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They said to him, \u201cJohn\u2019s disciples often fast and pray, and so do the disciples of the Pharisees, but yours go on eating and drinking.\u201d \xa0Jesus answered, \u201cCan you make the friends of the bridegroom fast while he is with them? But the time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them; in those days they will fast.\u201d He told them this parable: \u201cNo one tears a piece out of a new garment to patch an old one. Otherwise, they will have torn the new garment, and the patch from the new will not match the old. And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the new wine will burst the skins; the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, new wine must be poured into new wineskins. And no one after drinking old wine wants the new, for they say, \u2018The old is better.\u2019\u201d (Luke 5:33-39)

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I have to think of this past Sunday\u2019s sermon when I read this text from Luke.\xa0

The coming of Jesus is another one of those watershed moments: another shifting of the ages in terms of how God deals with his people. \xa0In 1 Samuel it\u2019s the shift from the tribal, nomadic time of the Judges to the more established nationalistic time of the Kings.\xa0 Here it is the shift from the Old Testament to the New, from Judaism to Christianity, from the Old Israel to the New Israel, from law to grace, from the time of prophets, priests, and kings to the time of Jesus who fulfilled them all.

New wine requires new wine skins and new cloth cannot be sown on old, because both of these new things are still, as preacher Fred Craddock says: \u201calive, changing, not fixed in form or size, and therefore\u2026 not to be treated as thought they were dead\u201d and rigid.\xa0 So it was with the new revelation of Jesus.\xa0 Jesus represented a significant shift of the ages that would burst the old forms if those old forms attempted to contain him.\xa0 Indeed, they could not.\xa0 The new revelation of Jesus required new forms.\xa0 No longer a Temple, but a living body of people called a church, for instance.\xa0

We often act as though this was the last shift point of the ages.\xa0 The revelation of Jesus was the final chapter in God\u2019s work in the world, we think.\xa0 But if God remains a living and active God, sovereign in all his ways: why should his work cease?\xa0 By thinking of ourselves as Reformed Christians, we implicitly confirm that God does do new things that require new forms: like the creation of an entirely new branch of Christianity that calls itself Protestantism nearly 500 years ago.\xa0

But having tasted the old and familiar: who wants to drink the new?\xa0 We resist new movements of the Holy Spirit.\xa0 We pray to Jesus for stability, comfort, and peace: not for change.\xa0 What God has given us has suited just fine up until now, why should it be different?\xa0

It is a hard thing to discern the times and to discern the sovereign movements of the Spirit of God.\xa0 When are we supposed to reach for the good old vintages of wine, and when ought we be readying new wine skins?\xa0

It seems Jesus addresses that conundrum here too.\xa0 John\u2019s disciples took the old forms: fasting and praying as was the tradition of many within the observant Jewish faith of that day.\xa0 But Jesus\u2019 disciples took the new\u2014feasting and drinking freely.\xa0 Jesus doesn\u2019t answer the question between these two forms with any hard and fast rules, but rather suggests that there is a seasonality and a wise discernment needed here.\xa0 A time to feast and a time to fast. \xa0A time for joy and a time for sorrow. \xa0A time for tradition and a time for innovation.\xa0

The question Jesus leaves with us then, is what time is it now? \xa0It\u2019s a question the church\u2014Reformed-and-always-Reforming\u2014must always wrestle with.

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