New patches and old wineskins part 2

New patches and old wineskins part 2

Mark 2: 21-22   No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. If he does, the patch tears away from it, the new from the old, and a worse tear is made. And no one puts new wine into old qwineskins. If he does, the wine will burst the skins—and the wine is destroyed, and so are the skins. But new wine is for fresh wineskins.”

John is in prison, and at least some of his disciples have, for whatever reason, decided to fast with the Pharisees rather than feast with Jesus. I think part of the reason Jesus told them these parables was to open their eyes to reality. As I said in part of the discussion of the parable of the wedding guests, Matthew records the questioners here as John’s disciples. Mark and Luke don’t specifically name them, but Luke makes it appear that there are Pharisees among the crowd. Probably there is a mixed crowd of John’s disciples, Pharisees, and onlookers, wanting to see how Jesus will answer their charges.

The parables he tells them have been interpreted in varous ways through the years, and one of the most popular is that Jesus is telling them that the Judaism is old and frayed past repair. He isn’t coming to patch ip the old law but to usher in the new era of grace.  You can’t mix law and grace in the same way you can’t patch an old garment with new cloth or store new wine in old skins. Grace will only further expose the holes in the law and end up destroying it.

I think there is some truth that can be gleaned from that interpretation. Jesus did come to usher in the era of grace. And to be sure, Judaism as it existed in Jesus’ time was certainly old, tired, and frayed.  

The question we have to ask, though, is does that interpretation mesh with the rest of the New Testament?

Jesus himself said in Matthew 5:17 “Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them.”

And as we read through the book of Acts and through the writings of Paul, we know that the first followers of Jesus were all Jews who did not abandon their Jewishness in following him. In fact, there was a pretty big argument over whether Gentile believers had to convert to Judaism before they could follow Jesus. And the final decision was that they didn’t have to follow Jewish law, but not because Jesus abolished the law, but because they were Gentiles.

Even Paul says that though the law cannot save, it is a good thing. The law isn’t evil,  it points us to our need for a Savior because of our inability to keep it completely. That’s not a deficiency in the law, but in our nature.   We are no longer under the Law because Jesus fulfilled it, not because he abolished it. The law is still a good thing, and it still functions as it was intended.

Now, in many ways Christianity is new. We see a new commandment, a new sacrifice, a new temple, a new Jerusalem, and the list goes on and on. And in those ways, it is legitimate to see Jesus saying that he’s bringing the new thing that will supplant the old; the new wine that cannot be placed into old wineskins; the new cloth that cannot be used to patch an old garment.

But it seems to me to be equally legitimate to see all of these new things as the actualities toward which the old things were pointing as types and shadows. The coming of Jesus revealed the ultimate reality that had been underlying Jewish practice since the time of Moses. I think it is valid to say that Jesus didn’t replace the Passover lamb. He was the true Passover Lamb that the earlier lambs only represented. He was the Mercy Seat, declaring that atonement had been made for Israel. The golden lid of the ark and the cherubim were merely pointing to the ultimate truth.

If Israel had recognized Messiah when he came, this probably wouldn’t be a discussion. But the religious leaders of Israel had, over the years, added so much tradition to Torah that it had rendered most people unable to see the truth. They were so busy trying to keep all of the traditions , what they call the Oral Torah, they didn’t have time to actually stop and think about what was happening.

In a way, it’s both at the same time. The rabbis were trying to add more and more patches to Judaism that just made it more and more cumbersome and threatened to destroy it. But at the same time, Jesus was telling them that what they had created could no longer be patched. An entirely new garment made of whole cloth would be needed to restore God’s people. back to true worship. 

This is one of the reasons that spending time reading and meditating on the parables is so instructive and rewarding. There are layers upon layers of meaning that can be drawn from them. I think that’s the point.