Mark 2:13-22 contains the well-known story of Jesus sitting down to eat with Levi and various other tax collectors and sinners. When the Pharisees saw this, they were shocked, and asked the disciples why he would do such a thing. Jesus overheard them and responded with the following familiar explanation: ‘Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.’
This is one aspect of the reading - Jesus reminding the Holier-Than-Thou crowd that God is not impressed by their smug self-righteousness. The first step in healing is admitting you have a problem, and so those who consider themselves righteous are in fact distancing themselves from God more-so than those who know they are sinners and ask for forgiveness.
But there’s another thread to this reading that I find interesting, and this time Jesus’ analogies are a bit more obscure (at least to our modern way of thinking). When asked why his disciples were not fasting while the Pharises were, Jesus tells them that, as it would be inappropriate for wedding guests to fast while the bridegroom is present, so too is it inappropriate for the disciples to fast with Jesus in their midst. But he goes on, saying ‘No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old cloak; otherwise, the patch pulls away from it, the new from the old, and a worse tear is made. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and the wine is lost, and so are the skins; but one puts new wine into fresh wineskins.’
I had to look this one up. The metaphors made sense, and to bring the idea into the modern world you could even come up with a few new ones: You don’t put chrome rims and expensive tires on a 1980 Buick with 180,000 miles on it; You don’t try to load Apple’s iOS on a flip-phone. Sure, I got the metaphors... but I didn’t understand them. What was Jesus really saying?
This is one aspect of the reading - Jesus reminding the Holier-Than-Thou crowd that God is not impressed by their smug self-righteousness. The first step in healing is admitting you have a problem, and so those who consider themselves righteous are in fact distancing themselves from God more-so than those who know they are sinners and ask for forgiveness.
But there’s another thread to this reading that I find interesting, and this time Jesus’ analogies are a bit more obscure (at least to our modern way of thinking). When asked why his disciples were not fasting while the Pharises were, Jesus tells them that, as it would be inappropriate for wedding guests to fast while the bridegroom is present, so too is it inappropriate for the disciples to fast with Jesus in their midst. But he goes on, saying ‘No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old cloak; otherwise, the patch pulls away from it, the new from the old, and a worse tear is made. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and the wine is lost, and so are the skins; but one puts new wine into fresh wineskins.’
I had to look this one up. The metaphors made sense, and to bring the idea into the modern world you could even come up with a few new ones: You don’t put chrome rims and expensive tires on a 1980 Buick with 180,000 miles on it; You don’t try to load Apple’s iOS on a flip-phone. Sure, I got the metaphors... but I didn’t understand them. What was Jesus really saying?
Fortunately, Biblical scholarship was only a few clicks away, and it seems pretty obvious now after a little research. What Jesus is telling us is that things are changing. The old rules don’t apply anymore because there is a New Covenant. Those who pride themselves on being righteous must step to the back of the line. Those who accept Christ into their lives and humbly ask forgiveness for their sins will receive it. Whoever wishes to be first must be a servant. The Prodigal Son is welcomed home, and the meek shall inherit the Earth. Throw out the old rules, for the times they are a changin’! And to borrow a popular phrase, this
is “Change you can believe in.”
(Brion K.)
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