Living Stones – Wednesday, January 3, 2018
Winepress
Matthew 9:17
“But they put new wine into new wineskins”
New wine is what was put into new wineskins for the fermentation process to begin. But new wine is itself the result of a process. The production of new wine was an intricate undertaking involving many persons, factors, and processes that were both delicate and violent at the same time. The violence helped produce something delicate and desirable.
Jesus often used the vine and the vineyard as a setting for many of his parables and illustration for us to understand the life that we are called to live in Him before God. We looked at some of this back when these Daily Devotionals examined John 15. In that scenario, Jesus likened Himself to the vine and us to the branches. He also introduced the person of the vinedresser.
The vinedresser is among several persons who work on the vineyard. The vinedresser had the responsibility of ensuring a bountiful harvest of the best grapes for juice production. This was often a violent process, at least from the perspective of the vines and branches. Jesus put it this way, “Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit.” John 15:2
The vineyards provided considerable employment and wage negotiations were sometimes arbitrary, especially in the absence of organised labour with unions and collective bargaining agreements. This arrangement often led to industrial and social conflict on the vineyard. There is a perfect example of this in the story Jesus told in Matthew 20:1-16. Jesus told this story for a different purpose, but these other elements are included in the story.
There were also many varied operational and commercial arrangements around the vineyards. Vineyards were not always owner operated and vinedressers and vintners were often able to rent large estates from absentee property owners for agreed fees. Many of these estates had complex security arrangements for boundary markers and surveillance systems. In Mark 12:1-9 Jesus, again using the relationships that existed on a vineyard property, tells a story about the attitudes of the Jews, but yet again we still get a glimpse into ownership and management arrangement of the vineyard industry and economy.
The story in Mark 12 is particularly troubling because it is violent to point of murders. The vineyard tenants were treacherous and were prepared to use violence and commit multiple murders to perpetuate their dishonest operation on the leased premises with its attendant production facilities.
On these estates were the winepresses and storage vats for the new wine. The vintner (winemaker) was busy working with the owner of the vineyard and the vinedressers to ensure that the grapes were ripening properly and that the right time was set for harvesting. He was also making preparations for the pressing of the grapes, for juice collection, and for settling and filtering to produce new wine.
These ancient winepresses were sometimes cut out of rocks on a mountainside. A shallow vat was dug and lower down on the hillside were two smaller but deeper vats. The grapes were placed in the first vat and the juice expressed by stomping (treading, trodding) on them with men’s bare feet. The juice would run into the lower vats where it was drawn off to be placed in the wineskins for fermentation.
Most of us reading here in Guyana, the Caribbean, and North America are familiar with large estates in crops like sugar, cotton, and maybe rice, but the ownership arrangements have always been different and the social relationships with the land and production involved slavery and indentureship in its history.
The peculiarities of the vineyard with its winepress and these particular socio-cultural relationships are foreign to us. Nevertheless, Caribbean icon and legend, Bob Marley, employed its imagery powerfully as he railed against the Babylon System on his 1979 Survival album; Yeah, we’ve been trodding on the winepress much too long: / Rebel, rebel! / Yes, we’ve been trodding on the winepress much too long: / Rebel, rebel! / Babylon system is the vampire, yea!
The winepress is the place where grapes, having lived a very delicate existence, meet a very violent end for the sake of the pleasure of the ultimate beneficiaries of their juice. The sheltered grapes, on a carefully tended vine, were then attacked by violent feet spilling the juice often staining the garments of them that trodded. Sometimes the labourers have their clothes change colour from working on the wine press, in Isaiah 63:2 we see this, “Why are your garments red, like those of one treading the winepress?
Wine is very often used in Scripture to represent the presence and anointing of God in our lives. In some imagery, the juice of the grape (or wine from it) represents the blood of Jesus, especially in the Last Supper observance. Jesus had His blood shed in a very violent way on the cross, just like the grapes in the winepress. We experience grace through the violence that was done to His body. We must always be conscious of the violence that is often required to produce a desired outcome.
Think on these things:
- Have you ever been through any life circumstances where you felt pressed on every side like in a winepress?
- How were your perspectives on life and God altered by any experience of pain or grief or other life pressures that you have lived through?
- How (if you ever) have you been able to comfort and/or support those who are going through difficult times?
Prayer focus:
Let us pray today that we would be willing to, if necessary, suffer violence for the gospel’s sake.
In His Grace
Pastor Alex