New Wineskins

Matthew 9:14-17 (NRSV)

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, "The wedding guests cannot mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them, can they? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast. No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old cloak, for the patch pulls away from the cloak, and a worse tear is made. Neither is new wine put into old wineskins; otherwise, the skins burst, and the wine is spilled, and the skins are destroyed; but new wine is put into fresh wineskins, and so both are preserved."

In the past I tended to look at this text in an individualistic and personal way, and in some respects that's not completely wrong.  As a motto for life, it falls somewhere near the one I was taught:  "if you do what you always do, you get what you always get."  God is making me a new creation and that's going to involve changes - not always comfortable - or new as the old me becomes the new me.

But I don't really think that's what Jesus is really getting at here.  As I've talked about before, Jesus is all about community and relationship, and as he's talking here to the Pharisees, it isn't a stretch to guess who the old wine skins are.

Jesus is coming to do a new thing.  He's proclaiming the Kingdom of God and that means that structures, identities, ways of working together, and group life is going to change.  The binding that the Pharisees were so tightly trying to use to hold onto the people wasn't working anymore for God's kingdom.  It was time for a new container.

What does that say about our churches?  For one thing, I think it says that they are important.  Structure, the very building itself, as well as the committees, teams, and ministries that gather the community and promote the kingdom in the world are important.

But what's truly key is what that structure contains.  With the help of the Holy Spirit, we contain the work of God's kingdom.  The purpose of the wineskin is to be strong enough to make sure the work is done, proclaimed and able to go out into the broken world.  In that respect, it's important and needs our vigilance.

But two problems can arise.  First, we can put more energy into the maintaining of the structure that we forget what it is for.  And second, we can put so much energy into the maintaining of the structure, that we miss when it needs to be tossed out all together and a new structure needed.

The work of the kingdom is not static, and that in the end is the reply to that statement all churches have made at some point or another when things begin to change and get uncomfortable:  "We've never never done it that way before!"

Change is not for change's sake.  But when, as Bob Dylan sings, "the times they are a'changin," it might be good to look at whether our wineskins are up to the task at hand.

Gracious God: grant us the serenity to accept the things that we can not change, courage to change the things we must, and wisdom to know the difference.  Amen.