Passion Sunday Sermon (Draft)

Wine After its Time[1]

Passion Sunday 03/16/08

Matt 27:48

Wine is a metaphor for life. It can be sweet. Sweet as a new born baby, or fine dinner. It can be dry. Dry as a business lunch or a trip to the beach. It can be bubbly. Like fantastic news, or a celebration. And it can be intoxicating. Like love. Wine is a metaphor for life.

It’s made from the essence of individual grapes, but only in combination with many others. Sometimes there’s a diversity of types, sometimes not. It takes nourishment from the soil and light from the sun to raise those grapes. Then there’s the pressure of the wine vat and the straining off of the waste and impurities. Finally it requires patience and time to ferment and achieve its maturity. What was that winemaker’s slogan? “I’ll sell no wine before its time!”

Well, what about wine after its time?

We call it vinegar. It’s sour wine actually. Wine that’s “turned.” It’s what the bystanders at the foot of the cross offered Jesus off a sponge on the end of a long stick. Did you ever wonder about the significance of that sour wine? I mean-why was it done—why was it given to him?

Was it a merciful attempt to offer relief from the excruciating pain of the nails in his palms and feet? Was it simply pity for a fellow human being, obviously parched from hanging on a cross, in the hot sun all afternoon? Or was it done as cruel mockery of the “King of the Jews,” on an equal footing with the crown of thorns, reed scepter, and scarlet robe the soldiers dressed him in before crucifying him?

What might be the symbolism of the sour wine—the vinegar? Well, what is vinegar used for? Some kinds are used to flavor anything from tuna salad to gourmet dishes such as seared quail with cranberry vinegar reduction. Aged Italian balsamic vinegars are so subtly flavored that Alton Brown, host of the Food Network show Good Eats even quaffed some like a cocktail during one episode. So, vinegar adds a bitter, yet needed, flavoring to things.

Vinegar is also acidic and is used as a catalyst in chemical reactions in cooking. It reacts strongly with baking soda—a base. So, vinegar adds what’s needed to get a reaction.

But for the most part vinegar has been used over the ages as a cleaning product—to clean glass, copper, and surfaces that come in contact with meat, such as cutting boards. The acetic acid in vinegar is what makes it not only bitter tasting, but also a good cleanser.

So what reality does the symbolism of the sour wine point to? One way you could think of it is as Jesus taking on the bitterness of our sins. You may even imagine Jesus taking the vinegar as the opposite of him giving good wine to his disciples at the Last Supper only a short while before this.

Another notion would be to see the vinegar as one final insult that Jesus bore directly before his death. Coming as it does in Matthew’s gospel from a simple “bystander,” rather tan a Pharisee or soldier, we can feel culpable, too. Guilty of pouring bitter, soured expectations upon the head of the Christ. Expectations of a more grand and glorious Son—not this one hanging on a tree!

You might even see the vinegar as representing the souring of life itself, as humanity careens hopelessly to the destruction of the very one who came to heal them. Wine after it’s time—life gone bad, horribly bad.

Or perhaps you experience the sour wine that Jesus drinks as a cleansing agent, marking the moment of his death on the cross as a catalyst for a whole new creation. Given freely. For us.

One thing ironic about vinegar, wine after its time, is this: many of us will use it in the coming week – to color Easter eggs. As you prepare for the resurrection, don’t forget that it takes some sour wine to get there. Thanks be to God that Jesus drinks that cup for us! AMEN

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[1] Adapted from illustration in Sundays&Seasons 2008 p. 124