who prepares a feast before us in the presence of those who trouble us.

Our lives as Christians are tending toward the great marriage of Christ and His Church. Every Sunday, we are invited forward for a taste of that wedding feast. When the Psalmist exhorts us to ‘taste,’ it is an invitation to know, in a small way, something that far exceeds that taste, and yet is not substantially different from it. The paradise of the Lord’s new creation comes to us in the cup that contains the good fruit of God’s good world, prepared thankfully and carefully in the hands of the winemaker, blessed and sanctified by the Word and Holy Spirit. It is wine that is also blood that is also life. Our gracious God has offered us His goodness to redeem and renew us. God is a good God who loves mankind. Come: taste and see.