Completely New (Hunch 20)
“No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. If he does, the new piece will pull away from the old, making the tear worse. And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the wineskins will be ruined. No, he pours new wine into new wineskins.”
In a Nutshell
Jesus gives John's disciples, and the religious teachers
further teaching about His place in God's Kingdom. He not only wanted
people celebrating God's gifts, but uses the examples of clothing and wine to
help them understand.
Questions
What's clothing got to do with it?
And also what's this wine talk about?
Remember
who Jesus is talking to here. There are three groups. There are the disciples
of John the Baptist, there are the religious wise guys and there are Jesus' own
disciples. Jesus used the way a Bride and Groom become married to explain
what's happening to these people who feel there's too much partying taken
place. So, as we said, God's Chosen Son - Jesus Himself - is the Groom. We are
the Bride. Why will the groom be taken away? What's going on? What's Mark
telling us?
Jesus
was saying the Kingdom of God is like a marriage. His coming was the
“engagement party”, and as the announcement is celebrated, the Groom and the
Bride make a promise to each other to wait for each other until the marriage
party can be held. In Jesus' day the final marriage ceremony was held a year
after the engagement party, when the Groom's father is ready. Jesus used the
idea of an engagement to help John's disciples, and the worried religious
leaders, understand God's invitation to celebrate His love. Yes, it is a matter
of celebrating "now" but it is also "not yet". Jesus was
happy to see His disciples living and enjoying themselves, when He was with
them. He was aware of the "not yet", the future. Things take time. So
does a wedding; so does a marriage.
Jesus
also suggested His Father was ordering Him a complete new wedding shirt. His
old shirt was what He was wearing then, at the engagement party. But He was
going to be fitted out in a completely new outfit! That has something to do
with His Resurrection, I think.
But
there was more. Jesus looked at them and said: "There's wine at this
party. Which wine?" Strange question. Which wine? They were wanting to
know why His disciples were not fasting. Wine takes time to mature and Jesus
was telling them not only that they were drinking the old brewed wine and
enjoying it. He was brewing a new wine. His teaching and His work were the new
wine. Their celebration of God's gifts was drinking the wine of God's promises
that had been sitting in bottles for years, getting better and better. The wine
they were drinking was wine that was new some years ago. It was then ready to
drink. It had matured. But Jesus was pointing out that there was still much
more to come. His new wine, the new wine He was brewing by announcing God's
Kingdom, was not wine that would be drunk at an engagement party. It's the wine
for the wedding breakfast; the finest matured wine. The new wine matures in its
new bottles between the engagement party and the wedding breakfast.
In
this way Jesus helped his disciples, John's disciples and the others, to
understand God's Kingdom and how it was and is coming in fullness and that will
take time. They needed to know that by returning to His Father, He was helping
the new wine to mature. God's Kingdom has come. The new wine is in the bottles.
But until we toast the Groom and the Bride it sits and matures and we wait
patiently for it to be un-corked for that magnificent toast.