New Wine, New Wineskins 051610
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Parable M2 Sermon Notes
Title: New Wine, New Wineskins
Text: Luke: 5:27-38
Big Idea: When God moves in a new way, we need a new container.
INTRODUCTION: Illustration about Tevye in the musical Fiddler on the Roof and his playing the song Tradition.
The beloved musical Fiddler on the Roof (show image), opens with a scene of Jewish dairyman Tevye standing in front of his home in Anatevka, Russia (it’s the early 1900s).
Teyve says, “In our little village of Anatevka, every one of us is a fiddler on the roof trying to scratch out a pleasant, simple tune without breaking his neck… (Tevye always feels like he’s about to fall off the roof as he faces poverty, the prejudice people direct against him as a Jew, the romantic entanglements of his daughters). And how do we keep our balance? That I can tell you in one word: (play audio) Tradition!... Tradition!... Without our traditions, our lives would be as shaky as... as... as a fiddler on the roof!
In Jesus’ day many Jewish people felt like they might fall off the roof, as their traditions were threatened by the culture of Rome. Many Jewish people were hoping for a messiah, a savior figure who would ride down the hill in on a white stallion, conquer Rome and enable them to keep their tradition.
But Jesus was not the kind of Messiah people were expecting:
In Luke 5:27 through 31 we read these words that describe a scene during Jesus’ life and ministry:
27 After this, Jesus went out and saw a tax collector by the name of Levi sitting at his tax booth. "Follow me," Jesus said to him, 28 and Levi got up, left everything and followed him.
29 Then Levi held a great banquet for Jesus at his house, and a large crowd of tax collectors and others were eating with them. 30 But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law who belonged to their sect complained to his disciples, "Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?"
31 Jesus answered them, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. 32 I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance."
Jesus Questioned About Fasting
33 They said to him, "John's disciples often fast and pray, and so do the disciples of the Pharisees, but yours go on eating and drinking."
34 Jesus answered, "Can you make the friends of the bridegroom fast while he is with them? 35 But the time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them; in those days they will fast."
36 He told them this parable: "No one tears a piece out of a new garment to patch an old one. If they do, they will have torn the new garment, and the patch from the new will not match the old. 37 And people do not pour new wine into old wineskins. If they do, the new wine will burst the skins; the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. 38 No, new wine must be poured into new wineskins.
Jesus does not look or act like the kind of messianic religious leader that people were expecting.
Here in Luke 5:27 we see that Jesus approaches a tax collector by the name of Levi, and says, “Follow me” (become one of my disciples). Tax collectors are never popular at any time. When people who work as tax collectors for the CRA here in Canada or IRS in the United States if they are asked at a party what they do for a living, they are more likely to be ambiguous, and simply say, “I, uh, work for the government.”
Tax collectors in any age are not popular, but in Jesus’ day they were seen as criminals. They could charge people whatever they wanted for taxes—they could charge people 80% of their income. They had to give a certain cut to Rome, but could pocket the difference. They were seen as thieves--and thieves who were in bed with the enemy—Rome. They were hated.
Jesus calls a tax collector Levi to follow him as his disciple.
Then as we see (v. 29) Jesus goes to a party at the home of Levi, and he shares a meal with a large crowd of tax collectors and other “sinners.” (A sign in the culture that he accepted and considered them friends.) And so the Pharisees and the teachers of the law complain, “Why does Jesus eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?” Jesus responds, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. 32 I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” End of the debate. Of course it’s questionable if the Pharisees were truly healthy… (Lee will address that in an upcoming sermon).
The religious establishment had expected a messiah who would confirm their traditions, but Jesus is breaking the rules.
Many devout Jewish men in Jesus’ day would pray every day: "Thank you God, for not making me a Gentile, slave, or woman." A Pharisee later in the Luke prayers, “I thank you that I am not a thief, an adulterer, or a tax collector.” There was a wide spread belief among the Jews that God’s blessing was only on the side of devout Jews or people who had converted to Judaism. Jesus,, by eating with tax collectors and sinners, was saying God is on the side of sinners, Gentiles and women, too.
Last week, as we began this new series in the parables we saw Jesus parables were designed to shake us, change our minds. They were intended to disrupt us and give us a new set of lens of seeing the world. Here we the same effect… in Luke 5 we see Jesus had been at a party with all these tax collectors--these crooks, and sinners. Jesus through his actions is saying, “There is a new wideness to God’s love that is being revealed through me… God through me is saying to sinners, Gentiles, and to woman—I am on your side….”
The Pharisees (who were part of a Jewish sect that emphasized a very strict interpretation of God’s law) and the teachers of the law are offended by this… He’s upsetting our traditions.
The Pharisees and the teachers of the law vent some of their frustration by asking Jesus, “"John's (Jesus’ cousin John the Baptist, a forerunner of Jesus and a great prophet) disciples often fast and pray, and so do the disciples of the Pharisees, but yours go on eating and drinking."
In the first century many devout Jews and the Pharisees in Jesus’ day had a custom of fasting (going without food) twice a week, on Mondays and Thursdays. The practice of fasting was highly revered in Jesus’ day. When people fasted, they typically took more time to pray. They confessed their sins. They took on the mood of a mourner. They mourned the fact that God’s kingdom still had not arrived and prayed that God’s kingdom would come.
But what if God’s kingdom—his reign had now come in Jesus, was alive, moving onto the earth, creating a new world, and inviting you to enjoy it like a great party or a wedding feast?
Jesus’s coming represents a new wideness to God’s love—extending to sinners, slaves, to women, and his coming represents a new wedding.
Jesus asks, “Can you make the friends of the bridegroom fast while he is with them?
35 But the time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them; in those days they will fast. (BTW, Jesus is not abolishing fasting. His disciples will fast when Jesus is taken from them and crucified.) But, Jesus is saying this is the time when I the bridegroom have come and people through me are being wedded to God. This is wedding time.
In Revelation 19:7 we read:
For the wedding of the Lamb has come,
and his bride has made herself ready.
The Lamb is Jesus and the bride is us, his people.
In Jesus’ day wedding feasts were the most joyous occasions in the entire village. They might last as long as a week. There would be eating… drinking…dancing…singing. And at this time the rabbis had a rule that all the attendants of the bridegroom were to be relieved of their duties to fast because that would lessen their joy. Joy was to be embraced at a wedding. Because Jesus, the bridegroom, has come and has wedded us to God, the normal rules, like at a Jewish wedding, have changed.
Jesus breaks the tradition as he brings a new wideness to God’s love, a new wedding and a new wine. Wine in Scripture among other things symbolizes abundance and joy. In Isaiah 55, God invites those with no money to come to him and enjoy milk and wine on him. Jesus’ first miracle involved turning water into wine at the wedding.
As Jesus shares his parable: "No one tears a piece out of a new garment to patch an old one. If they do, they will have torn the new garment, and the patch from the new will not match the old. 37 And people do not pour new wine into old wineskins. If they do, the new wine will burst the skins; the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. 38 No, new wine must be poured into new wineskins. (Like 5:36-38)
If someone sewed a new patch onto an old garment and then washed it, the new patch would shrink, but the rest of the garment would not because it was old. Then the new patch would tear the old garment.
Jesus said, “…And people do not pour new wine into old wineskins.” In Jesus’ day wineskins (show WINESKINE IMAGE here—SHOW UNTIL I’VE FINISHED EXPLANATION) were usually made from sheep’s skin or goat’s skin, the body portion was skinned; the hair was removed; the hide was treated to prevent the skin from changing the taste of the contents. Finally, it was sewn together. Over time the skin of the container would age, stretch, become brittle and hard.
As Jesus in his parable says, “No one pours new wine into old skins.” Why? Because as the new wine ferments it expands the container and the old skin will burst, because it is no longer able to expand. The new wine pours out. The old skin is destroyed.
The point of both parables is simply that the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the new kingdom, the new wine, cannot be contained within the old forms of Judaism (the religion of the Jews—which stressed close adherence to the Torah as a way to draw near to God) without destroying both Judaism and the Gospel. The new ways in which God is dealing with human beings through Jesus cannot be mixed with the old ways. The Gospel is the new way to God. New wine must have new wine skins. They must have new containers.
A colander ((USE PROP) might be able to hold ice fairly well, but once the ice takes on a new form, when it becomes water, it needs a new container. It needs a bowl (Use Prop).
Newness is exciting, but for many people the new is also a threat. Think about how you would have felt if you were building horse-drawn carriages in the early 1900s and then you heard how the Ford Model T was being built. Think about how you would have felt if you were part of the shipbuilding industry when people started creating airplanes for the first time. Think about how you would have felt if you were working at Intel in the mid 1980s designing computer memory chips—that’s what you know, and your leader Andy Grove said, “We heading out of the memory chip business, and we are going into the new field of creating micro-processers.” Even when change is positive, people experience change as loss.
Jesus is the new wine who makes all things new.
The old containers will not be able to hold the new wine. We need new containers. New wine skins.
If you try to put new wine into old wineskins, if you try to mix and old and new and hang onto both, you tear the old wineskin and you lose your new wine, as well…
Several years ago, I was travelling with my wife Sakiko to a different part of the world (I keep this place unnamed so I can keep the person anonymous).
While we were there, we met a woman who had moved to this place in the world from the United States. She seemed really unhappy. Part of the reason she was unhappy was because she wanted the culture and the conveniences from her previous life in the United States replicated in this new world. It wasn’t happening. People were too relaxed and slow in the new place, and she was feeling miserable.
During the trip, my wife happened to be reading this passage in Luke 5 about the new wine and the old wineskins. At the time she had been in Canada, her new home, for just a few years. In many ways it was great; but in many ways it was hard, too, because of the cultural differences.
One cultural difference to her was the custom that some people in Canada have of walking in their house with their shoes on. Not a big deal here, but is a big deal in Japan. In Japan the floor in your home is considered to be clean space. So for someone to walk on the floors of the house with their shoes in Japan would be like my going to your house for dinner and instead my asking you to pass the ketchup from the other side of the table, I hop up on the table with my shoes and say, “No worries, I’m just going to get the ketchup.” That would shock you. It would probably be the last time I was invited for dinner. It is kind of the feeling that Japanese people have when you walk through their house with your shoes on--like the top of your table with your shoes on--it is considered clean space.
While we were on this trip, observing this woman, and reading the passage from Luke, Sakiko felt that God was calling on her to let go of the old wineskin of certain Japanese cultural practices (not all of them of course—the metaphor breaks down), and to embrace a new wineskin in Canada.
It was a turning point for her. She became more content, happier. When you are trying to live in between two worlds and hanging on to both sets of values and trying to practice them, like a new wine and old wine skin it ruins your experience of both worlds—it tears the old wine skin and the new wine spills onto the floor. Sitting on the fence is the worst place to sit… Your butt gets sore. You can’t enjoy either garden. So it with Jesus, you can’t sit on the fence… or you won’t enjoy the world, or Jesus… you lose both.
Part of what Jesus in his teaching is saying is, “Contrary to what you expected, I have not come to preserve your old traditions, but I have come to bring new ones, new wine. You will have to let go of your old wineskins, and replace them with new wineskins, new containers.”
What might this look like in our lives as the new wine breaks in?
Let me illustrate again, if I may, from Sakiko’s life. She is obviously a big part of my life so it is just natural for me to talk about her, as you do with people are a big part of your life.
The other day as a friend of Sakiko who’s not a Christian was asking her about her life journey, “Before I became a Christian, in my life, was defined by doing things that would cause other people to envy me.” Japan is a culture (as you know if you are from there) that places a great deal of importance on what people think of you. My wife had been able to play this game very well in Japan. She ended up going to a very prestigious university in Japan. She enjoyed her studies immensely, but she also liked the fact that she was going to a school that caused people to envy her. She dated guys who were considered very desirable: smart, successful, good-looking. She liked them, but she really liked the fact that people envied her because of her boyfriend. (So when I first met her, I thought she was a way out of my league.) When she graduated from university, she ended getting her dream job as an editor at Newsweek magazine. At the time Newsweek in Japan was hiring just one university graduate per year in Japan. She loved her job. But she says what she enjoyed most of all in those days was being at a party and giving someone her business card and doing a double-take and them saying, “Aren’t you a little young for that?” Her life was defined by doing things that would cause other people to envy her. She was able to play that game so well.
She shared that when she gave her life to Christ, she experienced a lot of losses. Many people talk about how much better their life gets right after coming to know Jesus. Sakiko said, “In many ways my life got worse.” As a result of meeting Jesus, she had to get rid of those old wineskins…those old wineskins of being defined by what other people think of her…of getting people to envy her. She ended up feeling led to start a small not-for-profit, publishing company. She was eventually led to marry me (someone in Japan who knew about the really successful guys who had wanted to date her asked me how did you get her to marry you—marry a minister is not a way to move up in the world, not in Canada, but especially not in Japan?!).
The irony is that though those outward trappings of success are no longer present in her life, she is happier. She was telling her friend of hers who, “No one envies me now, I’m an immigrant… we don’t have a lot of money... Looking from the perspective of an outsider, my life is very ordinary, nothing to envy… but with Jesus, I have this peace, this joy that I did not have before…a sense of security that I did not have before.”
If my wife had not been willing to let go of those old wineskins, those old garments of self-definition she had before and tried to embrace Jesus, she would not have able to enjoy the new wine, nor the old wineskin. The old and the new would have been destroyed. For those who are turning to Christ, you’re going to get new wine, so be prepared to shed the old wineskins, or you’ll tear the old container, and lose the new wine.
Let me speak to those of us, who have been followers of Christ for some years. We also need wine skins as God moves in our lives in new ways.
A few weeks ago (as part of the rule of series), I spoke about how Elijah on Mount Carmel. I spoke about how God had responded to his prayer to consume the sacrifice of the bull by sending fire from heaven that devoured the whole sacrifice…even the altar that the sacrifice was placed on, and licked up the water that had drenched the sacrifice and created a moat around the altar. Later in Elijah’s life we see that God doesn’t speak to him by fire, but in a gentle whisper. The Hebrew of that can be translated “God spoke in the sound of the silence.”
Some of us, when we were new believers, experienced very dramatic answers to prayer.
As a teenager and new Christian I remember going on my very first mission trip to a community of poor black community in the Deep South. We were there to do some renovations for the community church and the school. The evening before we were supposed to finish the dry-walling and paint the school and the church, ominous black clouds rolled in and the forecast for the following day was for a storm and a torrential downpour.
I remember being in that prayer meeting and praying to God about weather, and praying with the boldness of a teenager and relatively new Christian: “God, you’re the Lord of the weather, push away the black clouds and give us a clear day tomorrow.”
The next morning, we had a perfectly, clear, beautiful day in South Carolina—not a cloud in the sky.
As I look back to my early days as a Christian, I had some dramatic answers to prayer… But now that I have been a Christian for many years, I don’t experience many dramatic answers to prayer. I do not typically feel God’s presence like electricity coursing through my body. But I feel like I am experiencing God in quiet, gentle ways…in the ordinary and every day. I experience God as I jog around Douglas Park pushing a stroller. I experience God as I spend time with my son and my wife and friends. I experience God in my everyday work. I feel close to God, but I don’t experience him very often in a really dramatic way.
At some point, I can’t remember exactly when, looking back, it was as if God was saying, “I don’t want my relationship with you to be only one where you are following me because I am answering your prayers in dramatic ways and by doing amazing miracles through you.”
At some point for many of us who know God, God will say. “I don’t want you to love me only because you feel intense, cool vibes in my presence or get amazing miracles, but because I am God.”
Part of what it means to grow in faith is that we love God, not only for all the benefits he provides us with, but because God is God, and God is worthy.
I have felt called to shed some of the old wineskins of how God relates to me. Like Elijah, God does not have to answer me only through fire and the very dramatic, but also in the sound of the silence. Shed an old wine skin, embrace a new one.
As a church there are times when God calls us to let go of the old wineskins and embrace new ones. I first came here almost 14 years ago. Tenth Church was a wonderful community. Many people were in their senior years. Many were long-time Christians.
Part of what I sensed God putting on my heart was to foster the kind of community where people, even people who had never been to church or had been hurt by a church, would feel welcomed.
Part of what that meant was that we would change some of our art and communication forms so that they would be accessible to the ordinary person in Vancouver. The music director at the time came up to me one day (she had been classically trained) and said, “What do you think about the music here?” I said, “I don’t know much about music, but it kind of reminds me of the Lawrence Welk show. It feels like the music that is played here is from a previous time… my sense is that it won’t connect with people outside the church.” (Frankly though the words are meaningful to Christians, I’m not sure the music connects with a lot of Christians either). She replied, “What should I do?” I said, “Well, for starters… why don’t you get some drums on the platform?” A few weeks later she got some drums on the platform. Someone came in to the sanctuary, looked at the drums and said, “If Jesus saw those drums on that platform right now, he would roll over in his grave!” (For those of you who may not know, Christians believe that Jesus rose from the dead. That is why we celebrate Easter.)
I regularly meet people here who tell me that they are inviting their friends who have not had a connection with church in the past and they had a good, welcoming experience here. I just spoke with someone who told me, “I have been bringing five people who are coming and are not Christians.” We want to be a place for all: The old, the young, the rich, the poor, those who believe in God, and have for a long time, those who doubt.
The CBC paid us a nice compliment several years ago, when they said that Tenth Avenue Church has become a resting place for people of all backgrounds.
In that time of change when we were first experiencing change around music in certain forms, it created a sense of loss for certain people. A new work that would require a new container…a new wineskin what would hold an older set of people, but a new set of people, too?
A new wineskin that God is leading our community into is a deeper discipleship… we’ll be unfolding this more in the coming year.
Jesus, contrary to our expectations, doesn’t come just as a preserver of tradition.
He comes as the new wine, as the one who makes all things new.
In order to embrace the new, we must let go of and die to the old. We cannot try to embrace both, or we lose the old wine and the new.
LET’S PRAY
Do you sense God calling you to rid yourself of a wine skin? (e.g., a habit, an expectation, a way of seeing, the need to control).
Do you sense God calling to receive new wine? (e.g., embracing a spiritual discipline, a relationship, a risk)
Parable M2 Sermon Notes
Title: New Wine, New Wineskins
Text: Luke: 5:27-38
Big Idea: When God moves in a new way, we need a new container.
INTRODUCTION: Illustration about Tevye in the musical Fiddler on the Roof and his playing the song Tradition.
The beloved musical Fiddler on the Roof (show image), opens with a scene of Jewish dairyman Tevye standing in front of his home in Anatevka, Russia (it’s the early 1900s).
Teyve says, “In our little village of Anatevka, every one of us is a fiddler on the roof trying to scratch out a pleasant, simple tune without breaking his neck… (Tevye always feels like he’s about to fall off the roof as he faces poverty, the prejudice people direct against him as a Jew, the romantic entanglements of his daughters). And how do we keep our balance? That I can tell you in one word: (play audio) Tradition!... Tradition!... Without our traditions, our lives would be as shaky as... as... as a fiddler on the roof!
In Jesus’ day many Jewish people felt like they might fall off the roof, as their traditions were threatened by the culture of Rome. Many Jewish people were hoping for a messiah, a savior figure who would ride down the hill in on a white stallion, conquer Rome and enable them to keep their tradition.
But Jesus was not the kind of Messiah people were expecting:
In Luke 5:27 through 31 we read these words that describe a scene during Jesus’ life and ministry:
27 After this, Jesus went out and saw a tax collector by the name of Levi sitting at his tax booth. "Follow me," Jesus said to him, 28 and Levi got up, left everything and followed him.
29 Then Levi held a great banquet for Jesus at his house, and a large crowd of tax collectors and others were eating with them. 30 But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law who belonged to their sect complained to his disciples, "Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?"
31 Jesus answered them, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. 32 I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance."
Jesus Questioned About Fasting
33 They said to him, "John's disciples often fast and pray, and so do the disciples of the Pharisees, but yours go on eating and drinking."
34 Jesus answered, "Can you make the friends of the bridegroom fast while he is with them? 35 But the time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them; in those days they will fast."
36 He told them this parable: "No one tears a piece out of a new garment to patch an old one. If they do, they will have torn the new garment, and the patch from the new will not match the old. 37 And people do not pour new wine into old wineskins. If they do, the new wine will burst the skins; the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. 38 No, new wine must be poured into new wineskins.
Jesus does not look or act like the kind of messianic religious leader that people were expecting.
Here in Luke 5:27 we see that Jesus approaches a tax collector by the name of Levi, and says, “Follow me” (become one of my disciples). Tax collectors are never popular at any time. When people who work as tax collectors for the CRA here in Canada or IRS in the United States if they are asked at a party what they do for a living, they are more likely to be ambiguous, and simply say, “I, uh, work for the government.”
Tax collectors in any age are not popular, but in Jesus’ day they were seen as criminals. They could charge people whatever they wanted for taxes—they could charge people 80% of their income. They had to give a certain cut to Rome, but could pocket the difference. They were seen as thieves--and thieves who were in bed with the enemy—Rome. They were hated.
Jesus calls a tax collector Levi to follow him as his disciple.
Then as we see (v. 29) Jesus goes to a party at the home of Levi, and he shares a meal with a large crowd of tax collectors and other “sinners.” (A sign in the culture that he accepted and considered them friends.) And so the Pharisees and the teachers of the law complain, “Why does Jesus eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?” Jesus responds, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. 32 I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” End of the debate. Of course it’s questionable if the Pharisees were truly healthy… (Lee will address that in an upcoming sermon).
The religious establishment had expected a messiah who would confirm their traditions, but Jesus is breaking the rules.
Many devout Jewish men in Jesus’ day would pray every day: "Thank you God, for not making me a Gentile, slave, or woman." A Pharisee later in the Luke prayers, “I thank you that I am not a thief, an adulterer, or a tax collector.” There was a wide spread belief among the Jews that God’s blessing was only on the side of devout Jews or people who had converted to Judaism. Jesus,, by eating with tax collectors and sinners, was saying God is on the side of sinners, Gentiles and women, too.
Last week, as we began this new series in the parables we saw Jesus parables were designed to shake us, change our minds. They were intended to disrupt us and give us a new set of lens of seeing the world. Here we the same effect… in Luke 5 we see Jesus had been at a party with all these tax collectors--these crooks, and sinners. Jesus through his actions is saying, “There is a new wideness to God’s love that is being revealed through me… God through me is saying to sinners, Gentiles, and to woman—I am on your side….”
The Pharisees (who were part of a Jewish sect that emphasized a very strict interpretation of God’s law) and the teachers of the law are offended by this… He’s upsetting our traditions.
The Pharisees and the teachers of the law vent some of their frustration by asking Jesus, “"John's (Jesus’ cousin John the Baptist, a forerunner of Jesus and a great prophet) disciples often fast and pray, and so do the disciples of the Pharisees, but yours go on eating and drinking."
In the first century many devout Jews and the Pharisees in Jesus’ day had a custom of fasting (going without food) twice a week, on Mondays and Thursdays. The practice of fasting was highly revered in Jesus’ day. When people fasted, they typically took more time to pray. They confessed their sins. They took on the mood of a mourner. They mourned the fact that God’s kingdom still had not arrived and prayed that God’s kingdom would come.
But what if God’s kingdom—his reign had now come in Jesus, was alive, moving onto the earth, creating a new world, and inviting you to enjoy it like a great party or a wedding feast?
Jesus’s coming represents a new wideness to God’s love—extending to sinners, slaves, to women, and his coming represents a new wedding.
Jesus asks, “Can you make the friends of the bridegroom fast while he is with them?
35 But the time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them; in those days they will fast. (BTW, Jesus is not abolishing fasting. His disciples will fast when Jesus is taken from them and crucified.) But, Jesus is saying this is the time when I the bridegroom have come and people through me are being wedded to God. This is wedding time.
In Revelation 19:7 we read:
For the wedding of the Lamb has come,
and his bride has made herself ready.
The Lamb is Jesus and the bride is us, his people.
In Jesus’ day wedding feasts were the most joyous occasions in the entire village. They might last as long as a week. There would be eating… drinking…dancing…singing. And at this time the rabbis had a rule that all the attendants of the bridegroom were to be relieved of their duties to fast because that would lessen their joy. Joy was to be embraced at a wedding. Because Jesus, the bridegroom, has come and has wedded us to God, the normal rules, like at a Jewish wedding, have changed.
Jesus breaks the tradition as he brings a new wideness to God’s love, a new wedding and a new wine. Wine in Scripture among other things symbolizes abundance and joy. In Isaiah 55, God invites those with no money to come to him and enjoy milk and wine on him. Jesus’ first miracle involved turning water into wine at the wedding.
As Jesus shares his parable: "No one tears a piece out of a new garment to patch an old one. If they do, they will have torn the new garment, and the patch from the new will not match the old. 37 And people do not pour new wine into old wineskins. If they do, the new wine will burst the skins; the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. 38 No, new wine must be poured into new wineskins. (Like 5:36-38)
If someone sewed a new patch onto an old garment and then washed it, the new patch would shrink, but the rest of the garment would not because it was old. Then the new patch would tear the old garment.
Jesus said, “…And people do not pour new wine into old wineskins.” In Jesus’ day wineskins (show WINESKINE IMAGE here—SHOW UNTIL I’VE FINISHED EXPLANATION) were usually made from sheep’s skin or goat’s skin, the body portion was skinned; the hair was removed; the hide was treated to prevent the skin from changing the taste of the contents. Finally, it was sewn together. Over time the skin of the container would age, stretch, become brittle and hard.
As Jesus in his parable says, “No one pours new wine into old skins.” Why? Because as the new wine ferments it expands the container and the old skin will burst, because it is no longer able to expand. The new wine pours out. The old skin is destroyed.
The point of both parables is simply that the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the new kingdom, the new wine, cannot be contained within the old forms of Judaism (the religion of the Jews—which stressed close adherence to the Torah as a way to draw near to God) without destroying both Judaism and the Gospel. The new ways in which God is dealing with human beings through Jesus cannot be mixed with the old ways. The Gospel is the new way to God. New wine must have new wine skins. They must have new containers.
A colander ((USE PROP) might be able to hold ice fairly well, but once the ice takes on a new form, when it becomes water, it needs a new container. It needs a bowl (Use Prop).
Newness is exciting, but for many people the new is also a threat. Think about how you would have felt if you were building horse-drawn carriages in the early 1900s and then you heard how the Ford Model T was being built. Think about how you would have felt if you were part of the shipbuilding industry when people started creating airplanes for the first time. Think about how you would have felt if you were working at Intel in the mid 1980s designing computer memory chips—that’s what you know, and your leader Andy Grove said, “We heading out of the memory chip business, and we are going into the new field of creating micro-processers.” Even when change is positive, people experience change as loss.
Jesus is the new wine who makes all things new.
The old containers will not be able to hold the new wine. We need new containers. New wine skins.
If you try to put new wine into old wineskins, if you try to mix and old and new and hang onto both, you tear the old wineskin and you lose your new wine, as well…
Several years ago, I was travelling with my wife Sakiko to a different part of the world (I keep this place unnamed so I can keep the person anonymous).
While we were there, we met a woman who had moved to this place in the world from the United States. She seemed really unhappy. Part of the reason she was unhappy was because she wanted the culture and the conveniences from her previous life in the United States replicated in this new world. It wasn’t happening. People were too relaxed and slow in the new place, and she was feeling miserable.
During the trip, my wife happened to be reading this passage in Luke 5 about the new wine and the old wineskins. At the time she had been in Canada, her new home, for just a few years. In many ways it was great; but in many ways it was hard, too, because of the cultural differences.
One cultural difference to her was the custom that some people in Canada have of walking in their house with their shoes on. Not a big deal here, but is a big deal in Japan. In Japan the floor in your home is considered to be clean space. So for someone to walk on the floors of the house with their shoes in Japan would be like my going to your house for dinner and instead my asking you to pass the ketchup from the other side of the table, I hop up on the table with my shoes and say, “No worries, I’m just going to get the ketchup.” That would shock you. It would probably be the last time I was invited for dinner. It is kind of the feeling that Japanese people have when you walk through their house with your shoes on--like the top of your table with your shoes on--it is considered clean space.
While we were on this trip, observing this woman, and reading the passage from Luke, Sakiko felt that God was calling on her to let go of the old wineskin of certain Japanese cultural practices (not all of them of course—the metaphor breaks down), and to embrace a new wineskin in Canada.
It was a turning point for her. She became more content, happier. When you are trying to live in between two worlds and hanging on to both sets of values and trying to practice them, like a new wine and old wine skin it ruins your experience of both worlds—it tears the old wine skin and the new wine spills onto the floor. Sitting on the fence is the worst place to sit… Your butt gets sore. You can’t enjoy either garden. So it with Jesus, you can’t sit on the fence… or you won’t enjoy the world, or Jesus… you lose both.
Part of what Jesus in his teaching is saying is, “Contrary to what you expected, I have not come to preserve your old traditions, but I have come to bring new ones, new wine. You will have to let go of your old wineskins, and replace them with new wineskins, new containers.”
What might this look like in our lives as the new wine breaks in?
Let me illustrate again, if I may, from Sakiko’s life. She is obviously a big part of my life so it is just natural for me to talk about her, as you do with people are a big part of your life.
The other day as a friend of Sakiko who’s not a Christian was asking her about her life journey, “Before I became a Christian, in my life, was defined by doing things that would cause other people to envy me.” Japan is a culture (as you know if you are from there) that places a great deal of importance on what people think of you. My wife had been able to play this game very well in Japan. She ended up going to a very prestigious university in Japan. She enjoyed her studies immensely, but she also liked the fact that she was going to a school that caused people to envy her. She dated guys who were considered very desirable: smart, successful, good-looking. She liked them, but she really liked the fact that people envied her because of her boyfriend. (So when I first met her, I thought she was a way out of my league.) When she graduated from university, she ended getting her dream job as an editor at Newsweek magazine. At the time Newsweek in Japan was hiring just one university graduate per year in Japan. She loved her job. But she says what she enjoyed most of all in those days was being at a party and giving someone her business card and doing a double-take and them saying, “Aren’t you a little young for that?” Her life was defined by doing things that would cause other people to envy her. She was able to play that game so well.
She shared that when she gave her life to Christ, she experienced a lot of losses. Many people talk about how much better their life gets right after coming to know Jesus. Sakiko said, “In many ways my life got worse.” As a result of meeting Jesus, she had to get rid of those old wineskins…those old wineskins of being defined by what other people think of her…of getting people to envy her. She ended up feeling led to start a small not-for-profit, publishing company. She was eventually led to marry me (someone in Japan who knew about the really successful guys who had wanted to date her asked me how did you get her to marry you—marry a minister is not a way to move up in the world, not in Canada, but especially not in Japan?!).
The irony is that though those outward trappings of success are no longer present in her life, she is happier. She was telling her friend of hers who, “No one envies me now, I’m an immigrant… we don’t have a lot of money... Looking from the perspective of an outsider, my life is very ordinary, nothing to envy… but with Jesus, I have this peace, this joy that I did not have before…a sense of security that I did not have before.”
If my wife had not been willing to let go of those old wineskins, those old garments of self-definition she had before and tried to embrace Jesus, she would not have able to enjoy the new wine, nor the old wineskin. The old and the new would have been destroyed. For those who are turning to Christ, you’re going to get new wine, so be prepared to shed the old wineskins, or you’ll tear the old container, and lose the new wine.
Let me speak to those of us, who have been followers of Christ for some years. We also need wine skins as God moves in our lives in new ways.
A few weeks ago (as part of the rule of series), I spoke about how Elijah on Mount Carmel. I spoke about how God had responded to his prayer to consume the sacrifice of the bull by sending fire from heaven that devoured the whole sacrifice…even the altar that the sacrifice was placed on, and licked up the water that had drenched the sacrifice and created a moat around the altar. Later in Elijah’s life we see that God doesn’t speak to him by fire, but in a gentle whisper. The Hebrew of that can be translated “God spoke in the sound of the silence.”
Some of us, when we were new believers, experienced very dramatic answers to prayer.
As a teenager and new Christian I remember going on my very first mission trip to a community of poor black community in the Deep South. We were there to do some renovations for the community church and the school. The evening before we were supposed to finish the dry-walling and paint the school and the church, ominous black clouds rolled in and the forecast for the following day was for a storm and a torrential downpour.
I remember being in that prayer meeting and praying to God about weather, and praying with the boldness of a teenager and relatively new Christian: “God, you’re the Lord of the weather, push away the black clouds and give us a clear day tomorrow.”
The next morning, we had a perfectly, clear, beautiful day in South Carolina—not a cloud in the sky.
As I look back to my early days as a Christian, I had some dramatic answers to prayer… But now that I have been a Christian for many years, I don’t experience many dramatic answers to prayer. I do not typically feel God’s presence like electricity coursing through my body. But I feel like I am experiencing God in quiet, gentle ways…in the ordinary and every day. I experience God as I jog around Douglas Park pushing a stroller. I experience God as I spend time with my son and my wife and friends. I experience God in my everyday work. I feel close to God, but I don’t experience him very often in a really dramatic way.
At some point, I can’t remember exactly when, looking back, it was as if God was saying, “I don’t want my relationship with you to be only one where you are following me because I am answering your prayers in dramatic ways and by doing amazing miracles through you.”
At some point for many of us who know God, God will say. “I don’t want you to love me only because you feel intense, cool vibes in my presence or get amazing miracles, but because I am God.”
Part of what it means to grow in faith is that we love God, not only for all the benefits he provides us with, but because God is God, and God is worthy.
I have felt called to shed some of the old wineskins of how God relates to me. Like Elijah, God does not have to answer me only through fire and the very dramatic, but also in the sound of the silence. Shed an old wine skin, embrace a new one.
As a church there are times when God calls us to let go of the old wineskins and embrace new ones. I first came here almost 14 years ago. Tenth Church was a wonderful community. Many people were in their senior years. Many were long-time Christians.
Part of what I sensed God putting on my heart was to foster the kind of community where people, even people who had never been to church or had been hurt by a church, would feel welcomed.
Part of what that meant was that we would change some of our art and communication forms so that they would be accessible to the ordinary person in Vancouver. The music director at the time came up to me one day (she had been classically trained) and said, “What do you think about the music here?” I said, “I don’t know much about music, but it kind of reminds me of the Lawrence Welk show. It feels like the music that is played here is from a previous time… my sense is that it won’t connect with people outside the church.” (Frankly though the words are meaningful to Christians, I’m not sure the music connects with a lot of Christians either). She replied, “What should I do?” I said, “Well, for starters… why don’t you get some drums on the platform?” A few weeks later she got some drums on the platform. Someone came in to the sanctuary, looked at the drums and said, “If Jesus saw those drums on that platform right now, he would roll over in his grave!” (For those of you who may not know, Christians believe that Jesus rose from the dead. That is why we celebrate Easter.)
I regularly meet people here who tell me that they are inviting their friends who have not had a connection with church in the past and they had a good, welcoming experience here. I just spoke with someone who told me, “I have been bringing five people who are coming and are not Christians.” We want to be a place for all: The old, the young, the rich, the poor, those who believe in God, and have for a long time, those who doubt.
The CBC paid us a nice compliment several years ago, when they said that Tenth Avenue Church has become a resting place for people of all backgrounds.
In that time of change when we were first experiencing change around music in certain forms, it created a sense of loss for certain people. A new work that would require a new container…a new wineskin what would hold an older set of people, but a new set of people, too?
A new wineskin that God is leading our community into is a deeper discipleship… we’ll be unfolding this more in the coming year.
Jesus, contrary to our expectations, doesn’t come just as a preserver of tradition.
He comes as the new wine, as the one who makes all things new.
In order to embrace the new, we must let go of and die to the old. We cannot try to embrace both, or we lose the old wine and the new.
LET’S PRAY
Do you sense God calling you to rid yourself of a wine skin? (e.g., a habit, an expectation, a way of seeing, the need to control).
Do you sense God calling to receive new wine? (e.g., embracing a spiritual discipline, a relationship, a risk)
posted by Shigematsu at 3:08 PM
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