January 16, Monday

 

Mark 2:21-22

 ‘No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old cloak; otherwise, the patch pulls away from it, the new from the old, and a worse tear is made. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and the wine is lost, and so are the skins; but one puts new wine into fresh wineskins.’

Right now the daily Eucharistic lectionaries and the daily office readings are both beginning Mark, so there's a lot of overlap.  This is the second time I've read this in a week, and it seems fitting for the beginning of the year.  Each time I read it I wonder, what if you put old wine in new skins?  But I know that's not important.

Paul describes Christianity as a graft onto the root of Israel.  Luke and Matthew go to pains to demonstrate that the movement is in fact "old," because in the Roman worldview old was good.  But here Jesus seems to question that.  How does his message fit with what has gone before?  And how does the message we receive today fit with what previous generations thought and did?  In our world, where new is often privileged over old, we still expect our churches to be what they were 50, 100, 1000 years ago.  How do we blend the old and the new?

We say that the Companions are standing at the border between what has been and what is emerging, weaving a new tapestry out of old and new threads.  But that is tricky business, as Jesus says.  The old threads are heavy and solid, sometimes encrusted with layers of grime and assumption.  The new ones are beautiful and shiny, and untried.  Their strength hasn't yet been tested.  I'm reminded that we need to "shrink" the new threads a bit before weaving them with the old.  Here at CMA we experiment a lot.  We have designed a formation process, we have a covenant and a rule, but they are constantly being evaluated rather than simply followed.  And we ourselves are being shrunk (not so much soaked in wine, except metaphorically!).  We are being grafted into the larger body of Christ, bit by bit.

This calls for discernment, and obedience.  Obedience is listening to God, listening to one another.  It requires us to detach from our views and desires enough to see how God is actually moving, whether our way is the right way for that moment, and to let go if needed.  It means honoring the "old cloth" while we are weaving something new.  And, to use Jesus' other metaphor, if means having patience to let the new wine start to mature and show its flavor.

Where is the cloth, or the wine, of your life today?  What is needed from you in this area?