Daily Thoughts from Mark: Same Wine, New Wineskins (Mark 2:18-22)

Now John’s disciples and the Pharisees were fasting. And people came and said to him, “Why do John’s disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?” And Jesus said to them, “Can the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast. The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast in that day. No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. If he does, the patch tears away from it, the new from the old, and a worse tear is made. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the wine will burst the skins—and the wine is destroyed, and so are the skins. But new wine is for fresh wineskins.” (Mark 2:18-22, ESV) 

John’s the Baptist still had disciples and they would observe, along with the Pharisees and others, fasts prescribed not by Scripture but by tradition.  Fasting is a way of expressing grief (what I have lost is more important than eating) and devotion to God (God is more important than eating).  But Jesus did not make his disciples fast, so the people were confused and asked why.  Implicit in their question might have been a challenge to how spiritual Jesus and his disciples were.

But Jesus likens his presence among his disciples to the bridegroom among his friends at the wedding.  The attendants of the bridegroom don’t fast, they feast.  The occasion is festive, not mournful.  Yes, life is hard and its evil is worth mourning, but a wedding is joyous.  When Jesus is “taken away,” that is, when he is killed, then they will mourn and fast.

Jesus is here declaring that he is Israel’s long-awaited Messiah.  God is the bridegroom of Israel (Isaiah 62:5) and had the people been discerning enough they might have accused Jesus, therefore, of blasphemy for identifying himself as the bride’s groom.

Jesus wants them to also know that the coming of the kingdom is bringing new forms to things.  Just as you do not keep the same rules for a 16 year old as you do for a 6 year old, so things are changing with the coming of the King and his kingdom.  The kingdom is like unshrunk new cloth that cannot be sewn into an old garment because when it shrinks it would ruin the old garment. Newly fermenting wine would burst an old wineskin that had already been stretched to capacity.  The people should not expect that all the same practices and forms will work for life in the kingdom.

We are still tempted to hold on to old ways of doing things when they are no longer suited to the new situation.  And we will always find ourselves in conflict about whether those old ways are still suited to the new situation.  May God give us wisdom to keep the wine but get new wineskins to hold it.