Take It From a Drink Like Me
a sermon by Jim Spruce
HOW LUCKY can you get? I'm cheap - dollar for dollar the best value in town!
I'm popular - everybody wants me in order to look good, act cool and be at ease.
I swear by my own name to make you self-assured, hip and suave.
So for only ninety-five cents at your nearest gas station, how can you go wrong?
OR FOR A read bargain of only $5.79 per six-pack, you can PBR me at your nearest Wal-mart.
So as deals go, that's about as sweet as it gets.
You and two of your friends can chugalug the likes of me in no time flat, and besides -
Who cares? Who's watching? What difference does it make?
SO IT IS that as the default option of an educated society I get a lot of good press, actually.
I get the notoriety of those who consume me, screw up big-time and beat the system.
I get unparalleled publicity as the proud sponsor of the Super Bowel and the World Series.
And most of all I get the privilege of being secretly offered to minors. I'm so right for them!
HERE I AM the poster-boy of pop-culture, the icon of smart advertising
and the hero of every musical genre from blues to Reggie to county-western to rock.
Yet in some strange way , I guess I really don't get it.
I get blamed for a lot of stuff that is truly no fault of my own.
I'M COOL in the can alright, but you still blamed me because the coach kicked you off the football team.
I mean, how lame is that? You're the consumer; I'm merely your beverage of choice.
AND DUIs? I can't even ride in the care with you anymore,
and you can't even afford to have your breath or blood level checked for fear of too much of me!
SO YOUR WIFE is suing you for divorce because of spouse abuse - and blaming you know who!
What's this world coming to?
Whatever happened to the good old days of white lightning, Muskogee and Merle Haggard?
And why am I these days being called a gateway drug to cocaine and methamphetamine?
TAKE IT from a drink like me - being an alcoholic beverage is a party that never really happens.
O, for the moment I do offer my highs, my bubbly fizz, my mysterious buzz.
I sparkle in the glass. I go down smoothly. I warm the gut.
But in the end what doesn't get thrown up in the toilet gets saved up for the liver.
AND THE ODDS are that if we become good enough friends I will betray you
I will slur your speech and make you look like a fool.
I will dull your brain and play havoc with your reaction time.
I will drain your conscience of reason and make you do things you'd never consider in sobriety.
I WILL appear to you as the most handsome devil in blue jeans you ever saw.
And you will meet me in a perfect stranger for a one-night-stand in the next motel you see.
And in the morning you will find a note on the pillow next to your which will read,
"Thanks for the night on the town. You are Number 82. The world of AIDS is now yours."
STILL, THE $5.79 six-pack is the best bargain at Wal-mart.
But the loss of your virginity and dignity and self-worth is the immeasurable price you will pay for me.
It's true: you only have to pay for me twice:
once when you pay the cashier, and once again when I settle up with you.
I SPEAK as a prophet from the bottle
because some are unable to hear the prophets from the Bible.
Tragically, clearly, I am a lesson, a sermon from the bottle - the only sermon someone will ever drink.
Would to God those who drink me might drink from his word instead.
FOR AS the ancient Solomon wrote in his Proverbs:
"Who has woe? Who has sorrow? Who has strife and complaints?
Who has needless bruises? Who has bloodshot eyes?
Those who linger over wine, who go to sample bowls of mixed wine.
"DO NOT gaze at wine when it is red, when it sparkles in the cup, when it goes down smoothly!
In the end it bites like a snake and poisons like a viper.
Your eyes will see strange sights and your mind imagine confusing things.
You will say, 'When will I wake up so I can find another drink?'"
AND AS THE prophet Isaiah wrote,
"Woe to those who rise early in the morning, to run after their drinks, who stay up late at night till they are inflamed with wine.
Woe to those who are heroes at drinking wine and champions at mixing drinks,
who acquit the guilty for a bribe, but deny justice to the innocent."
NO, THIS is not an appeal from me as a popular beverage to be let off the hook.
I myself am culpable. I alone can create a whirlwind of misery and sorrow.
But it is an appeal to reason: I am guilty exclusively though abuse and misuse.
I have earned a reputation as a beverage that consumes those who consume me.
BREWERIES make me to make money and people drink me because they have money,
so I exist at the will of one for the saturation of the other.
I, therefore, am cheaply reduced as a pawn, and I am objectified as a tool of economics.
I have no integral worth. I offer no added value. Odd as it sounds, I bring nothing to the table.
IF THE DRUNKARD is the finished product of the brewer's art
--all laughable appeals to "drink responsibly" aside-
and if the law is the means by which I am made legally available,
then I am a sad footnote to a time history when the means of embarrassingly justifies the end.
SO TAKE IT from a drink like me - you only think you can afford to consume me!
I once was the scapegoat of prohibition only to become the paragon of moderation.
But alas: moderation is the seductive charm to which my popularity is achored,
because my worst enemy - and your best friend - is the nearly lost relic of abstinence.