But they put new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved

 

 As Jesus passed on from there, He saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax office.  And He said to him, "Follow Me."  So he arose and followed Him.  Now it happened, as Jesus sat at the table in the house, that behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and sat down with Him and His disciples.  And when the Pharisees saw it, they said to His disciples, "Why does your Teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?"  When Jesus heard that, He said to them, "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.  But go and learn what this means:  'I desire mercy and not sacrifice.'  For I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance.  

Then the disciples of John came to Him, saying, "Why do we and the Pharisees fast often, but Your disciples do not fast?"  And Jesus said to them, "Can the friends of the bridegroom mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them?  But the days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them, and then they will fast.  No one puts a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment; for the patch pulls away from the garment, and the tear is made worse.  Nor do they put new wine into old wineskins, or else the wineskins break, the wine is spilled, and the wineskins are ruined.  But they put new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved."

 

- Matthew 9:9-17 

 

Yesterday we read that, after healing two demon-possessed men in the country of the Gergesenes, Jesus got into a boat, crossed back over the Sea of Galilee, and came to His own city of Capernaum.  Then behold, they brought to Him a paralytic lying on a bed.  When Jesus saw their faith, He said to the paralytic, "Son, be of good cheer; your sins are forgiven you."  And at once some of the scribes said within themselves, "This Man blasphemes!"  But Jesus, knowing their thoughts, said, "Why do you think evil in your hearts?  For which is easier, to say, 'Your sins are forgiven you,' or to say, 'Arise and walk'?  But that you may know that the Son of Man has power on earth to forgive sins" -- then He said to the paralytic, "Arise, take up your bed, and go to your house."  And he arose and departed to his house.  Now when the multitudes saw it, they marveled and glorified God, who had given such power to men.

 

  As Jesus passed on from there, He saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax office.  And He said to him, "Follow Me."  So he arose and followed Him.  Now it happened, as Jesus sat at the table in the house, that behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and sat down with Him and His disciples.  And when the Pharisees saw it, they said to His disciples, "Why does your Teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?"  When Jesus heard that, He said to them, "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.  But go and learn what this means:  'I desire mercy and not sacrifice.'  For I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance."  Matthew (the author of the Gospel we are reading) is also named Levi (Mark 2:14).   As Israel was under the rule of Rome, Roman overlords assigned specific areas to Jewish tax collectors, and my study Bible explains that these tax collectors were free to collect extra revenues for their own profit.  Backed by the Roman state and power, they could practice extortion on their own people.  My study Bible says that their collaboration with the occupying Romans, their fraud, and their corruption caused other Jews to hate them and to consider them to be unclean (Matthew 11:19).  As Jesus both dines with them and accepts a tax collector as a disciple ("Follow Me") , this offends the Pharisees.  But Christ's defense is simple:  As our ultimate healer, He goes where the need of the physician is greatest.  My study Bible adds that Jesus' quotation from Hosea's prophecy (Hosea 6:6), "I desire mercy and not sacrifice," isn't a rejection of sacrifice per se, but rather shows that mercy is a higher priority (see Psalm 51).

 

 Then the disciples of John came to Him, saying, "Why do we and the Pharisees fast often, but Your disciples do not fast?"  And Jesus said to them, "Can the friends of the bridegroom mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them?  But the days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them, and then they will fast.  No one puts a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment; for the patch pulls away from the garment, and the tear is made worse.  Nor do they put new wine into old wineskins, or else the wineskins break, the wine is spilled, and the wineskins are ruined.  But they put new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved."  My study Bible explains that the Jews typically fasted twice a week (Luke 18:12), on Monday and Thursday.  Additionally, there were regular public fasts which were observed and occasionally proclaimed (2 Chronicles 20:3; Ezra 8:21; Esther 4:16; Joel 2:15), especially on the Day of Atonement (Leviticus 16:31-34) and in times of mourning (Zechariah 7:5, 8:19).  But the day of the Messiah was seen as a wedding feast -- a time of joy and gladness.  Here Jesus is proclaiming that day, and declaring Himself to be the Messiah/Bridegroom.  My study Bible adds that for Christians, fasting is not gloomy but desirable, a "bright sadness," for by fasting we gain self-control and we prepare ourselves for the Wedding Feast.  The old garment and old wineskins stand for the Old Covenant and the Law, viewed as imperfect and temporary; the new wineskins are the New Covenant and those in Christ.  The new wine is the Holy Spirit dwelling within renewed people, who cannot be constrained by the old precepts of the Law.  

What is your new wine?  What does your new wineskin look like?  Our faith often seems to teach us that we live in a kind of fine tension between practices we know and honor, and which are always helpful to us, and the new exuberant life which is sudden and surprising and through which the Holy Spirit works in us.  Sitting in a liturgy that dates itself to centuries past, we find tremendous truths and beauty that is waiting for us to discover it, as the Holy Spirit, while we're in prayer, will open up our eyes to what is there, what has always been there, and yet is working in us now.  We might engage in fasting practices which don't find much popular favor necessarily in the Church worldwide, but we'll find that they do indeed teach us the kind of self-mastery that allows us to rise above our own habits and seeming limitations, teaching us that we have a power to aspire to the capacity to say "No" to what plagues and ails us.  These old practices are not meant to be restrictions in and of themselves, but rather platforms; they are meant to give us structure, rails within which we can move and live and move forward on the right track, so to speak.  Just like the stunned and offended Pharisees in today's reading, we might not necessarily like or expect what that surprising new wine will do, what the new wineskins look like.  But there is one thing we can be certain about, and that is that when we plant our faith where it belongs and do all we can to nurture it, we are calling on the Physician who knows what's best for us, who will call all of us beyond what we know and expect -- even through the practices that are meant to give us proper structure for that journey, which have served for many centuries, through the saints who came before us and helped to show us the way, God's power in that new wine revealing itself through those who came before us in faith.  Let us take on those new wineskins and become the new wine, and turn to the fasting that is in preparation for the Bridegroom, the resources ready to help make that happen, to a faith that is always surprisingly new.  The Bridegroom says, "I am always making all things new" (Revelation 21:5).  The tension between what is, what was, and is to come, is always there in His presence and in the Church, and it is there we dwell and practice our faith (Hebrews 13:8, Revelation 4:8).