AN UNEXPECTED STORY

No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. Otherwise the new piece will pull away from the old, making the tear worse. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the wine will burst the skins and both the wine and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins. (Mark 2: 21-22).

Jesus was good at interspersing His profound teaching with simple stories that unexpectedly made deep truths clear. This was one of them. A question about fasting – “Why don’t your disciples fast when John’s and the Pharisees’ disciples do?” – prompted Jesus to launch into a teaching full of hints about Himself and His coming passion, which His hearers obviously did not understand.

He had come to make clear to His people what they had misunderstood. He was no ordinary rabbi, following and adding to the already top-heavy list of dos and don’ts of what had moved from a lifestyle to a religion. His job was not to rubber-stamp the opinions of the sages, but to live out God’s Torah – His instructions and way of life so that His people would see His kingdom in action.

The bridegroom was on the scene. He had come to propose to His bride and to set in motion the process that would culminate in the glorious day when He would return to claim her and to take her to His Father’s house for the wedding. He had come to invite her into a brand new life. Like recently woven, unshrunk cloth; like new, unfermented wine.

The problem was that the new cloth and the new wine did not fit with the old. The old system and the new were incompatible. How could you “sew” this renewed walk of faith, love and freedom with Jesus onto the old “cloth” of religion with its intricate mesh of meaningless rules and rituals? How could you pour the “new wine” of life in fellowship with the Holy Spirit into the stiff, rigid old wineskins of self-righteous performance? It just would not work. Any attempt to blend the new with the old would ruin them both.

New wine could only mature in the new, flexible wineskins that had not yet stiffened with age and with use. Was Jesus implying that the “new wine” that He was introducing them to was alive with movement and expansion? It needed flexibility and room to grow. It was as mysterious and unpredictable as the wind. It was a life of interconnectedness with the Father through the Holy Spirit, a relationship of trust and obedience, based on something far deeper than the instructions they were supposed to follow.

This life was not so much about reading and following the “Book” as it was about living in intimate union with the Author of the Book. How much more effective than simply trying to get into the mind of the Author by reading His words! Now Jesus was giving His people the opportunity to get to know and understand the heart of the Author by living in fellowship with Him.  Once His followers grasped that, they would understand how futile it was to try please the Author by interpreting what He wrote as a rule-book rather than a love-story.

Did His hearers get the point? Old cloth and old wineskins were past their “sell-by-date”. There was no value in trying to make them last longer. They had served their purpose and would be replaced by something new and far better – life which the Holy Spirit would give them, freely and forever. This was not about resurrecting an old garment but clothing them with a brand new one. This was not about pouring new wine into old wineskins. This was about pouring the new wine of the Holy Spirit into new hearts, made clean and new through what Jesus would do on the cross.

A simple, homespun story – everyday things which they were familiar with, but packed with fresh insights into something no other rabbi had even offered, leave alone thought about. Did His hearers go away enlightened, excited, full of anticipation for what He would do for them? Much more than merely heal their bodies and make their lives a little easier to bear?

He was talking about wine – the stuff that went to their heads and made them temporarily jolly so that they would forget their troubles as long as its effects lasted. No, He was announcing that they would soon be drinking a wine so potent and so permanent that, in spite of their circumstances, they would be filled with joy that would not fade because the “wine” would live inside them forever. Much of their fasting was nothing more than part of the old “garment” and the old “wineskins” – no longer of use or value. They could dispense with that old life forever because the kingdom of God had come.

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

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