The Trump Card

Next Sunday's text is: Luke 5:33-39

³³ They said to him, “John’s disciples often fast and pray, and so do the disciples of the Pharisees, but yours go on eating and drinking.”³⁴ Jesus answered, “Can you make the friends of the bridegroom fast while he is with them? ³⁵ But the time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them; in those days they will fast.”³⁶ He told them this parable: “No one tears a piece out of a new garment to patch an old one. If they do, they will have torn the new garment, and the patch from the new will not match the old. ³⁷ And people do not pour new wine into old wineskins. If they do, the new wine will burst the skins; the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. ³⁸ No, new wine must be poured into new wineskins. ³⁹ And none of you, after drinking old wine, wants the new, for you say, ‘The old is better.’”

I wonder how you've heard this text used?  I sometimes think of it as "a trump card" played by folks who want to do something new in the church and just need everyone else to "get over it" so that they can do as they'd like. The North American mentality (call it consumerism, individualism, what-have-you) makes scanty room for repetition, for the wisdom of old-ness or decisions influenced by anything other than flash & jazz hands.  It is certainly a frustrating tendency in the church and in worship.  

Too many babies done got thrown out with some arguably tepid & grey bathwater.

Is this what Jesus' intended with this parable?  Is Jesus an advocate for new and relevant?  

Well now, I don't think Jesus is OPPOSED to new and relevant.  I just don't think of Jesus as American enough to swoon over such things. And I definitely think that co-opting this text for that purpose is a distortion of Scripture and skews our view of the rest of Jesus' ministry.  So that's a problem.

Rather than fleshing the parable out this way:

new = rockin' drum set & old = dumb pipe organ

new = movie clips in church & old = preacher's dry/dusty 3 point outline

What if a more faithful rendition starts with this premise:

old = "earthly nature" & new = "Christ in you, the hope of glory." 

old = "old ways, the life you once lived" 

& new = "new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator"

(All language from Col. 3, by the way)

'Cause now, see, I think we've got ourselves a ball game.  

Or at least a sermon:

We are not in the business of patching together old lives with scraps of Jesus.

We are in the business of being clothed in the new life of Christ.