A WORD FOR TODAY, April 13, 2023
Peggy Hoppes
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Blessings. Peg
A WORD FOR TODAY, April 13, 2023
“Jesus said to them, ‘Can the friends of the bridegroom mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? But the days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them, and then they will fast. 16 No one puts a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment; for the patch would tear away from the garment, and a worse hole is made. 17 Neither do people put new wine into old wine skins, or else the skins would burst, and the wine be spilled, and the skins ruined. No, they put new wine into fresh wine skins, and both are preserved.’” Matthew 9:15-17, WEB
I recently read this quote from N. T. Wright, and thought it was worth our consideration. “In particular, if Lent is a time to give things up, Easter ought to be a time to take things up. Champagne for breakfast again — well, of course. Christian holiness was never meant to be merely negative. Of course you have to weed the garden from time to time; sometimes the ground ivy may need serious digging before you can get it out. That’s Lent for you. But you don’t want simply to turn the garden back into a neat bed of blank earth. Easter is the time to sow new seeds and to plant out a few cuttings. If Calvary means putting to death things in your life that need killing off if you are to flourish as a Christian and as a truly human being, then Easter should mean planting, watering, and training up things in your life (personal and corporate) that ought to be blossoming, filling the garden with color and perfume, and in due course bearing fruit. The forty days of the Easter season, until the ascension, ought to be a time to balance out Lent by taking something up, some new task or venture, something wholesome and fruitful and outgoing and self-giving. You may be able to do it only for six weeks, just as you may be able to go without beer or tobacco only for the six weeks of Lent. But if you really make a start on it, it might give you a sniff of new possibilities, new hopes, new ventures you never dreamed of. It might bring something of Easter into your innermost life. It might help you wake up in a whole new way. And that’s what Easter is all about.”
We talk about fasting at the beginning of Lent. “What are you giving up?” we ask one another. In recent years, however, many people talk about taking up something new in Lent. I read a devotional and did a photo challenge. Some people suggested filling a bag with items to give away or collecting food to donate to the food bank. These additional Lent practices are valuable, but only if they don’t replace the practice of fasting. See, as Wright suggests in this quote, Lent practices are meant to kill off the things that we need to cleanse from our life. I suppose those practices like filling bags to donate is a way of purging the “stuff” that burdens us, but I think sometimes we use this idea of taking up practices as a cop-out so that we don’t have to fast. However, we don’t benefit from the fast if we don’t fast. I have to confess that I took on so much that I didn’t accomplish everything. Perhaps I need to take those practices I did not finish and work on them in this season of Easter.
Unlike the patches and wineskins in today’s passage, the old ways are not always bad. The new ways aren’t always bad, either. I like taking on Lenten devotions and photo challenges, but they should not replace the old practices of fasting.
Matthew spoke these words in response to questions about how to live this new faith in the old ways. They wanted to know why the Pharisees fast but Jesus’ disciples did not. Jesus said that you should not mix the old with the new. The garment and wineskin in today’s passage is old. Putting a new patch on the cloth will destroy the garment because the two fabrics will not wear well together. The patch will shrink with the first wash and rip the old cloth. The new wine will expand in an already stretched wineskin and cause it to break. In both these cases, it might seem like good sense to reuse the old, but in the end it will be a waste.
Jesus was doing a new thing; it was time to worship God in a new way. Jesus was not suggesting that we should never fast or give up the old ways completely. But He reminds us that each has its own place in our lives. The old and the new provide ways for us to grow in our faith; fasting helps us prepare for Jesus’ passion, and Easter is an opportunity for new growth. We just have to figure out how to do what is best, that which will benefit us at the right time in the right season.
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