New Wine, Old Skins

People come to Jesus with a comparison. John's disciples fast, and the Pharisees' disciples fast, so why do his disciples not? It is a fair question. Fasting was a mark of seriousness, and Jesus' followers seemed to be eating rather a lot. Mark 2:18-22 records his reply.

He answers with a picture. Can wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? Of course not. A wedding is not the time for mourning. But a day will come when the bridegroom is taken away, and then they will fast. It is one of the earliest hints in Mark that Jesus knows where his road ends.

Then two more pictures. Nobody sews unshrunk cloth onto an old garment, because the patch will pull away and make the tear worse. Nobody pours new wine into old wineskins, because the fermenting wine will burst the brittle leather. New wine needs new skins.

What Jesus is saying is that his coming is not a minor adjustment to the religious life people already had. It is not a patch. It is a new thing, and the old forms cannot simply absorb it. Fasting, prayer, Sabbath, sacrifice, all of it must now be understood in relation to him. Practices that were once ways of waiting for God become ways of responding to a God who has come.

There is a caution here for those of us who have been Christians a long time. The forms of our faith, the habits and schedules and preferences, can quietly become old wineskins. We keep them because we have always kept them, and forget what they were for. Jesus does not abolish the practices. He fills them. Fasting continues; his disciples will fast when he is gone. But it continues as longing for the bridegroom, not as a performance of seriousness.

On a Monday it is worth asking which of your spiritual habits are alive with him and which have gone stiff. The remedy is not to throw out the skins. It is to bring them back to the wine.