The Worst Wine

Wine is joy. Divine generosity. Wine is the image of covenant. Of transformation. Of new life. Of the arrival of God’s kingdom.


Creation is good, right – it’s not to be rejected. And the good wine is the goodness of creation.

Water becomes wine – the old law gives way to the fulfilment of the law. The old revelation to the new one. Just like the old scriptures are transformed.

The best wine is kept until last, right? The fullness of the new revelation …


Wine gladdens, in scripture. It’s for a people who need to be gladdened. For those needful of joy, who are lacking in joy.


The medicine of immortality – that’s what Ignatius calls it.


Wine gladdens, right? And we need to be gladdened. We need joy. We’re lacking in joy.

New wine in new wineskins. Where new wine means the new power of the gospel.  And new wineskins mean new human lives and communities.

The new wineskins are renewed people.


The best wine is kept to the last, that’s what they say. The worst wine is what you drink after the last. When there is no last.


This wine’s definitely alive. With some weird kind of life.


This wine’s full of a weird kind of algae. A black algae. A dead algae.

Do you get zombie algae? Is it, like, anti-algae, like the anti-dragon in Game of Thrones?


This wine’s humming. Or singing. Or something.

I think it’s hissing.


The wine is probably plotting terrible things.


I think this wine is hostile to us. It’s, like, evil wine. Forked tongue wine. Milked from some serpent.


This wine is the katabasis. It’s taking us down, down, down.


This is what the world is, this wine. It’s concentrated essence of world. of everything. Of nature. In its total hostility to us.