Looking Forward to January 27, 2019

The Scripture Reading this week is Mark 2:13-22. (or here is the passage as Eugene Peterson put it in the Message)

The Sermon title is New Wine

Early Thoughts: Do we want new containers? If we are honest do we really want new wine?

Some people fall easily into comfortable patterns. Most organizations do the same. And once we are in the comfortable new wine and new wineskins are sometimes a threat.

This, I think, underlies much of the conflict Jesus has with the Jewish leaders of his day. From dining with the unacceptable to not being ascetic enough, to proclaiming God's healing forgiveness in a much broader way than ever before Jesus upsets the comfortable pattern.

Do we want new wine?  Do we want our comfortable way of being to be challenged? I know that while there are days I would say yes to those questions there are far more days I would say most definitely NO.  And yet I almost always will say that maybe we need some of that disruption.

Jesus speaks of the dangers of trying to use old containers with new stuff (though personally I always use old scrap fabric when needing to patch something, why would I buy new cloth for such a thing). One of the realities is that our old containers were made to fit the old contents. Sometimes we just can't force new contents into that box. Maybe, like the cloak, the new just moves or adapts to the environment in a way the old can not. Maybe, like the wineskin, the new is still lively and growing or fermenting and expands beyond the old boundaries. Maybe the new is just of a totally different shape or nature and it is like the square peg for the round hole. It just won't work.

I think that sometimes we in the church get it wrong the other way too. I think sometimes we think up new forms and structures and think they will solve all our problems and yet we don't change the stuff inside. While it is too soon to say for certain, I suspect this is what we may find with the recent restructuring of the United Church of Canada. WE have shaken up the structure, but lots of people want the church to operate the same way. Where is the new wine for these new skins?

Jesus is about healing our dis-ease. WE need Jesus not because we are healthy but because we have dis-ease -- and sometimes we don't really want to be healed. Jesus is inviting us to celebrate because God is with us, and sometimes our ideas of what it means to be decent and orderly seem far from a celebration. Jesus is about transformation, about new things happening, about new growth springing from the old. WE need healing, we need to celebrate God's presence, we need to be transformed. We need new wine AND new wineskins.  ARe we ready?
--Gord