On being an old wineskin

I learned today an interesting way of looking at this passage from Matthew (9:14-17)

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 and then they will fast. No one sews a piece of un-shrunk 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."

Now I have heard this passage many, many times - I've read it, and I've heard it proclaimed in church. But I had never really even wondered what it meant. But when I heard someone admit that they did not know what it meant, I realized that not only had I never thought of this passage and what it could mean, I didn't really see what he was getting at.

But there is a meaning to it. John's disciples were likely Essenes, ascetics who lived lives of privation out in the desert in the manner of John the Baptist. Like certain disciplined orders of monks today, their manner of worshipping God was to deny the self and focus only on God.

The disciples of Jesus, on the other hand, were with God. They did not yet know it, but when I think of one day meeting God face to face, I don't picture fasting as my reaction. That will be a moment of pure joy. And I imagine that this is what life with Jesus was like. It was a hard life of itinerant preaching and healing, but to be in the blessed presence of the holiest one the world had ever seen had to be a joy. And given how Jesus himself says that he came "eating and drinking" I am sure that there was much joyous fellowship in his company.

How strange that must have seemed to John's followers. They had gotten used to a style of worship that was a self-imposed hardship, and it could not have been easy to see a new movement arise around someone who worshipped in a celebratory, joyful way.

And I think what Jesus is saying to John's disciples is that he understands that it is hard for them; he empathizes with them. The Essenes had a long established discipline that was intense, ascetic, and challenging. And yet here was someone with a similar message, but who did not have harsh disciplines for his followers: on the contrary, they had a festive approach. John's followers were old wineskins. Jesus knew that they could not do the things his own disciples did; he understood, and so he brought his festive style of ministry to new disciples, and not to John's movement. It illustrates his profound respect for the religiosity of John's followers, all the while explaining that the freewheeling ways of his own disciples was quite justifiable.

Change in our lives needs to be organic. We can't overturn everything about ourselves and establish something new in its place overnight. Just as Jesus did not expect these Essenes with John to handle the jubilance of the Gospel, God never gives us more than we can handle; it has a downside, because when the time comes, and we are able to handle a lot, he will give us a lot. But we need not fear; for the Lord will not give us a burden we are not able to bear.