The first mention of wine in the Bible is on the occasion of Noah’s drunkenness. The last mention of wine in the Bible is in the context of a condemnation of Babylon’s luxuriousness. It is not really surprising that many Christians have come to regard wine with suspicion. Other drinks are safer, less wild, less susceptible to dangerous corruptions. In other words, other drinks are less like the gospel.
In the message of the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus, and in the declaration that He, the risen one, is now at the right hand of God the Father, we have massive scope for misunderstanding, abuse, confusion, and more. The gospel is a lot like wine—potent.
We come to this Table every week, not to domesticate it, making it more like our mundane selves, but rather so that it would make us potent. God gives us the wine of the new covenant to drink, so that we would be transformed, not so that it would be.
Some might want to say that the wine of the new covenant is automatically safe, that it is not possible to get drunk on it. But the behavior of the Corinthians tells us otherwise on one level, and all the strange doctrines that have spun out of the Christian faith on another level says the same. But the solution to this problem is not to retreat to a watered down gospel, or a grape juice gospel. The solution is to accept from this meal what God is giving us in it—nothing more and nothing less.