New Wineskins

The Young and Restless

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about Jesus statement concerning wineskins. You know the one – “No one puts new wine into old wineskins, because the old wineskins can’t hold new wine.” Judaism is the old wineskin, while Jesus’ teachings and actions are the new wine. Right?

I don’t think so. Jesus was born of a Jewish woman, raised in a Jewish home, and educated in a Jewish synagogue. Most of his teaching, as well as his teaching method, was Jewish. Jesus encouraged obedience to the Law and Prophets, emphatically so, in fact. Jesus told stories, asked questions, used metaphor, just like other sages in the Jewish tradition. I don’t think Jesus had a problem with his faith tradition, at least not a big one.

Old Wineskins

In Mathew 9, where the wineskin metaphor is inserted, Jesus is healing a variety of folks. He’s hanging out with a questionable crowd of drinkers and stinkers. And he’s forgiving sins as if he has authority to do so. The everyday, every man and woman, was in awe of the idea that such authority was given to someone like them, a regular guy.

What bothered the old guard, I think, is that Jesus was not authorized to be changing notions around who had authority to forgive sins. Or when you could heal hurting people. Or who might be allowed in. Or who should be stoned! Jesus seemed to be declaring that access to God didn’t have to go through certain forms or designated people.

Old Men’s Club?

And let’s be clear, the “old guard” were not all “old men.” What they had in common, these scribes, Pharisees, Priests and Levites, is that they were serious men, men of certainty, men of standing and position, men who carried the weight of generational, comfortable, controllable Judaism.

That’s a heavy load! And age is not the requirement for entry into this club.

When I left my small, rural Iowa town to go to seminary, an older church elder, a good and decent man, said, “Don’t let them change you!’ Okay, but who’s the “them?” And what would a “changed me” look like?

The Jesus Movement

They were young, these followers of Jesus, really, really, really young. The disciples were teenagers, Peter, and maybe Judas, being the exceptions. The women who travelled with them might have been older, certainly some of the financial support came from married women, or so it seems to me from a straight reading of the Gospel accounts. Mary Magdalene? Who knows, right? She loved Jesus. Jesus loved her.

The older supporters of the Jesus movement mostly seemed to come alongside in support of their young and zealous brothers and sisters. Barnabas might have been a bit older than Paul. Lydia was probably older, as was the case with Priscilla and Aquila. These older followers of Jesus offered the young ones home and hearth, and money too.

Out Front

It’s almost always the young who are at the front of movements that matter most in history.

Martin Luther was 34 when he wrote the 95 Theses out of which sprang Protestantism, and moved the Catholic Church into reform mode. John Calvin was 26 when he wrote the Institutes, one of the great theological writings of any time – too much loved by today’s old guard, I fear, but that’s another blog post.

Gandhi was 37 and living in South Africa when he led his first “passive resistance” march. Martin Luther King, Jr was 39 when he was assassinated. Mother Teresa was 18 when she began working in Calcutta.

Ida Scudder, probably the greatest of Reformed Church in America medical missionaries, was 20 years old when she witnessed three pregnant Indian women die because there was no female doctor to treat them. She got her medical degree and in the course of her life founded the Christian Medical College, Vellore, a private, minority-run medical school, hospital and research institute

Such an important list, I think. Which of our lost sons and daughters might have been added to it – may still?

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