Mark 2:18-22
“What’s New?”
March 11, 2012 - Third Sunday in Lent

         We looked at a couple of beautiful steaks and groaned. Terry and I had just come down from a long, cold backpack trip in the high Sierras of California and arrived at his grandmother’s house in Santa Barbara. We should have been famished and ready to devour the meal his grandmother wanted to cook for us, but there was no way.

         The problem was that we stopped on the way at the Big Yellow House. It was a family style restaurant just south in Summerland. They just kept bringing wonderful food to our table, all we could eat. We walked out stuffed. Terry should have known his grandmother well enough to know it was a big mistake, but we were young and foolish and hungry. We hadn’t yet learned much about taking other people into consideration. So we ate when we shouldn’t and didn’t eat when we should have.

         When to eat is the lesson Jesus wanted to teach the people who asked him about when His disciples were eating. Why were Jesus’ disciples enjoying their food at a time when other disciples, those of John the Baptist and of the Pharisees, were fasting?

         There’s a little turn here in Mark. In our last two texts, people complained about what Jesus did and said. Now in this text and the next, they shift to griping about His disciples. Mark is a storyteller. He’s selected these controversies to show how Jesus’ opponents came at Him from every angle. If they couldn’t pin Him down, they would try for His associates.

         Fasting was one of the three pillars of Jewish piety. A devout Jew offered regular prayers, gave alms to the poor, and engaged in fasting. Fasting was a sign of your devotion to God, a way of expressing repentance and atoning for your sin. It helped strengthen your prayers. It was out of the ordinary like it feels for us. Every good Jewish person fasted to some extent.

         We don’t know exactly what John’s disciples practiced, but we know from Mark that he ate an austere diet (honey and bugs) gleaned from the wilderness where he preached and baptized. Other historical sources tell us that the Pharisees would fast each week on Monday and Thursday, usually from sunrise to sunset. It’s likely someone observed Jesus and His disciples enjoying a hearty meal on a Monday afternoon when all the other holy people were going hungry and wondered, “What’s up with that?”

         One comforting fact about Jesus is that though He suffered and even fasted for forty days at one point, He definitely liked to eat. He made no bones about it. On a similar theme in Matthew 11 and in Luke 7, we find that people griped about John the Baptist because he fasted so much, but then turned around and griped about Jesus because He didn’t fast enough, calling Him a glutton.

         Jesus defended His disciples by offering three little parables. The first is an image He used over and over to describe Himself. He is the Bridegroom arriving for a glorious wedding. Throughout the Old Testament, especially in the prophet Hosea, we get the picture of God as the husband of His people Israel. Now Jesus claims that image for Himself. It’s another subtle way of expressing the fact that He is God. He came to complete that marriage between God and us.

         Just like you need to be ready to eat when you show up at the home of your grandmother who loves to cook for you, you need to be ready to eat at a wedding feast. Jesus says, “The wedding guests cannot fast while the bridegroom is with them, can they?” You’ve been to wedding receptions where the food is all held back while the guests stand around waiting for the bride and groom, who are changing their clothes or getting pictures taken or whatever. You all stand around fasting, starving, eyeing the cheese and crackers, longing for a shrimp, wishing you could sneak a handful of mixed nuts, just wishing the young couple would hurry up.

         When they arrive, though, it’s time to eat and drink. It’s not the moment to stand in the corner and think about your diet. Lift a glass of punch in a toast. Take a slice of wedding cake. For awhile there it would have been rude and inappropriate to eat. But when the couple shows up it would be wrong not to join in celebrating this happy beginning of their new life together.

         Jesus is the Bridegroom in God’s wedding celebration. He has arrived. Our new life with God began when He became one of us, walked and talked with us, lived like we live. It was the start of something gloriously new between human beings and God. So those who joined Him at the beginning had an attitude of celebration. They didn’t need to fast and be gloomy like the Pharisees. They enjoyed the presence of God Himself living among them.

         It’s all in the timing. Terry and I should have fasted just another hour until we got to his grandma’s house and she broiled our steaks. Wedding guests need to fast until the bride and groom arrive. In verse 20, Jesus says that a time would come after the celebration when fasting would again be appropriate. “The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast on that day.”

         That was a hint of what was to come. At this point Jesus had not told them anything about the big plan. They didn’t know He was going to die and rise again and ascend into heaven. But here was the subtlest suggestion of a time when He would not be with them in the same way. It wouldn’t be time just for celebration any more. They would need to fast once again, to be sorrowful for sin, to be humble before God.

         Please keep verse 20 in mind as we move on. Jesus gave us two small images from daily life in the ancient world in order to support what He said about the time to eat and the time to fast. We might imagine these mini-parables teach us to focus exclusively on what’s new. Everything old is worthless. Only the new is good. But verse 20 reminds us that’s not quite it.

         These parables do show how the new things God does through Jesus can be incompatible with sticking rigidly to our old ways. Verse 21 is about sewing a patch of new, unwashed, unshrunk cloth on an old cloak or garment that has been washed many times and shrunk to its final size. If you do, says Jesus, the new patch will itself shrink and pull at the corners of the tear, making it worse.

         The wine and wineskins need a little explanation. “New wine” didn’t mean just a recent vintage. It meant the fresh pressed grape juice which would become wine. You put it into a leather skin and leave it to ferment. There’s tremendous force in that amazing process by which wine comes to be. Carbon dioxide is generated. The gas expands. Those of you who’ve made beer or wine know that if you are not careful, corks or tops can pop off. A bottle can even explode. Ask my wife Beth to tell you the story of the exploding bottle of sangria in the closet of their apartment in graduate women’s housing at Notre Dame.

         In ancient times the pressure was dealt with by putting grape juice into containers sewn out of leather. When the wine fermented and gas built up, the leather stretched to accommodate it. New wine, new leather wine skin, and all was well. But if you tried to put your new wine in an old skin that had already been stretched out, there was no place for the pressure to go. The skin would pop and your wine spilled out on the ground. As Jesus says, “the wine is lost, and so are the skins.” Both old and new suffer when you put them together in the wrong way.

         It’s especially important in our time to keep all the parts of this text together. We live in age which almost worships whatever is new. The new iPad came out last week and techies all over the world waited breathlessly to see what wonderful new features the ghost of Steve Jobs would produce. But no matter how marvelous it is, it will be considered old in a few months.

         But it’s not just tech, it’s almost anything. We’re already forgetting last year’s films that won Academy awards and looking toward new summer blockbusters. Your phone company or your favorite department store probably has a new name. We look for new items on the menu when we go out to eat. We live in a culture that idolizes the new, that lives for novelty.

         We go for the new, the novel, even in our faith. What’s the latest Christian music? Where’s the hot new church in town? Who is writing the best new Christian book? What’s the most recent translation of Scripture? Is there some fresh approach to spiritual life? What’s new? What’s new?

         Please notice that Jesus did not ask us to embrace the new for its own sake. He was not concerned just for what’s new. There would be a time again to do the old discipline of fasting. If you put new wine into old wine skins, He pointed out, the new wine is lost, but He also said, “and so are the skins.” Jesus loves and is concerned about both the old and the new. He just doesn’t want what’s old to hinder the new life He brings us.

         These parables are not teaching that faith in Christ is all about chasing the latest fad, even if it’s a spiritual fad, a Christian fad. No, what Jesus wants us to grasp is that His presence is vital, powerful and life-changing in a way that cannot be constrained by a mindset that wants to keep everything the same. When you meet Jesus, things change.

         If you want to get married, you can’t just keep your life exactly as it was before, but just add a wife or a husband. If you go into marriage thinking that you can go on living just the same as when you were single, except for sleeping with someone else in your bed, it’s a mistake. Your habits will have to change. You won’t go out with your other friends as often. You’ll have to compromise when you buy a new couch or when you decide how to spend a vacation. You’ll have to eat new things, watch new TV programs, meet new relatives. You can’t just think of it as the same old life plus a new partner. It’s a whole new life.

         That’s how it is when the divine Bridegroom shows up in your life. Don’t think that it’s just the same old thing, plus Jesus. If you’ve got a job, don’t think that all Jesus wants is to help you do that same job better. If you’re a student, Jesus wants more than just to get you better grades. If you are an investor, Jesus isn’t in your life just to strengthen your financial portfolio. And if you are married, Jesus isn’t there just to make you a better spouse, to help your relationship work better. All those old things may stay with you, and some of them definitely should! But Jesus wants to change you, change the focus of your life.

         Jesus’ disciples didn’t stop fasting because fasting was now an old-fashioned, outmoded, unnecessary practice. They didn’t fast because their attention was all on Jesus. They didn’t have time to do that spiritual discipline right then because they were concentrating on what Jesus had to say, on the miracles He was doing. They didn’t fast then, because Jesus was changing who and what they were.

         Krisann works for our North Pacific Conference of Covenant churches. Part of her story is that she used to work for one of the big cruise lines. She’s a talented manager and she directed and arranged the various programs and entertainment which happened aboard the company’s ships. She says it was an exciting and interesting job. It paid well and she got to travel and meet all kinds of exciting people. She really wanted to believe that she could follow Jesus and make that job her career.

         Then she began to notice some things about the company. The white owners, captains and crew of the ships had a status and privilege that she enjoyed as well. But the non-white people who cleaned the cabins and cooked the food and served in the dining rooms had a different experience. They were paid poorly, worked long hours, and had very little recourse if the crew treated them unfairly. She began to feel the injustice of it.

         For awhile Krisann thought she could just keep the same old job and be a witness while she did it. But she began to feel the pressure of the new wine of her faith in Jesus who loved everyone the same. She couldn’t keep enjoying her old privileges while people around her were suffering. In the end, she felt God calling her to quit and find a new place and way to work that would have room for seeking the justice she knew Jesus desired. That’s what Jesus meant by new wineskins.

         What’s new in your relationship with Jesus Christ? Where do you feel pressure that may call for setting aside something old, perhaps for awhile, perhaps forever? Do you need to make some changes at home, at work, in your habits, in your prayer life? Into what new wineskin will you pour your own walk with Jesus?

         Not everything old has to go. Sometimes what is old in Christian life and faith might be new to you. For some of us, this business of Lent and fasting and spiritual discipline, which has been around for centuries, is brand new. We’ve never experienced it before. For those disciples at that time, being with Jesus meant enjoying their food. For us, it might be time once more to do the opposite and give attention to Christ and His sacrifice by giving up some of what we eat.

         Yet it’s not rigid. My wife shared with me an article by a woman reflecting on fasting in Lent and what it might mean for a person with anorexia. The suggestion she gave one struggling person was to eat a chocolate strawberry every day in Lent. That reverse fasting was a profound experience as a way to honor and celebrate her new life in Christ. New wine and new wineskins are not the same for everyone. It’s Jesus who stays the same.

         The little bit of liturgy we do here, the saying of “Thanks be to God,” and singing “Glory Be to the Father,” after we read Scripture, may be a new experience for you, even though it’s ancient practice in the church. Or maybe joining a small group or serving the homeless in one of our shelter ministries will be the new thing you discover.

         Each of us and each generation needs to discover its new wineskins. In the Reformation, Luther and Calvin and others didn’t plan to start something new. They saw themselves as recovering the old and true faith. In the Christian church sometimes the old is the new “new.” Jesus isn’t asking us to constantly reinvent faith or church or what it means to be a Christian. Jesus only wants us to see the freshness and newness that is always there in Him, that He is always bringing to our lives.

         May the Lord pour out the new wine of Jesus Christ into your heart and soul. And may He give you grace and strength and courage to let the joy and power of it fill you completely. May Jesus always be what’s new in your life.

         Amen.

         Valley Covenant Church
         Eugene/Springfield, Oregon
         Copyright © 2012 by Stephen S. Bilynskyj