“Now John’s disciples and the Pharisees were fasting. Some people came and asked Jesus, ‘How is it that John’s disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees are fasting, but yours are not?’ Jesus answered, ‘How can the guests of the bridegroom fast while he is with them? They cannot, so long as they have him with them. But the time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them, and on that day they will fast. No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. If he does, the new piece will pull away from the old, making the tear worse. And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the wineskins will be ruined. No, he pours new wine into new wineskins.’” Mark 2
20, she sat at my kitchen table with me, years ago, and earnestly desired to accept Christ and to be baptized. Wild street child, her life had been a train wreck since puberty and she desired better. “I’ll become a Christian, but I won’t give up my Marijuana, and my old friends are still my friends.” Not requiring perfection as a condition of baptism, I baptized her, and then watched as battle was joined. Unwilling to let go of her past, she was an unhappy Christian. Desperate to leave her destructive lifestyle, she was in a conflict-laden transition. The old was battling the new and she was a walking civil war, unhappy in either world.
She is not unusual, and the battle she fought took years. In the end, faith won, and she fully embraced life with God, punctuated by occasional relapses into crazy thinking.
John knew he was transitional. He even called himself “the best man,” acknowledging Jesus as the bridegroom sent by God. The Pharisees were so locked in their traditions, regulations, and religious customs that they just didn’t have a clue. Newness is very threatening to religious people.
For 43 years I worked in the institutional church. I worked hard. I learned early on that change came slowly, and sometimes not at all. I found myself locked into a system that depended on work by the few for the comfort of the many. I wrestled with such peripheral issues as what kind of music to use in worship and how to keep the nursery staffed, while searching year after year for a way to ignite and energize the “laity” for the real work of the ministry in a very needy culture. But it was an institution, and institutions have incredible inertia. I fear that my unorthodox style and constant teaching on the imperatives of the gospel were as much irritant as effective. I was trying to pour new wine into an old wineskin.
Four years ago I left the institutional church, but I have not left the church. I am searching out the new wineskin. I still teach, pastor, baptize, and share communion, but find my fellowship and ministry in informal small groups of people who are new to the faith and desire only to know and follow Jesus. Somehow, even at my advanced age, I fit. I do not think that the institutional church is somehow ‘wrong.’ It still is the church, and I attend a ‘church’ with my wife. But it is a wineskin for a different time, and it will slowly and inexorably be forced to change in spite of itself as a generation dies out and a slightly younger generation takes its place. All is well when we see and follow Christ as the bridegroom, knowing that he gives new life to each unique and precious soul called by God. None of us need point fingers of judgment at others, only follow faithfully the path Christ sets before us. For now, I am comfortable and glad to meet and teach atheists and agnostics, watching them morph into believers with a wonderful new take on our common life of faith.
Prayer: “Father of the universe, help us to be unafraid of change; to know and remember that in every circumstance you are still our Father, and you are ever with us. Instead, we ask you to surround us with your presence, leading us to maturity and surrounding us with companions in this great journey. Each day we will get up and thank you for another day of life, and give that day and ourselves into your care. Lead us into your everlasting and eternal presence. In Jesus’ name, amen.”