Something New (And by New I Mean NEW!)
Matthew
9:14-17
14Then
the disciples of John came to him, saying, “Why do we and the Pharisees fast,
but your disciples do not fast?”
15And
Jesus said to them, “Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is
with them? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and
then they will fast.
16No
one puts a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, for the patch tears away
from the garment, and a worse tear is made.
17Neither
is new wine put into old wineskins. If it is, 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.”
Today, I carry an iPhone. In fact, I love
my iPhone (even though we aren’t supposed to say we ‘love’ inanimate objects.)
But I am old enough to actually remember a time when the phone hung on the wall
and all you had to do was pick up the earpiece and speak to a living operator
who would hook you up with the person you wanted to call. You didn’t even dial
a number! (And everyone else who had access to that line could listen in to your entire conversation!) Now granted I was very young, the memory is vague and we were in
rural (and I mean rural) South
Dakota. But that’s where phones started out. A few years later someone
predicted that you might even be able to see
the person you were talking to in later years. I didn’t think I would live that
long! Now imagine if I were to insist that the only phone to use is one that
resembled that ancient phone on the wall. I would be missing out on something
incredible.
As Jesus and His disciples are hanging out
together, the disciples of John the Baptist come to Him with a question. These disciples
of John even align themselves with the Pharisees
as they wonder why Jesus’ disciples don’t fast. (It was the practice in the
Jewish culture to fast on Monday’s and Thursday as a part of their religious
practices.) Jesus then uses 3 examples or parables of what instigates this new
behavior. First, He associates Himself with the picture that is drawn in the
Old Testament of God as the Groom and the His people (or what we call the Church)
as the Bride. He claims for Himself the roll of Groom thus also claiming the
position of God. This would have been a mind blower from the start. To fast
during a wedding celebration would have been so extremely offensive that the
people would have been shocked. Jesus disciples are with the Groom. To fast
would have been inappropriate.
Then Jesus gives two concrete examples of
placing something new into/onto something old. Dr. Jeffery Gibbs has an
interesting and insightful comment about that in his commentary on Matthew. “Jesus’
second image, that of the dangers of putting a new patch on an old garment
(9:16), entails a sober note of warning to His hearers. They are in danger of
trying to take something new – Jesus Himself – and simply adding Him or
stitching Him onto their old way of life in Judaism. No one does such a thing
with a garment, and for good reason: the only possible result is that the old
garment will be ruined. Jesus cannot be ‘a patch,’ something small and
secondary that merely ‘repairs’ the larger structure that was already in place;
that was what these disciples of John and the Pharisees wished to make of
Jesus. But Jesus is and must be primary, first, central. He has not come to fix
a small breach in the existing religion, nor just to supplement it. Rather, He
has come to fulfill the entirety of the Old Testament Scriptures and inaugurate
the promised new covenant in Himself. Any other approach to Him results in
something even worse than before.”
Gibbs, J. A. ©2006. Matthew 1:1–11:1
(p. 479). Saint Louis, MO: CPH.
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