Filled With The Spirit

I was sixteen when I bought my first alcoholic drink. I put on a jacket and tie, trying to look older and slipped into a cocktail lounge, hoping that the darkness would further help my façade.

The lounge was in a hotel that had seen its glory many decades before and my fellow imbibers were of the same genre. Trying to appear sophisticated I ordered a gin and tonic. I could hardly swallow the stuff. And as I sat and listened to the extremely mediocre pianist play the piano several of the ‘locals' began to chat with me.

It wasn’t long before I found myself dancing with a woman who had sailed past the age of sixty many moons ago and she was possibly well past the tidal markers of seventy. She kept asking the pianist to replay the tune from Cabaret. And today, all I can remember about the woman is that she was the image of ‘Elsie’ from the song.

It was all a bit of fun and laughter, I thought, until I woke up the next morning, discovering that I had thrown up during the night and I was sporting a splitting headache. No longer did it seem funny, nor even the ‘in’ thing to do. I tried to console myself with the idea that the evening must have been fun because I had drunk so much and because I felt so bad.

Thankfully we grow up...sometimes.

Last week both the American and British papers suggested that binge-drinking was fast becoming the new global social disease, and that something needs to be done fast. But I’m not sure that changing licensing laws, the price of drinks, or banning happy hours will bring us to the root of the problem.

A lot of people binge drink to escape themselves. The terms we use for getting drunk reflect this intention: we want to ‘get smashed’, ‘out of our trees,’ and ‘off our heads.’ Drinking is a way of escaping our troubles – if only for a few hours. But people also drink to have a good time; our brains are wired to seek pleasure and man will fill himself with whatever does the job. The trouble is that in the process we so often settle for 'the shadow,' the fleeting pleasure of drunkenness. It's really an ersatz version of a greater want; a blurred glimpse of the real freedom God intended for us.

The Bible sees wine as a sign of God’s blessing and acknowledges that it gladdens life. It also encourages us to drink deeply – not with wine but with God’s Spirit. Curiously the activity of God’s Spirit seems to have the same effect on people as alcohol. Which is why so many biblical figures experiencing religious ecstasy are accused of being drunk. Indeed, the word ecstasy means to stand outside yourself- to actually be out of your mind.

Jesus, who must have spent a lot of time in bars with binge drinkers, was accused of being a drunk. Just as the apostles, who on being filled with the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost were thought to have had too much wine.

When Peter had to explain their behaviour to amazed and outraged onlookers, he quoted the prophet Joel, who said that in the last days God would pour out His spirit on all flesh.

The difference was that this spirit was something new. Yes, it would fill people with joy and boldness; yes it would help them lose their inhibitions, make them laugh and cry, and even sing; but this new wine wouldn’t make them violent and want to trash themselves or the town. Instead it would transform, for the better, the way they lived their lives. Causing them to engage more deeply with the world rather than escape it.

This Holy Spirit is a spirit that, once drunk, does not lead us to oblivion, but sets us free to greet the day with a full heart and a clear head.
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Lord God, fill us with Your spirit so that we may be whole. We humbly beseech You to teach us and have mercy upon us. Amen

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