Mark 2:20-22

Passage

Jesus teaches that there will be a day when the bridegroom (Jesus) will be taken away from His disciples.  Then His disciples will fast.  Then Jesus gives us two familiar parables.  Nobody sews a piece of new material onto old material.  If you do, the patch tears away and the tear is made worse.  Likewise, nobody puts new wine into old wineskins.  If they do, the wine will burst the skins as it ages and both the wine and the skins will be ruined.

Thoughts for Today

First Thought:

Jesus speaks clearly here about the ascension.  There was a day coming in the not-too-far-off future for His disciples when Jesus would no longer be among them.  There was a day coming when Jesus would not be physically present.  Already Jesus is preparing them for that day.  Jesus tells the people that in those days it will make sense for His disciples to fast because He will not be among them as readily.

Can you see Jesus preparing His disciples for the future with these words?  Can you see Jesus planting seeds to help them understand something that is going to be very difficult in the future?  What does this story tell us about the kind of vision that is required by disciple-makers?

Second Thought:

Jesus tells us about cloth.  Jesus is telling the people around Him that He is doing something new.  Through Him, God is doing something that has never been done.  This is why Jesus is gathering His own disciples.  He knows that through His death on the cross something brand new will be happening.  If He tries to keep that new teaching perfectly within the old understanding of the Jews, it will eventually tear away painfully.  Unfortunately, this is kind of what does happen anyway.  Rather, what Jesus is saying here is that in Him, we are better off starting from scratch than trying to put what Jesus teaches us into our “traditional” box.  As we heard yesterday, with Jesus life is often countercultural.  There does come a time when the time for patching up the old is done and you must start anew.

What differences are there between traditional Judaism and Christianity?  Do you think there are differences in the Christianity today versus the Christianity that exists several hundred years ago?  Why is change necessary in the church?

Third Thought:

Jesus also talks about wineskins.  In his day and age, they didn’t have bottles.  They put wine in skins or clay jars.  As the wine fermented, it naturally gave off gasses.  These gases would cause pressure to build up from the inside.  New skins still had some elasticity in them.  They could expand until the pressure was released.  Old skins, however, had dried up and become rigid.  They could accommodate already fermented wine but not accommodate wine that would cause any internal pressure because instead of stretching they would rupture.  Jesus is telling the people around Him that in order to follow Jesus one must have a certain amount of elasticity in order to be willing to change in the direction that God is leading.  This is especially true with Jesus, since the prior parable about the cloth told us that God is starting with a completely new thing and not patching the old!

Think back to the original context of fasting and tradition.  How does this parable of wineskins speak to us about tradition?  What are the dangers of tradition in light of these verses?  How should we approach tradition so that we don’t have to throw it out but we also have ability to grow and stretch?

Passage for Tomorrow: Mark 2:23-24