Fresh Wineskins

Monday of the Second Week in Ordinary Time

But Samuel said: “Does the LORD so delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as in obedience to the command of the LORD?  Obedience is better than sacrifice and submission than the fat of rams.  1 Samuel 15:22

“No one sews a piece of unshrunken cloth on an old cloak.  If he does, its fullness pulls away, the new from the old, and the tear gets worse.  Likewise, no one pours new wine into old wineskins.  Otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the skins are ruined.  Rather, new wine is poured into fresh wineskins.”  Mark 2:21-22

Piety

Beyond this, I am in Birmingham because injustice is here. Just as the eighth-century prophets left their little villages and carried their "thus saith the Lord" far beyond the boundaries of their hometowns; and just as the Apostle Paul left his little village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to practically every hamlet and city of the Greco-Roman world, I too am compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my particular hometown. Like Paul, I must constantly respond to the Macedonian call for aid.

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from a Birmingham Jail, August 1963

Study

At the beginning of his ministry, Jesus realized that he was bringing something new into the world.  Before he could change course, he started from where people were at his present moment.

Although Jesus wants a new obedience to come from his instructions, his message built directly off of the prophetic teaching right up through John the Baptist.  In picking up where they left off, he still seeks something from his followers that the prophets did not obtain – obedience.  In the first reading, the student Samuel chastises his mentor Saul for his lack of obedience.  That same sense of admonition comes out of the mouths of the Pharisees. 

Jesus wants us to take on a new attitude, not just the same lip service that the Pharisees and Sadducees paid to Hebrew law.  He wants us to take up this message with a new attitude -- like it is a new law.  Rather than sticking with the ways of the past (burnt offerings), he wants us to adopt a new way of following in His footsteps.

New wine (Jesus’ teaching) must be poured into new wineskins (our minds, hearts and souls).

Action

Today, the nation celebrates a day devoted to the spirit of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  Posters abound which us not to make this just a day off, but a day engaged in making his “dream” a reality.  Most will see or hear some of all of the famous “I Have a Dream” speech in the media today. 

Rev. King also took to task the Pharisees of his day when he wrote in longhand the Letter from the Birmingham Jail in longhand to eight white religious leaders of the South.  These leaders had called his present actions of civil disobedience "unwise and untimely."  However, in justifying the actions that landed him in jail, Dr. King reminded his critics that “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

The tension that exists between Jesus and the Pharisees over the lack of “proper fasting” is similar to the tension between Dr. King’s civil disobedience and those calling for negotiation.  Dr. King explained that there is nothing new about this kind of civil disobedience. He wrote, “It was seen sublimely in the refusal of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego to obey the laws of Nebuchadnezzar because a higher moral law was involved. It was practiced superbly by the early Christians, who were willing to face hungry lions and the excruciating pain of chopping blocks before submitting to certain unjust laws of the Roman Empire.”

“We must come to see that human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability. It comes through the tireless efforts and persistent work of men willing to be coworkers with God.”

Interestingly, Jesus uses the image of the bridegroom – who represents half of a couple bound together in extreme love.  King also calls on those who read this seminal letter to be extremist in Christ’s love.

Jesus was as disappointed in the Hebrew church leaders as Dr. King was in the leadership of the white churches of the South and the rest of the nation – leaders who wanted to pay attention to the letter of the law and not the spirit of love that infused the law.

King knows what Jesus wants – an obedience to the Good News which does not separate social issues from the gospel. He concludes by writing, “Over the last few years I have consistently preached that nonviolence demands that the means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek. So I have tried to make it clear that it is wrong to use immoral means to attain moral ends. But now I must affirm that it is just as wrong, or even more, to use moral means to preserve immoral ends.”

Dr. King wants the message of obedience to the Good News to be held in fresh wineskins, not judged from the perspective of old laws that preserved inequality and oppression.

“What is new and what is creative and what is strong demands something strong and new to hold it,” said Dr. King in a sermon at the beginning of 1962.  New messages cannot be confronted by closed minds.  Jesus was ahead of his time because people did not fully realize how to accept and put into practice his new message of love.  

Dr. King’s ideas also were ahead of his time and his 1962 sermon and his 1963 incarceration.  He knew that “If you have new wine of integrity and concern, be sure that you get a new bottle strong enough and powerful enough to hold it.”  

If Dr. King were alive today, he would be finding new battles to fight and new messages to deliver.  What do you think he would be getting arrested to change?  Are you willing to be by his side in that cell be it Birmingham or Boston, Jerusalem or Jacksonville?