Wine spilling everywhere

From Luke Chapter 5:

33They said to him, "John's disciples often fast and pray, and so do the disciples of the Pharisees, but yours go on eating and drinking."
34Jesus answered, "Can you make the guests of the bridegroom fast while he is with them? 35But the time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them; in those days they will fast."
36He told them this parable: "No one tears a patch from a new garment and sews it on an old one. If he does, he will have torn the new garment, and the patch from the new will not match the old. 37And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the new wine will burst the skins, the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. 38No, new wine must be poured into new wineskins. 39And no one after drinking old wine wants the new, for he says, 'The old is better.' "
The new living translation of that last verse reads: But no one who drinks the old wine seems to want the new wine. ‘The old is just fine,’ they say.”

I was intrigued by this parable over the weekend. Partly because I was sitting in an Easter Sunday service that included a rendition of “You Found Me” by The Fray, rather than the marchy-nazarene song “Up from the grave he arose!” and partly because I usually find Jesus’ parables both so profound and so cryptic that I love to try to take them apart and explore the context. This one is interesting. Jesus just went around healing bunches of people. Each time he heals them, he says not to say anything to anyone. Either a clever marketing ploy or a genuine strain towards secrecy: it doesn’t work. No matter where he goes, people know who He is and the power He has. Both those who have faith and wish to be healed, and those who lack faith and don’t think they need healing. The Pharisees and saducees, namely. So sometimes, Luke tells about the person who comes up and says “if you are willing, heal me.” But other times, Luke writes very blatantly about how church leaders questioned Jesus outright.

This case is of the latter. Self-important people (for this is not an inquisitive-type question, this is a challenge question) ask Jesus why everyone else who is supposedly religious fast and pray, but Jesus apparently nourishes himself all the time. His direct answer confuses them. He basically says “party with the King, dude, why mourn when you’ll have time for that later.”

But His parable is the real answer to the question. The parable, talking about very practical things like clothes and wine, two staples of Jewish life, discusses the quality of each. No one decides to half-heartedly update and old, holey garment with a shiny new patch of fabric. It looks stupid. If you are going to patch an old garment, use old cloth. Ah, but if you are going to have a new shirt, then have one! Don’t do the job half-way.

Same with the wineskins. This example is a little more graphic. If you pour new wine into old wineskins, it will literally burst the old skins at the seams, and wine will spill everywhere. If you want to do it right, you have to get new skins to hold the new liquid. There’s no two ways about it, no shortcuts. New goes with new, old goes with old.

Gentle though it is, this rebuke is still explicit. You cannot say to Jesus, Yo, why aren’t you doing everything the way we always did things. The way we’re supposed to do things. The way it makes sense to do things?!

And Jesus said – because you can’t fit new stuff into old clothes. The skins will burst. The outfits will be ruined. The reputation will cease. If you want new stuff, and believe you me, He came with some new stuff in His mission statement, you gotta go the whole way. 100%. New. Not old. You can’t just hang on to that old pair of pants and replace the shoes and the shirt. It’s gotta be all new.

And here’s the cool part.We don’t have to be or get the new stuff ourselves. It doesn’t outline in the Bible where sinner have to change their ways, and then Jesus can take a look-see, maybe set up camp. It doesn’t say we have to use our own willpower and goals list, be our own heroes and change the world (see post later from my husband about the mis-step in the Men’s Frat teaching), and when we’re good enough, humble enough, successful enough, missional-minded enough, sacrificial enough, then Jesus will hang out with us.

Nuh uh.

It says, He’ll go ahead and give us all the new stuff Himself!! Because, lets face it, we can’t be all that. We can try really hard, and we can make resolutions and to-do lists and suffer through, but we will never be as Christ-like as Jesus Himself without letting Him commit and do the cleansing. (Note: I’m not for the “I’ll lay on the couch and think Christian thoughts and let Jesus figure out how to fix me” at all, I’m all for going out and serving and sacrificing and building relationships. I just want to make the point that we can’t do it ourselves and then sometimes talk to Jesus. It’s a God-thing. He’s all over it.)

All that to say. I hope I can become the kind of person who doesn’t stick to “the old is just fine,” Parts of the church, my soul, and my life. Because, the old isn’t just fine. The old has gone, the new has come. I want to live like that’s the reality in my life.