A friend once invited me to join him and his neighbors for a bonfire to mark the beginning of spring. I’m a pastor and it was Maundy Thursday of Holy Week, and I probably should’ve been in church. But I was far from any stained glass windows, congregating in a different kind of sanctuary under the stars.
As we got the fire going, it didn’t take long for my friend’s sociable neighbors to see the fire illuminating the common woods down by the lakeshore. Like moths to a front porch light, one by one they came over and joined us. Each person brought some beer to share.
As I observed the scene unfolding, and watched the reunion of neighbors emerging from their winter hibernation, there was something liturgical and religious about it all. They had done this habitually for many years now, that there was an unstated but well-understood pattern. Like a first timer walking into our church on a Sunday, I was now the new visitor entering into another congregation’s sacred space and communal practice.
In my narrative universe and sacred calendar, it was Maundy Thursday, the night when Christians around the globe were gathering in church sanctuaries around the Communion Table to celebrate Jesus’ Last Supper. But here I found myself gathering around a fire in the woods, part of a neighborhood congregation, celebrating the arrival of Springtime in Minnesota.
Instead of a church choir singing hymns, the woods resounded with the sounds of mating frogs. Instead of words that recall the Lord’s passion, the conversations were largely about summer plans for pursuing worldly pleasures, a trinity of Bs: Beer, Boats and Babes. Instead the pastor’s ‘words of institution’ and the passing of the Bread and Cup, a neighbor proclaimed, “Spring is here at last, and I brought a bottle of Black Label Bourbon to celebrate!”
Like Mary expending costly perfume on that solemn occasion long ago, this friend had brought out his best bottle of bourbon to share with us this night. As that bottle was passed around the circle, everyone’s lips touching the same opening like Roman Catholics at Mass, there was something religious about the whole thing. We were sharing in a pagan liturgy, joined together in mutual adoration for the blessings that each new spring and summer holds out. While there was no corporate confession, there was a collective sense of “turning away” and “putting behind us” (i.e., repenting of) the ravages of another cold, hard winter.
I was at a loss for what my role was in this gathering. I was pinned between two world’s colliding, feeling truly “in the world but not of it.” I wanted to be a light in a dark world, a faithful witness to the Way of Jesus where ever I found myself. However, as soon as I am introduced as “This is Jeremy, my pastor,” I suddenly feel like a leper and outcast. People start to twitch and act nervous and strange around me. They start filtering their language and apologizing to me every time they curse, as if Jesus died on a cross to rid the world of four-letter words, as if Christian baptism is God’s way of washing our mouths out with soap!
Then I’m faced with that all-important decision: Do I try to blend in and just be “one of the guys”—making myself less threatening and more relatable? Or, do I maintain some degree of pastoral “set-apartness,” embracing my identity as a foreigner and stranger in this world—an ambassador for Christ or, in this case, a beer-drinking missionary in jeans and ball cap? When they pass the Holy Bourbon and drink to the Spring Thaw, do I partake of the libation or pass on it like a prudish Puritan?
On this holy night, I partook.
I drank the Black Label Bourbon and participated in this smokey lakeside communion as ash fell from the sky, coating our clothes with flakes that resembled that manna of old. As I did, I pondered Jesus’ final prayer for his disciples—the Scripture being read that night in churches and cathedrals around the globe by people huddled behind the stained glass windows. Jesus prayed:
“For they are not of the world any more than I am of the world. My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world” (John 17:14-17).
Sanctuary walls and stained glass windows have a way of taking Christ’s followers “out of the world” and away from searching souls and thirsty people passing bourbon and beer around bonfires. But Jesus sends us into the world of lakeside liturgies and neighborhood bonfires.
Feeling a bit like Judas, I stood quietly in their company—not sure if I really belonged nor not. I listened to the sounds of laughter, friendship and unspoken longings rising up with the smoke as a kind of burnt offering to any god who might show favor on this ragamuffin fellowship. Like Judas, I wondered if I should make an early exit, to betray this group of friends who invited me into their circle, to turn them over to the Judge for condemnation in my heart.
But I found a beauty in their authentic fellowship. I found a camaraderie and devotion to one another. I found their company to be just the kind of company Jesus liked to keep in his ministry long ago, and still today. My instinct to retreat “out of the world” was outweighed by Jesus’ desire to send his disciples “into the world” as loving and gracious representatives.
Instead of removing his disciples from beer flavored bonfires, Jesus prayed that his disciples would be “sanctified by the truth” even while occasionally partaking of Black Label Bourbon in a circle of sinners. The truth I hope those men all come to experience, whether in a church pew or around a bonfire, is the Truth Himself who said,
“I came feasting and drinking and they called me a lush, a friend of the riffraff. Opinion polls don’t count for much, do they? The proof of the pudding is in the eating” (Matt. 11:19 The Message).
I hope each of those guys gets to taste the real pudding of Christianity. Some might even dare to pair the pudding with a hoppy beer or one’s best bottle of bourbon! That was a Maundy Thursday I will not soon forget! May God bless that ragtag congregation as they gather in those woods again this spring, and may God receive their burnt offering of brushwood out of the unspeakable riches of His grace. Amen.
Kingdom Harbor 