Whether Jesus Be Making Lemonade
Objection 1: It would seem that the Lord is not making lemonade. The claim that the Lord is making lemonade is meant symbolically to suggest that He is improving our lives by turning difficulty into sweetness. However, according to St. John, the Lord said, "If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also." Therefore, Jesus is not making lemonade.
Objection 2: Further, the Lord often suggests that an excess of wealth or success is not a sign of divine favor, but of our own failure to ascribe value rightly to what is most worthy. The man who enjoys conspicuous wealth is often treated as a man who loves lesser things that he ought not love at all or ought not love to that degree. Therefore, Jesus is not making lemonade.
Objection 3: The Lord now resides at the right hand of the Father, and his body has been taken up out of the earth. Lemons, however, are earthly. Therefore, Jesus is not making lemonade.
On the contrary, St Augustine teaches that the knowledge of God is like "sober intoxication," in which he symbolically links the knowledge of God to the pleasures of wine. Likewise, the Lord makes wine to serve to others as a celebration of his incarnation. If Scripture and the Church speak of God as dispensing wine, a drink which gladdens the heart and refreshes the spirit, then it is also proper to claim, metaphorically, that Jesus makes lemonade.
I answer that, when it is said that a person has turned lemons into lemonade it is a metaphorical way of saying that a person has received great difficulty or sadness and turned it to joy. Scripture testifies extensively to the various and sundry ways in which the Lord brings health and wholeness out of decay and death. Therefore, it follows that the Lord can be said to have made lemonade from lemons in the same way that one can say that the Lord transforms darkness into light or raises the dead to life.
Reply to Obj. 1: The claim that followers of the Lord will suffer in this life is correct. However, the suffering in view is relative. For St Paul says that, "I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ."
Reply to Obj. 2: This is answered in the reply to objection one.
Reply to Obj. 3: The claim that the Lord makes lemonade is not to be understood literally, but symbolically. Therefore, the fact that the Lord is not present on earth does not invalidate the claim that the Lord be making lemonade.
Jake Meador
Jake Meador is the editor-in-chief of Mere Orthodoxy. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Commonweal, First Things, Books & Culture, National Review, Comment, Books & Culture, and Christianity Today. He is a contributing editor with Plough and a contributing writer at the Dispatch. He lives in his hometown of Lincoln, NE with his wife and four children.
