New Things: Mark 2:21-22
New things can be both exciting and scary. I remember driving for the first time – convinced someone was about to die yet thrilled at the control at my fingertips. I remember the first time I taught in a classroom or preached my first sermon – scared to death of saying something stupid in a public forum yet thrilled at the ability to impact people’s thinking. Walking down the aisle at my wedding was thrilling with respect to my future but scary with respect to the level of commitment I was making.
Jesus gives us two odd teachings about the old versus the new. He tells us that you don’t put a patch of new fabric among old fabric; neither do you put new wine in old wineskins. Putting new fabric among old fabric results in a tear as the new fabric shrinks and pulls away from the old fabric, ruining the patch. Placing new wine in old wineskins causes inflexible old wineskins to burst as it releases fermentation gasses still trapped within the wine, resulting in leaky wineskins. In either case, there are circumstances when new things and old things don’t work well together.
Jesus is making a very sharp and cutting point here. Jesus' disciples are being questioned about being different than other religious people. That makes sense, since Jesus is actively collecting disciples who aren’t typically on the list of likely candidates. Jesus didn’t come and mingle with the religious elite of the Hebrew people. Neither did Jesus come and claim John the Baptizer’s followers after His baptism. Jesus collected new disciples from the likes of fishermen and tax collectors.
Why would Jesus do this? Jesus is about to do something that nobody can see coming. Jesus came to earth to do something so incredibly unthinkable that even His hand-picked and personally trained disciples will be caught by surprise and struggle to keep up. Jesus certainly can’t rely upon the inflexible traditionalists and their fancy training. Had Jesus picked from among the likely candidates, they would reject His teaching because – like the patch of new fabric – it would constantly be diverging from traditional thinking and therefore constantly be pulling away from generations of teaching. Had Jesus picked from among the likely candidates, they would reject His teaching because – like the old wineskins – the pressure between traditional teaching and Jesus’ plan would be enormous, bursting the relationship between Jesus and His disciples.
Jesus needed to start fresh. Jesus needed to pick people with the potential for being deeply spiritual but who were not particularly trained. Jesus needed people who, like new fabric and new wineskins, were flexible enough to learn and grow and accept this new thing Jesus came to do. The crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension would be very new. Jesus needed people who weren’t afraid of the fact that new things can be both exciting and scary.
