Wine in a Box
Luke 5: 27-39
Gettysburg Presbyterian Church
Daniel T. Hans
October 29, 2007

Be flexible. That’s a piece of advice every couple needs to hear as they marry. Be flexible because you cannot predict what life will bring to your lives together. Therefore, you need to be able to adjust and adapt and change.  Be flexible. That’s the advice we give to anyone who wants to participate in our annual medical and dental mission trip to Honduras.
Be flexible because you never know what might happen and what adjustments you might have to make while in Honduras.  There may be no electricity for several hours; there may be no running water for a day or two;
or, in the case of one of our members, Hugh Matthews, there may be a bat sleeping in your pants that you discover early one morning only after you put on your pants.

Whether in marriage or in mission or in life, be flexible so we can respond to needs and challenges in new ways rather than always default to the familiar and safe ways of doing things.

I

Be flexible is Luke’s message to the church at the end of the 1st century and at the beginning of the 21st century.  Luke begins his call for flexibility with an incident involving Jesus’ call to a tax collector to follow him.  One of the primary and persistent complaints against Jesus by the religious leaders is that he hangs out with the wrong kind of people. Tax collectors are those Jews who work for the Roman occupation troops.  With the power of the Roman Empire behind them, tax collectors levy their countrymen for the taxes due to Rome and also for extra funds to line their own pockets.

To be a tax collector and to be a friend of a tax collector is the social and religious kiss of death. Jesus not only befriends tax collectors and invites one of them to be a disciple, he agrees to be the guest of honor at a tax collectors’ banquet.  In ancient times, eating with others was more than accepting their food, it was also accepting them.

The religious leaders and their legal scribes are the Holiness Nazis.
They believe it is their job to make sure everyone else is not doing something wrong.  They believe they can tell what kind of a person Jesus is by the kind of people with whom he eats.  So they complain, “Why do you hang out with religiously unclean and morally sick people?”  Jesus answers, “As it is the sick who welcome a doctor’s help, so it is the sinners who wel-come a savior’s help.” The Pharisees’ zeal for being good and pure makes one wonder: Who are the people we exclude and block from God’s grace in our noble yet often misguided attempts to maintain goodness and purity?

The Pharisees would have no problem with Jesus calling tax collectors to change their lives and then for Jesus to eat with them.  The Pharisees’ problem is that Jesus takes the initiative to eat with them before there is any demonstrable change in their lives.  The invitation to Levi is sheer grace.  Levi has no prior accomplishments or qualifications that merit such an invitation.

Jesus teaches and shows that God’s grace requires no prerequisites. Grace is a gift: It is a come-as-you party. God’s grace accepts and welcomes people as they are and then offers the invitation to become part of something new, something transforming out of gratitude for the gracious welcome and acceptance.

To follow Jesus in trusting-faith is not to separate from the real world and isolate ourselves from others as the disciples of John the Baptizer and the disciples of the Pharisees do.  They try to get closer to God by disengaging from the messy, complex, trouble-filled world around them.  To follow Jesus is to do the opposite – to engage the world as it is and to associate with people where and as they are.  To follow Jesus is not to punish ourselves with religious restriction; it is to celebrate the joy of life in relationship with God.  But, the Holiness Nazis cannot understand this – not then and not now.

When in college he belonged to a fraternity that had the reputation of being a party house.  His was the first fraternity closed down on that campus.  When the movie Animal House first played a couple of months after he graduated from college, he was dumbfounded as he watched the film because he knew every character in the movie – except by a different name.  Even though he was a member of the “Animal House” fraternity, he was also involved in a couple of Christian groups on campus. Some the Christians on campus were like the Pharisees and they complained to him, “How can you be a Christian and belong to a fraternity?  Especially that house!”  His reply was always, “How can you be a Christian and not belong to a fraternity or sorority?”
“Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?”
“Those who are well don’t need a physician, only the sick do.”

II

Jesus’ message and his life declare that God’s grace is a time of joy and celebration like a wedding party.  There is a time to be serious, somber and sacrificial in faith, as he hints at his future death when the bridegroom of the party is no longer present.  But what faith needs is more times of joy, celebration and freedom. 

We should celebrate God’s grace as freely offered to all people.  We can celebrate grace so long as we are not tied to the old way of doing things – the way of merit not mercy, the way of love given only when it is deserved rather than love given even when it is undeserved.  If we are locked into to old way of trying to earn God’s love then the gift of grace is an occasion of bitterness and resentment: They don’t deserve God’s love! They aren’t worthy of God’s blessing! They haven’t made the sacrifices for God that we have made! They haven’t kept all the rules as we have! They are not a good as we are!

Sensitively and profoundly aware of this human tendency even within the religious leaders, Jesus launches into three metaphors (three comparative figures of speech) expressing the tension between the old and the new, between the retreating and the emerging.  In the first two metaphors Jesus says that we can’t take his message of God’s limitless grace and try to fit it into the existing restrictive religious structure.

First, you don’t cut up a new shirt in order to sew a piece of the new shirt as a patch on an old shirt.  Jesus doesn’t come with the good news of God’s grace simply to have it cut up and patched into the old ways of Israel’s religion. That would be like a church calling a new pastor and telling her, “We are excited about your new ministry with us, but we only want you to do things that will fit what we are already doing.  We don’t want you to bring any changes; we only want you to fit what is already here.”

Second, you don’t put newly made wine into old wineskins.  Jesus, who brings the new wine of the good news of grace, needs new flexible wineskins to carry his new wine. Old wineskins are stiff and brittle and cannot expand with the fermenting new wine.  The old skins cannot hold the new spirit. It is the same problem as trying to put new computer software into old computer hardware.  The old limited hardware cannot run the new expanded software.  Jesus repeatedly calls for an openness to the new – the new way of doing things – God’s new way of doing things.
Think of where we would be today without openness to the new: Where would the medical profession be if it could use only medical practices and medicines acceptable 100 years ago?  Where would interstate commerce be if it could use only the means of transportation available 100 years ago? Where would information transmission be if it could use only the technology available 100 years ago?  Where would the church be if it could use only the models of worship and the understanding of human relationships and the styles of preaching and the Sunday school curriculum available and acceptable 100 years ago?  Forget 100 years agon, what about 20 years ago! As businesses cannot thrive and grow by using outdated methods, so churches cannot thrive and grow by using outdated methods.  As a living organism (rather than a static organization) the church must be flexible to adjust and adapt, to change and grow, or else it will be left behind by life’s advance; and it will die.

Jesus knew what every church leader knows: the scariest word for the church is the word “change”. Change is scary is because change is messy and unpredictable and disorienting. However, change is essential for growth, especially growth in God’s grace.  Speaking of the importance of change for the church, David Murrow writes in his book, Why Men Hate Going to Church:  Take an honest look at the thermostat in your church.  Are you taking risks as a church? Are your members challenging each other or comforting each other? How about you personally: Do you walk with God for adventure or security?  Do you pray for God’s will or God’s protection?  Do you embrace change or try to stop it?  If you want to see men (and young adults) back in church, begin moving the thermostat away from security toward challenge. (p. 22)

This doesn’t mean the church should advocate change simply for the sake of change. After all, we are part of an important spiritual tradition that values the past and builds upon it, but we do so without living in the past and being buried by it. Jesus never rejected faith’s tradition or abandoned faith’s roots.  He reinterpreted and re-energized faith’s tradition as he sought to liberate it from religion’s stranglehold.  As we build upon our tradition, we must be open to innovation.  With shirts and wineskins and the church, we must find ways for tradition and innovation, for the old and the new, for commitment and flexibility to go together.

III

This brings us to the third of Jesus’ metaphors. While “the new patch and old garment” and “the new wine and old wineskins” metaphors are present in Matthew’s and Mark’s gospels, only Luke includes these words by Jesus: “No one after drinking old wine desires new wine, but says, ‘The old is good (or better.)” I think there are two ways to understand this cryptic claim. First, Jesus knows what every wine drinker knows: old wine tastes better than new wine. But he also knows that the new wine is God’s future.  He doesn’t expect people, who have given their lives to one of doing things, to change easily, to accept new things readily or to be flexible willingly.  When you have an acquired taste for old wine in a bottle you are not likely to enjoy new wine in a box; and yet wine in a box may be God’s future for his church.

Again, the message is not change for the sake of change, not innovation so we can claim to be progressive and avant-garde.  The message is change for the sake of people, innovation in order to reach more people with the good news of God’s grace. Our present reflections upon change began with Jesus’ invitation to a person, a tax collector, someone the old system excluded.
Change within the church is always and only for the sake of reaching people with God’s life-changing grace.

The second meaning of Jesus’ third metaphor is that while old wines taste better than new wines, they are more expensive.  The poor and the outcasts to whom Jesus came to minister cannot afford the good old wine just as they did not fit into the good old way of doing religion.  Those who are privileged enough to be able to cultivate a taste for old wine do not want to try new wine.  Jesus came not for the privileged connoisseurs but for the un-privileged commoners.

What any church must ask itself is this: Do we pursue our styles of worship and ministry and mission because they are our preferred way of doing things, they fit our taste, or do we develop our worship and ministry and mission in ways that will reach new people with the message of God’s grace in Jesus? In other words, are we serving ourselves or are we serving others?

IV

What are we to do when our preference is for the good old wine in a bottle but when God’s future for the church just might be the cheaper new wine in a box? Old wine in a bottle is the luxury of some.  New wine in a box is the opportunity for all.  Faced with our limited tastes and our finite preferences established by our traditions and faced with God’s unlimited grace and God’s infinite love revealed in Jesus Christ, what is the church to do? We proceed from where we began, with simple yet essential advice:  

Be flexible. Be flexible in grace; be flexible by grace; be flexible for grace.

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