New Wine into Old Wine Skins

Mark 2:22: 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.

What a curious scripture we have here today.  I ran across this in my daily reading and I began pondering on it.  Jesus is talking about the sabbath with the Pharisees and then all the sudden he pulls out two pithy statements about new patches on old cloaks and new wine in old wine skins.  Curious indeed.

The religious powers that be of Jesus day where the Pharisees.  They were the keepers of the law and they kept to it very strictly.  Jesus is bringing a fresh, new way of experiencing God that if was kept to this old way of doing religion would make the wineskin burst.  There are two challenges to us in this scripture.  The first is the fact that we can't let our faith get stale.  Anyone who has exercised can tell you that you can not keep doing the same exercises in the same way if you want to continue to grow in strength.  You have to change it up to shock the muscles.  I believe that we have spiritual muscles in much the same way.  It is the job of each generation of faithful disciples of Christ to exercise their spiritual muscles in new ways.  We need to continue to reevaluate what we believe and what we do through the lenses of scripture, experience, tradition and reason.  We do not go about this process 'willy nilly' and change things on the whim of culture.  That is the second perspective we can learn today.  While we do need to be aware of when we need new wineskins, we don't go changing the way we do things and how we believe just because of societal pressure.  It is a careful and delicate process, but one that needs to be done, especially in our society of immense cultural change.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Time to Grow Up

This morning I lost my wallet. Well lost is probably not the correct word, I temporarily misplaced it. Whenever I lose something, especially something important, I get anxious, even frantic. Most people have outgrown the problem of losing their keys or their wallet by having specific places to put it. I struggle with this (I often give the excuse that it's because it is how my brain works, while true it's an excuse) because I have not taken the time and effort to develop a pattern of where to put my important stuff. I am a very forgetful person, my dad used to say I would forget my head if it was not attached, but with the proper effort and training, I could learn to change my ways. Friends, the same is true with our faith. We must choose to put effort and energy into growing in mature followers of Jesus. Check out Hebrews 6:1-9: So let’s press on to maturity, by moving on from the basics about Christ’s word. Let’s not lay a foundation of turning away from dead works, of f
Read more

This world IS our home and it DOES matter when we lose the battle...

You might be wondering what this blog is about today, or you might have already connected the title with two popular Christian songs on the radio: Home by Chris Tomlin and Greater by Mercy Me. Both songs represent a theology that is an epidemic among popular Christianity today. Many Christians believe that this world is not really our home, that it is just a temporary place that we are passing through and (hopefully if we found Christ!) we go TO heaven and not experience eternal conscious torment in hell. That allows us to say (as it says in the song Greater by Mercy Me) that if we lose the battle with doubt or sin, it doesn't matter because we have the grace of God and so we still get to go to heaven (side note: this isn't exactly what the song means, but it is what it says. The song seems to be saying that because we are redeemed we don't have to earn grace. That is true but it overstates the point). The Christian world has focused on eternal salvation, however follow
Read more

Thoughts from the first five chapters of Luke

Last week I challenged people to read the book of Luke over the next month, and I am very excited about that! I am now realizing the challenge, however, of blogging over 5 chapters of the Bible! I am going to hit some highlights, feel free to comment below if you have thoughts or questions. First of all, Luke is actually book 1 of a saga that also includes Acts! Many people call it Luke-Acts because it was probably meant to be read as one continuous story (hmm maybe we should read acts together next...).  Chapter 1 "I have also decided to write a carefully ordered account for you, most honorable Theophilus." Theophilus is probably an honorific and it means friend of God or beloved of God. It is debated whether the book is written to an actual person or to all believers whom Luke is calling friends of God. The story of the birth of John the Baptist recalls stories in the Hebrew text that are similar such as Sarah and Abraham with the birth of Isaac (Genesis 18)
Read more