Get ready for something new
Luke 5:36-39
I am slow to throw out an old pair of shoes. It usually takes my feet getting wet a few times for me to come to my senses. I used to get shoes resoled when it was possible, because I like the comfort of broken in leather. Stiff shoes are a pain, but I don’t want wet feet either.
Change is hard but inevitable. How we approach it should be seasoned with wisdom from Jesus.
He told them this parable: "No one tears a patch from a new garment and sews it on an old one. If he does, he will have torn the new garment, and the patch from the new will not match the old. And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the new wine will burst the skins, the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, new wine must be poured into new wineskins. And no one after drinking old wine wants the new, for he says, ’The old is better.’" (Luke 5:36-39 NIV)
The new and the old are in tension
Can’t you see Jesus demonstrating this point? "James, come here. You need to learn to sew." Then he says to the crowd, "Look at James’ elbow. See that patch? See how it is tearing his tunic? That’s what happens when you sew a new patch on an old tunic. And what do you think happened to the new piece of cloth this patch was taken from? It is ruined. There is a big patch cut out of it."
Then He calls us to picture an old dried up wineskin filled with new wine. The expansion of the gasses would be too much for the inflexible leather. It would crack and burst. There is nothing wrong with the old wineskin, it just isn’t suited to this particular task.
New leather would work so much better since it is soft and pliable. It would expand and stretch as necessary to allow the wine to keep well. And nothing would get destroyed or wasted.
And remember the wedding at Cana? When he told this parable, Jesus might have been remembering.
... the master of the banquet tasted the water that had been turned into wine. He did not realize where it had come from, though the servants who had drawn the water knew. Then he called the bridegroom aside and said, “Everyone brings out the choice wine first and then the cheaper wine after the guests have had too much to drink; but you have saved the best till now.”
John 2:9-10 (NIV)
In other words. Why save the good stuff till everyone is too drunk to appreciate it? Only a drunk person would want weak wine after they’ve had the fine vintage.
A person with a palette for fine wine will turn his nose up at ripple.
Why is Jesus telling these stories?
Jesus usually doesn’t explain his parables. You either get it or you don’t. It might seem unfair, but He is trying to explain the unexplainable. If you need more explanation, hang around, ask questions, keep pursuing, and Jesus will help you out.
That’s the way He wants it.
Jesus is addressing a confrontation about fasting. But He knows, this issue is symptomatic of something deeper. It’s not about fasting. It is a clash of cultures.
LORD give us the wisdom of Christ to see at this depth.
The pharisees have been doing things a certain way for centuries. They have the firmest authority. God Himself spoke to Moses out of the fire and smoke and gave Him the Law. The elders of many generations have interpreted these laws till specific practices have been developed. If their system for spirituality won’t work, nothing will.
On the other hand, Moses and the prophets promised the Messiah. When He came, spirituality would take on a whole new meaning. Now He is here. His followers are just trying to keep up.
Moses is being reinterpreted in a big way.
So Jesus is trying to make the transition a little easier. In these parables He explains a few things.
Facts:
• Unwisely used new patches will destroy older garments
• It is foolish to destroy a new garment for the sake of an old one
• New wine will destroy an old skin, it should be replaced with a new skin
• New wine will be rejected by someone who likes the old
What is Jesus’ point?
There is value in both the old and the new and one should not be destroyed or lost for the other.
This is Jesus’ guideline for change. It is actually a word for both the Apostles and the Pharisees.
The old is:
• An old garment
• An old wineskin
• vintage wine
The new is:
• A patch cut from a new garment
• A new wine skin
• Unaged, fermenting wine
To the Pharisees, Jesus is saying, don’t expect to take the Messiah’s disciples and lay them on top of your incomplete system and expect it to be renewed. You will only wind up hurting the disciples.
On the other hand, Jesus is telling the disciples, "don’t think you can take on advice of the Pharisees and help the system. You are now followers of the Messiah. You will only wind up destroying the thing you are trying to help.
Lesson One: To the old, don’t expect the new to repair the deficiencies of the old
Things wear out. I have a stack of pants and tee shirts I use for yard work. I won’t wear them other places because they are not fit to be seen in public. They have holes and thread bare spots. They are stained, faded and frayed. It would be foolish to buy a new pair of pants and cut patches from them to mend my old ones. I would do two things in the process:
• Make my old pants worse when the new fabric shrinks and tears them
• Ruin a perfectly good pair of pants in the process
Here is an empty wineskin. You can’t get a thing to drink out of it. Let’s refill it.
That is a great idea, but if we refill it with new wine, as it ferments, the skin will be destroyed. When the skin cracks it will be useless and the wine will be lost.
But we make that mistake with people all the time.
We are invested in ways of doing things and we want to see them continued. We worked hard to developed them and we are accustomed to them. We tend to see new people as a way to renew our established patterns. If we can get them excited about our program they can take up where we leave off.
When we do this, we are mistaking their usefulness. It is like that new pair of pants getting cut up to make patches. It is like that quick fix of putting new wine in the old skin.
I need to put this new wine in a new skin. I can refill the old skin with something else, but not new wine.
In the mean time here is a new person with potential, strengths, expertise, and God given dreams of their own. It is a better thing to figure out what they are spiritually gifted for and let them work in that direction than it is to make them fit into an established pattern.
A central and important part of our call as believers is to love one another. Sometimes we mistake parenting love for the only kind of love. We think that we are here to show them the ropes.
This is not always the case. One of the truest expressions of love is to listen to a person long enough to understand them well. How will we ever know what a person is capable of if we don’t listen to them long enough to find out? How will we ever know their passion if we try too soon to sell them on ours?
Make no mistake, their gift, though different from mine, is just as much from the Holy Spirit. I will never discover the wonder of that gift if I am constantly trying to impose my gift on them.
Lesson Two: to the new, don’t mistake yourself for the cure of a broken system
This lesson is drawn from the other perspective. When I, as a newer element in an older system, see myself as a patch for a tear or a way to fill an old bottle, I am denying my true nature.
• An unused cloth is not yet settled into its true form
• New wine is not yet meant to be drunk, it has to age
I may think I can step in and help out in a place where others have gone before in systems that have been long in operation. Be a cog in the wheel. I may think everything that has been successful in the past will then be successful again, but I am mistaken.
Here is the reason, I am not the person who was there before. The minute I step in and become aware of my surroundings, I will change. I will have ideas. I will want to change things around me. I will want to adjust them to the way I work or in a better direction.
In other words, as soon as I start, my old conception of how I could step in and be what another person was will be diluted in the wash of who I actually am.
By then, I have indicated that I will be a replacement, when in fact I will be a total remodeling job. Down that road lays disappointment and conflict.
Lesson three: to someone used to the old, the new will seem inadequate
This is not an indictment, it is just a fact. Be careful about reading too much into this statement. Old wine is actually better than new wine. Jesus is not talking about mindless intolerance here. He is observing life.
• When a garment is broken in, I don’t want to exchange it
• When a machine is warmed up it runs more smoothly
• When relationships are established they function in spite of problems
Some have seen in these parables the idea that the old is inflexible and intolerant of things that could be stronger and better. Just toss out the old.
The fact is, Luke especially is showing Jesus saying there are good points to both:
• The strength and freshness of the new
• The seasoned smoothness of the old
The problem is in trying to combine the two, but
There is value in both the old and the new and one should not be destroyed or lost for the other.
But we seem to have an impasse
• If I try to reinforce an old thing with a new element, I will lose the new element
• If I, as a new element, try to fix an old thing I will break it
• And yet, in some ways the old is better than the new and should not just be tossed out
What can we do?
Let’s begin by listening quietly to Jesus’ word pictures for a truth, coming in the form of questions:
What is more important?
• The patch or the clothing?
• The skins or the wine they contain?
• Wine or the person drinking it?
I believe one thing Jesus is saying, especially in the last image, is that the people are the most important part of the equation. We cannot treat people like objects and expect to emerge without damage.
If we focus on things and "ways of doing things" we may be ignoring the people doing the doing.
• The system isn’t as important as the people involved
• The program isn’t as important as the people running it and the people benefitting from it
• The discussion isn’t as important as the people discussing
So when we focus on the people, we must ask:
Are you showing respect?
Always approach change with a heart full of respect for the people involved. That includes the people invested in the old and the people excited by the new.
Neither my established program nor my new idea are worth enough to justify attacking, disregarding or even ignoring a brother or sister.
Don’t destroy the new garment for a patch and don’t destroy the old garment trying to fix it.
Are there really only two approaches to an issue?
• Does it have to be this way or that?
• Does it have to be my way or the highway?
Jesus uses three parables here, and the third one, given to us only by Luke, is different from the other two. The first two are about survival or destruction. The third is about preference. How often do we treat questions of preference like questions of survival?
I am not talking about compromise. In a compromise, everyone gives up something and nobody gets what they want. I am talking about creative dialogue. Start by scrapping any ideas that benefit one at the cost of the other and start working toward a third and completely different option. We are Mennonites:
• We are neither Protestant nor Catholic (we were rejected by both)
• We are neither Democrat nor Republican (we like a little of each)
• We are neither Calvinist nor Arminian (we aren’t Reformed in the traditional sense at all)
• We are neither for one side nor the other (we are for peace that brings the sides together)
Even our most active website is called Third Way Café. We are people of the Third Way. We are a traditionally patient people. We think and discuss and try to cause no harm. If we can avoid being too invested in the way things are or in the way we want them to be, and seek instead what can work well for everyone and what God wants, then we are on the path to a creative third way option.
What brings the best return?
It is no mistake that Jesus is talking about things that are completely functional in their own way.
• A useful garment that only needs to be mended
• A new garment
• A useful skin that is limited in its uses
• A new wineskin that can handle other uses
• New wine that is desirable enough to be kept
• Old wine that is preferable for drinking today
Remember, Jesus said He did not come to abolish the Law but to fulfill it. Jesus was not opposed to the Law, He was opposed to a rigid, pharisaical approach to it. There is powerful continuity in the people of God. What God is doing in the Church is not opposed to what He has done with the Jews, it is a continuation of it. Don’t throw out what you learn about righteousness from Moses, and don’t throw out Messiah’s disciples.
What Jesus is not advocating here is throwing things out that are useful. He is advocating finding ways to make the useful things fill their functions whether they are new or old. He is talking about finding the most appropriate way to preserve the old and the most appropriate way to treat the new.
In the whole scenario, the only things that deserve to get thrown out were destroyed through misuse. That misuse comes about through a lack of wisdom in how to treat old things and new things.
Traditional wisdom says when it comes to change, a Church can handle less in a year and more in 5 years than you think.
In other words, a slow approach to change is more effective. This pace is a way of honoring what Jesus is teaching in the parable of the garments and the wine.
In the next year, you will have opportunities to listen to each other and explore new ideas and learn about old ones. At those times, it is important to hold our tongues. To let people explain themselves and do our best to understand, because
There is value in both the old and the new and one should not be destroyed or lost for the other.
As with the people of God, neither the Law nor the Church was destroyed. We have both Testaments in our Bibles. We retain the old and embrace the new.
The same can be true of the way we operate as a church. It is only when we expanded our Bible to include both testaments that we could see the whole of God’s plan.
It is only in expanding our conception of church to embrace the old and the new, that we can see the church expand to accommodate both. As a result we find a fuller expression of what it means to be the people of God.
