Mark 2: 18-22 A conflict narrative... ginger beer, patching clothes, new wine and coffee!

 

At home we have a solid metal steamer trunk. It was Kris’ before we got married and she and then we have carted it all around the country. At present I think its full of wool, knitting needles and patterns. Leftovers from favourite jumpers long worn to death or no longer fitting, and supplies for projects which just never quite got gotten round to… But its more than just a convenient storage box, for Kris it’s a container for family memories from her childhood. It’s in pretty good condition, although the original steamer labels from the 1890’s have long since disappeared,  but the lid is rather battered and covered in mysterious bumps. Not just because it’s been used as a seat at times, or because of rough handling as we’ve moved. Those bumps are part of the treasured childhood memories.

Kris’ family used to brew ginger beer. They made it the old way fermenting it with a bacteria and yeast combination. The trunk was used to store the bottles during the fermentation process. Occasionally from the trunk there would be a loud bang followed by a clunk and a new bump would appear in the lid. The energy built up by the fermentation process would shatter the glass or warp and throw the top off any plastic bottle used. Maybe you’ve got similar memories. But the new life bubbling up in the ginger beer couldn’t be contained.

 NT Wright also brewed ginger beer when he was a child and had the same issue with bottles, he connected it to this passage today writing

 “ that image of the ginger beer remains with me when I read what Jesus says about new wine needing new wineskins. He is talking about that shatteringly new thing that is happening through his ministry. Something quite different was coming to birth from anything that had happened before. Something powerful and explosive.” 

With Jesus the kingdom of God had stepped into the realms of humanity and with that presence the old ways could not contain it.

And we are on a major journey through the gospel according to Mark, ‘the beginning of the good news of Jesus the messiah, Son of God’. The series is called The Way of the cross as in Mark Jesus is portrayed primarily as the suffering servant, who came to give his life for many. The gospel invites us to strip away many of the cultural expectations we have of Jesus and what it means to follow him and realise as one commentator puts it we are an army whose only weapons are service and self-sacrificial love. That to be a flourishing Christian community is ironically to follow Jesus on the way of the cross.

So far in the gospel we have been introduced to Jesus at his baptism and as he starts his ministry in galilee, calling people to repent and believe the good news because the kingdom of God was at hand, and showing its presence through healing the sick and freeing people from evil spirits. At the same time gathering a group to follow him and become fishers of men. While Jesus ministry meets with initial acceptance and success, we see that very quickly there is push back and opposition from the religious authorities of the day. The reading this morning is the middle of three conflict narratives. The first was around dining with Levi and his friends, where Jesus is challenged about associating with such outcasts and speaks of his mission as being to call such people back into relationship with God. The conflict narratives finish in 3:6 with the Pharisees starting to plot his death… right at the start of the gospel story the cross comes clearly into focus.

The conflict in the reading this morning revolves around fasting. It may not seem like a likely point of conflict or a huge thing, but for the religious people of Jesus day fasting had become a sign of piety and devotion. The only fast regulated in the Old Testament was the day of atonement, yom Kippur, as a sign of Israels deep remorse for their sin, right before the offer of forgiveness. Other times in scripture it is associated with deep sorrow and remorse, David when he is confronted by Nathan, You may remember it was Nehemiah’s response to the news about the condition of Jerusalem, he mourned, fasted and prayed. But by the first century it has become a ritual observed by the Pharisees, they would fast two times a week, mourning and praying for the coming of God’s messiah. But it had become a public show of personal piety. In the sermon on the mount in Matthew’s gospel Jesus warns against emulating those who would make a big show of fasting, whitening their faces, wearing ashes on their clothes and not combing their hair as a sign to all around that they were piously fasting. John the Baptists disciples also fasted, which fits into their longing for the coming messiah and also the fact that they were simply a reformation group within Judaism.

Some people we are not given any other information about who these people are, asked why Jesus disciples did not fast. If this was an expression of piety and religiousness, why didn’t Jesus disciples act in the same way? Jesus responds by talking about his presence and how this presence changes everything.

In verse 19 as Jesus often does he answers with a question of his own. Is it right that the guests of the bridegroom fast while he is present?’ In Jewish culture the marriage feast time was a time of great joy and feasting. Instead of heading off on a honeymoon the day after the ceremony, the couple would remain at home and people would come and greet the them as a new family unit and it would be a time of great festivities and celebration. Often in the hard subsistence lives of the people it would be the highlight of their lives. The attendants of the bridegroom were even exempt from any religious observances that would lessen the joy of the occasion. 

Jesus is saying that his presence with his disciples makes that difference. Because he is there, there should be joy and rejoicing. It fits well with the understanding of the church as the bride of Christ in the epistles, and the scriptures of the Old Testament speak of God as Israels bridegroom, and the coming of God is likened to a wedding feast. Jesusbeing with his disciples is the fulfilment of what the Pharisees and John’s disciples are fasting and looking for.

In verse 20 Jesus does point towards a time when the disciples will fast, when the bridgegroom is taken from them. Even this early in his ministry Jesus is mindful of the cross. Then the disciples will experience pain, suffering, mourning and sorrow. Fasting will be more in line with how it was used in scripture rather than what it has become as simply an observance and religious expression.

Then Jesus goes on to expand on that and talk about how his coming changes everything. That the kingdom of God will not simply be a reformation of the old Jewish system. It will outgrow it and expand and be something totally different. He uses two parable sayings. The first, in verse 21, is that you don’t use a new piece of cloth to patch an old garment. We maybe used to non-shrinking synthetic material, but in Jesus day new cloth would shrink when it was washed, and so a small repair would end up with a larger hole as it pulled against the stitches. Old sailing boats used to have spare weathered sails to use for patches for their sails to avoid that. By trying to patch the old with the new both would end up being destroyed.

The other was that you can’t put new wine in old wineskins. In the first century a goat skin would be used to store new wine as it fermented. The skin would be taken off almost a whole and only partially tanned. AS the wine fermented the skins natural elasticity would accommodate the growth and the expansion of the wine. But with age the wineskin would become rigid and brittle, and so if new wine was put into it would cause the skin to break and the wine and the container to be wasted. Jesus lets his opponents know that Judaism isn’t going to be able to contain the new life that his coming is bringing. To Mark’s original audience this would have been obvious as they sat in a church full of both jew and gentiles. Maybe it was important to be reminded of that newness if they like many other churches being written to were struggling with the judieisers who were trying to rewrap the good news in Jewish religious observance. Of course we also know that early on the church actually adopted the practise of fasting two day a week, but simply changed the days.

What is there for us from this passage today.

Firstly, the presence of the bridegroom with us. While with Jesus crucifixion Jesus was taken away from his disciples, and there was great mourning, with the resurrection and the sending of the Holy Spirt, Jesus is present with his people. The continuing good news of Jesus Christ… Our lives, our services our faith should be full of joy because of that presence. Unlike the religious of Jesus days we also do not long and wait for God’s salvation, Christ it has come. However we also live in the tension of the fact that we await the final consummation of God’s kingdom with Christ’s return, so the mourning over sin and the brokenness of the world and longing for God to come and renew and save are also relevant. We live in the tension of the already (Christ has come) and the not yet (Christ will come again). We mourn over the hurt in this world, we also face opposition as we are about the kingdom of God, and cry out to God, but we do so with the assurance that Christ is with us, knowing that part of the answer to our prayers is the Holy Spirit leading us to be ambassadors of the Kingdom. But we also face those issues those problems with joy, because of Jesus and what Jesus has done for us, and his continued presence with and within us.

Lorne asked folk to give the ‘jerusalema’ dance a go at the combined service last week as an expression of that joy. A south African gospel song which the dance to it has gone viral, and one of the videos Lorne showed me was a law firm in Zimbabwe doing it. They were defending a couple of people who were criticising the government and were under immense pressure from the government to stop. But they dance with joy in the face of that, acknowledging that the kingdom of God has come in Christ and they have a home in the new Jerusalem. I’m sure they lament and pray but there is joy from the presence of Christ as well.

Secondly, with the coming of Christ we need to deal with new wine in new wineskins. The focus was on how following Jesus not going to fit into the Jewish way of doing things. This was something new and would need fresh expressions of faith fresh structures to hold the new life that was fermenting with it. In church history there have been times when there has been a fresh revelation and pouring out of God’s spirit and when those times happen there are new expressions new ways of doing things and it is easy for us to get caught up in the old container, the old structures and expressions and hold onto them and miss what God is doing… sadly it usually leads to both diminishing and ending. We need to be aware that the continued presence and ministry and mission of Christ in this world is going to continually push us out and cause new and fresh things to happen.

Having said that there are a couple of dangers we need to be aware of. The first is the danger of being a neophile… a neophile is someone who is in love with the new, for whom innovation, new ways and new structures can almost be an idol. An example of that is the line of customers waiting round the block each time a new iphone is released, they can’t wait to get the new one. Sadly when new things have happened in the church, some will simply throw out the old with the new. The other is that often people can cherish the container and forget the life giving liquid it contains, we can hold on to the expression and rituals and forms of faith and not long for or even notice that the new wine has gone.

Leonard Sweet tells a parable which helps us with the everyday wisdom we need to navigate our way through seeing what needs the new wineskins and what is a worthy vessel to carry that new life forward. He likens it not to wine but to another wonderful life giving liquid… Coffee.

He says that people just love coffee but that the way they consume their coffee differs greatly. Some like to drink it from bone China cups, the ones that are likely to be passed on down through the family. We bought a coffee machine at a church fair many years ago and it came with these very stylish new York coffee cups, very fashionable café style cups. Or maybe you are a mug kind of person… you love to drink coffee out of mug that you can wrap your hands around and feel the heat on a cold morning. Earthen ware or a tin one in the outdoors, or you really enjoy the glass or bowl of a latte. Recently people have taken to disposable cups to get their coffee, it fits with their busy lives, and our mobility, we get petrol and coffee at the same time and place. Or stop at a hole in the wall place on the way to work. Of course we’ve realised that has an environmental impact, so many people now have reusable coffee containers to take with. Metal with screw lids or pottery with rubber tippy cup like covers. The danger of course is we can disparage other people for the container they prefer.. they are not real coffee people. We can put our preferred one up on a shelf or the China cabinet admire it but never fill it with the life giving liquid… or we can hold onto the container and fill it with other things… a sort of weird herbal tea mix. 

This photo maybe lets you know how I like to drink my coffee. But in conclusion, we need the life giving substance, we need the Good News and presence of Christ by the holy spirit in our lives and be willing to allow that presence with its fizz and explosive nature to bring change and renewal and transformation… and have the wisdom to be open to new wineskins for the new wine.