Coming to Our Senses: The Spirituality of Wine

[Gisela Kreglinger]

Abstract:

When we think about the spirituality of wine, we could look at it from many different angels: wine the Bible, wine in the history of the Church, wine in the Lord’s Supper, a theology of joy & feasting which begs the questions of the importance of the human senses in our pursuit of the knowledge of God. Today I would like to explore how we can reclaim our God-given human senses for our pursuit of the knowledge of God and how wine can play an important role in it. Alexander Schmemann, in his little but profound book called “For the life of the world” argues that the most terrible accusations brought against Christians was uttered by Friedrich Nietsche, a German philosopher, when he said that Christians have no joy. Gratitude and joyful celebration are important ways for Christians to respond to God’s exuberant gifts of creation and salvation. The Westminster Catechism (1647), summarizing the beliefs of Calvinism, begins with the ultimate goal of the Christian life, which is “to glorify God and to enjoy him forever.” If this is the case, why is there so little joy in this world and especially in the life of the church? It seems that exhaustion, anxiety, fear and loneliness have become specters that many of us are all too familiar with.  Joy seems hard to come by. The accusation that Christians have no joy is indeed a terrible one. Alexander Schmemann believes that the church has embraced the modern ethos of a joyless and business-minded culture. He argues that our frantic and pathetic hunger and thirst for perfection is the death of joy. Schmemann goes so far to suggest that we experience a serious crisis in understanding the very idea of a feast and its role in Christian spirituality. Schmemann encourages us to recover the Christian meaning of joy and learn to embrace and cultivate it.

The full paper is attached to this post.