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Sermon for Epiphany 8, Year B, 2000

St Mark's, Basking Ridge, NJ

Reading: Mark 2:18-22

Do you ever hear the readings on a Sunday
and wonder what on earth
the person was thinking
who put them together?

I certainly do, and not least
when they are readings like today's.
I struggled for a while
to try to find some connection between them,
and you are probably glad to hear
that I finally
gave up.
Sermons
are not the place
for complex
theological
contortions.

But sermons are a place
to think about faith,
to struggle with the texts
that are at the heart of what we believe
and which tell us
who it is
that we believe in. And so it is with this in mind
that I ask you to turn your minds with me
to the gospel reading for today.

The people are confused. Jesus has come home,
back to the region of Galilee
where he had grown up.
He's been away, no one's quite sure why.
To seek his fortune, some said.
Others, kinder of hearing, heard that he had gone to see his cousin John -
though there were strange rumors about him too.

But now he is home,
not in Nazareth this time, but not so far away
in Capernaum.
And as it always does, news travels fast,
and already
they knew all about him.
Somebody's uncle
remembered him as a child,
a little boy running round the streets with his friends,
mussed up hair, scraped knees, mischievous grin.
Someone else's cousin met him as a young man,
quietly participating in the life of the town,
caring for his widowed mother, looking out for his younger brothers,
all pretty much
like any one else.

But now he is back, and
the rumors are
that something is different.
There is a new light
in his eyes,
a new strength
in his voice.

When he stood up
in synagogue
to read the scriptures -
which he had been doing since he was twelve -
he spoke
with a new authority.
And no one is quite sure
what had happened.

And then there are
the rumors.
Everyone,
and no one,
has seen
the miracles.
Spirits
cast out,
a leper healed.
And sins
forgiven? That's what some people say,
though it is hard to find
an eyewitness
prepared to testify
to what had happened that day.
After all, who can know
if sins are forgiven?
That's God's business, and God's business
alone.
They could understand a religious conversion - they have seen those before.
A little odd, but nothing to be too worried about. But this
is somehow
different.
It doesn't follow
the usual pattern of
conversions.
No self sacrifice here, no life of denial like those disciples of John, with
their sackcloth shirts and desert diet.
Nor an obsession with the synagogue, a fanaticism about the law, like the
followers of the Pharisees, whose greatest grief was that they lived far
from the temple.
No, he's come back with a strange group of friends, fishermen, and tax
collectors, and, so they say, even a prostitute or too, and he spends his
days
fending off the crowds
and his nights
relaxing over dinner with his friends.

And so they ask him
what seems like a strange question to us, "Why is it
that
the followers of John and of the Pharisees
fast,
but your followers don't?"
And I wonder if that question
was not so much
about what Jesus was doing
eating,
as about what Jesus was doing
with his life.
Perhaps
what they really meant
was
"What has changed?
Where do you fit in?
Why are you different?
We don't
understand."

And Jesus answers them with three sayings, and I'm not sure that any of
them make real sense
without the others -
even though
at first glance
they seem to have nothing to do with each other.
For he talks about wedding feasts,
and old clothes,
and wineskins.

Wedding feasts
seem to be a great favorite
of Jesus.
Perhaps because
we all know that peculiar mix
of excitement and anticipation
and relief
that a wedding day brings -
whether our own
or that of a good friend.
And we could no more imagine
showing up at a wedding feast
and then refusing to eat
than...
Not only would it be bad manners,
but it would be denying the whole celebration.

Yes, says Jesus,
something has changed,
something is different,
and what it means
is that the old ways
aren't appropriate any more -
or not, at least
for the time being. Because the time will come
when things will change again,
and then a whole new set of rules
will apply.

But....

*****

And he moves to another picture,
doing repairs
to old clothes.

I don't know
a whole lot about repairing old clothes. It seems to me
they're either worn beyond repair, like my beloved jeans,
or, more often, they seem to have strangely shrunk,
so I give them away.
But one of the things I so in my so-called spare time
is quilting.
And when you do quilting, you learn pretty early on
that new fabric
shrinks. And it shrinks
in unpredictable ways.
You may think
you need a 2 inch square
to fit that part
of your quilt block,
but if you cut it out of nice crisp unwashed red fabric
and then sew it alongside
that lovely old plaid
you rescued from your grandmother's scrap basket,
the one you remember
was your grandfather's favorite shirt,
not only will the red fabric most likely bleed over everything else
the first time it is washed,
but sooner or later
it will pucker up
and pull at the seam,
and suddenly
there will be a hole.
Sometimes
when you put the new
and the old
alongside each other
they simply tear each other
apart.

Yes, says Jesus,
something has changed,
something is different.
Just pretending it hasn't
won't help us in the least -
it will tear us apart.
But there is a hole here,
and we need to do something about it.
Who will fill it?
Maybe, if we want to fill
that hole
we need to look deep,
deep into our traditions,
to see what might bring the cloak
new life.

But...

*****

I've had
a lot less experience
with wineskins
than with fabric.
I like a good red, but I'm quite happy
to leave it to others
to do
the bottling.
But I believe
that leather
can make a good bottle.
It won't break
when you drop it,
it won't let the wine
go bad.
And it's just flexible enough
to give a little
as the fermentation
causes the new wine
to swell
in volume.
Of course, after a while, the leather hardens,
and as the wine inside ages
it no longer needs
that same room to breathe.
But if you take
new wine, just beginning to ferment,
and put it in
one of those hardened old skins,
sooner or later
tiny bubbles will form,
and pressure will build,
until suddenly
it will explode,
and both the wineskin
and the wine
will be destroyed.

Yes, says Jesus,
something has changed,
something is different.
And if we just put the new
right in beside the old,
as if nothing had ever changed,
the new will be destroyed
and so will the old.

*****

When the people asked Jesus their question,
I suspect they weren't expecting
an answer like this.
Because it isn't easy, it isn't nice and neat.
Change
is really difficult - for everyone.
Jesus showed up at his own home town,
and no one knew
what to do.

Because his very presence
spoke to them
about change.
God was doing something new,
and they weren't sure
what to do about it.

His answer?
I suspect they thought
that it was no answer at all.
Celebrate
when God comes among you, he says. Celebrate,
even when God's coming
means something new.
There will be time enough
to mourn.
Celebrate,
but don't ignore the old ways.
Don't pretend
that change
is not painful,
that it might tear you apart at the seams.
Don't forget
the past,
don't just force what is new
into the structures of the old -
it will only cause them both to break.
For there is room, there is room for both.

And maybe, just maybe
Jesus' words
are for us too.

The new and the old.
They don't sit real easy
beside each other,
do they.

And its so easy for us
to resolve that tension
by taking just one
or
the other.

Some of us
have spent our lives
patching the old cloak,
preserving the old wineskins.
We fear
for the faith
of our children.
We want them to know
the same wonder, the same certainty
which we have known.
God has been faithful
in the past
and will be faithful
again.

Others of us
love new clothes
and new wine.
It's exciting to see
the new ways
which God is working,
ways
we could never have imagined.
God's creativity
astounds us.

And I think Jesus is saying,
there is a time
and a place
for us all.
We belong
together.

Our tradition
roots us deep and firm
in the faithfulness of God.
Our innovations
reflect the Spirit at work
in our lives today.
We need the old,
and the new.

But most of all
we need Christ, the one in whom
all things hold together
and have their being.

Look carefully. Look carefully
at what God is doing among us,
where God is working
in the lives around us.

Sometimes
when we look,
we will see people
of great faith,
who have struggled and prayed and stood firm
over decades,
whose faith is rooted deep
in the eternal being
of God.

Sometimes
when we look,
we will see people
of great faith,
who are just beginners, and yet
have a passion for life under God
which leads them into new places
into risks, and new ventures,
and astounding hope.

Look carefully,
and in one another see
the one
in whom
we find wholeness
and life,
and in whom
our faith
is grounded,
Jesus the Christ.

Raewynne J. Whiteley
27 February January, 2000