KENTUCKY, BOURBON, AND THE SUPREMACY OF JESUS
In Fall 2022, the FAI STUDIOS crew descended upon the Kentucky Bourbon Trail to film BALLADS OF THE SONG OF SOLOMON. The first single, “Better Than Bourbon,” is available everywhere now. Links to streaming platforms and the lyric video are available at the end of this article.
Years back, I sat in the backseat of a Honda heading home from a spring break trip in college. (Not one of those spring break trips in college.) My randomized “reading plan” had me in Luke 9, and I read these words as if for the first time:
No one, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.[1]
The ink lifted from the page, formed a fist, and socked my jaw. I searched for footnotes, addendums. Fine print that would offer some kind of qualification, make room for some kind of extenuating circumstance that would get me off the hook for lukewarm waffling. Luke wrote nothing of the sort. Jesus made that statement, closed His mouth, and kept walking.
But isn’t He the One who guards and preserves even the weakest flame’s flicker?[2] Doesn’t He make room for little ones?[3] Won’t He lead me to the green pastures of David’s twenty-third psalm? Didn’t He invite me in my bone-deep fatigue to come to Him for rest?[4] Aren’t His yoke easy and His burden light?[5]
The right hook that met me in the backseat that day marked a moment in my last spring break in my last semester of college while I made my last decisions at the last fork in the road before “adulting” came like a freight train to finish off what the fist left behind. As I evaluated every option, my “safe,” “safer,” and “not safe at all” paths sifted my willingness to follow the “still, small Voice”[6] down the narrow road, however difficult to find,[7] for the kind of non-cowardly cross-carrying disciple I was endeavoring to become.
If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me.[8]
There is no room in obedience for “Jesus and ___.” There is only room for Jesus.
So the Shema, the singular message an entire nation’s attention was arrested to “Hear!”[9] articulates the demand this way:
Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.[10]
Basically, everything. Nothing is reserved for self. There is no backwards tithe on your mind, will, emotions, physical strength, financial strength, or allegiances that you get to keep for your favorite pet sin. There is no asterisk permitted on “I’ll follow You anywhere!”[11] Foxes have foxholes. You want to follow the Son of Man who sleeps on rocks under the moon at night?[12] That’s where He’ll take you. And that is where you’ll go.
It stands to reason that it would be worth it to follow someone who otherwise bankrupts you if they’re worth more than what you lose to have them—if they’re a true “pearl of great price” buried in a field you pay with your life to find.[13] And insanely, that’s exactly the offer He is making: we lose what we can’t keep to gain what we can’t lose.[14] He gets our black death, and we get His righteousness and life.[15] Eternal life.[16] Even better, we get Him.[17]
All the Scriptures testify to His supremacy; His “preeminence in everything.”[18] He inhabits eternity,[19] dwells in everlasting light,[20] is the “High and Lofty One,”[21] who commands the birthing deer and flashing lightning and crashing waves and knows the precise dimensions of the earth’s foundations because He laid them.[22] He knows every star in the universe, has a name for each of them, and calls them forth by the power of His word despite the fact the job is very clearly beneath His qualifications.[23]
His exclusivity crashes upon our human preference for relativity demanding our idolatry cease at the shore of “the fullness of time.”[24] He is the Way, the Truth, the Life.[25] The only Door.[26] The only point of access to the Father of lights and glory.[27] His exaltation above Buddha, Muhammed, Zeus, the USD, and every concoction of the idol factory with assembly line efficiency that is the dark and untrustworthy human heart is incontestable.[28] Jesus’ supreme exaltation is incontestable.
The Son of Man had good reason to mark Mary of Bethany’s offering with a memorial, forever tethered to a faithful proclamation of the Gospel of the Kingdom:[29] she had already established a pattern wherein she forsook all other pursuits and defied cultural norms and expectations when they stood between her and Jesus.[30] She already hung on His every word.[31] She had already postured herself to receive the revelation of His crucifixion and resurrection before they occurred, and responded appropriately.[31] It’s no small thing she was the only one, while every other apostolic leader in the room drank the Kool-Aid of the social justice liberation gospel from a backstabbing thief.[32] She was the first one who sold everything she had to buy the field and dig for the pearl. And when you preach the Gospel of the Kingdom and make disciples who make disciples, she’s the template of what He’s looking for.[33]
But you cannot lead someone to a well you’ve not yet found yourself. If you haven’t dug water out of the ground, what exactly are you pouring in the cup to offer them for a drink?
Perhaps John specifically intended to introduce the Word “who inhabits eternity” taking on the form of His dust-wrought Image bearers then inhabiting our neighborhoods[34] and deliberately follow the prose with a wild example of what happens when Jesus lives in your neighborhood: He goes to your wedding. Such a human thing. But nothing is coincidence, and we would be remiss to miss John’s train of thought:
In the beginning was the Word…and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.[35]
Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world![36]
(A) The eternal Word made flesh who (B) is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (C) went to a wedding in Cana and transformed water into wine to remove the threat of shame upon the bride and her bridegroom.[37]
If wine is richer than water, and old wine is better than new wine,[38] Jesus is out for our fullness—our maturity, to be sure (old wine), but our transformation as well. Truth transforms us insomuch as it sets us free from the slavery of this “present evil age,”[39] and the wise folly of Heaven prescribes a song for us to sing our way through this holy exodus.[40] He loves to mark moments of deliverance with a “new song” erupting from the overflow of your awestruck heart.[41] And in the “song of all songs,”[42] the ultimate song we’ll sing for all of eternity, the parabolic story of the bride and Bridegroom for whom a “certain King” prepares a wedding,[43] the beloved bride opens with this declaration:
Your love is better than wine![43]
Better than the Plan B safety, better than the pet sin, better than the legitimate but limited pleasure of choice to imbibe. Better than Buddha. Better than lesser confessions. Better than blasphemies. Better than everything it costs to carry the cross behind Him. Better than the secondaries. Better than wine. Better than whiskey. Better than life. Better.
With Kentucky in the forefront of the news nowadays (for good reason!), allow me to paraphrase Solomon’s confession:
Jesus is even better than bourbon.
BALLADS OF THE SONG OF SOLOMON
GLOBAL PREMIERE EVENT
SAINT PATRICK’S DAY
03.17.2023
Stephanie Quick (@quicklikesand) is a writer/producer serving with FAI. She cohosts The Better Beautiful podcast with Jeff Henderson. Browse her free music, films, and books in the FAI App and at stephaniequick.org.
[1] Luke 9:62
[2] Isaiah 42:3
[3] Matthew 19:14; Luke 19:5
[4] Matthew 19:28
[5] Matthew 19:30
[6] 1 Kings 19:12
[7] Matthew 7:14
[8] Luke 9:23
[9] Deuteronomy 6:4
[10] Deuteronomy 6:4-5 (emphasis added); see also Matthew 22:37; Mark 12:30; Luke 10:27
[11] Luke 9:57
[12] Luke 9:58
[13] Matthew 13:45-46
[14] Matthew 16:26; Mark 8:36; Luke 9:25
[15] 2 Corinthians 5:21
[16] Daniel 12:2; John 3:16; 4:14
[17] Genesis 15:1
[18] Colossians 1:18
[19] Isaiah 57:15
[20] 1 Timothy 6:16
[21] Isaiah 57:15
[22] Job 38:4-11, 35; 39:1; Psalm 29:9
[23] Psalm 113:4-6; 147:4
[24] Galatians 4:4
[25] John 14:6
[26] John 10:9
[27] John 14:6; Ephesians 1:17; James 1:17
[28] Jeremiah 17:9; Matthew 6:24; Philippians 2:9-11; John Calvin wrote in his Commentaries on the Acts, “The human heart is a factory of idols. Every one of us is, from his mother's womb, expert in inventing idols.”
[29] Matthew 26:13
[30] Luke 10:38-41
[31] Luke 10:39
[32] Matthew 26:6-16; John 12:1-8
[33] Matthew 26:13
[34] John 1:1-14
[35] John 1:1, 14
[36] John 1:29
[37] Genesis 3:10, 15; John 2:1-11
[38] Luke 5:39
[39] John 8:32; Galatians 1:4
[40] 1 Corinthians 1:18-31; Ephesians 5:17-21; Colossians 3:16
[41] Psalm 40:1-3; Luke 6:45
[42] Song of Solomon 1:1
[43] Ephesians 5:31-32 (cf. Genesis 2:24); Matthew 22:2
[44] Song of Solomon 1:2
