I don’t know much at all about wine. I think red wine goes with beef and white goes with chicken. I know that Two buck Chuck now costs more like four. David on Schitt’s Creek says that he likes the wine, and not the label. If I’m not careful, it is way too easy for me to drink way too much red wine. And all wine, along with other forms of alcohol, are potent—both joy-making and addictive.

I also know that wine containers have morphed over the years. In Jesus’ day it was kept in leather bags. Glass bottles with a cork became the mainstay for the longest time. And now wine at the store comes in bottles with corks or caps, in boxes and bags, and even aluminum cans. Wine has been around forever. The shape and makeup of the container is always changing. 

And this is a metaphor, Jesus says, for the message and makeup of the church. Jesus is new wine, and new wine always necessitates new containers, new ways to carry and distribute the message of God’s love and faithfulness. So today’s Will Preach for Food Podcast is entitled: “Uncorked,” based on a reading from Luke 5. I hope I am able to give you a taste of the richness and fullness of God’s amazing love. And I hope we can imagine new ways for each of us to be filled with, to carry, and to distribute God’s love to a thirsty and hurting world.

Open your Bible to Luke 5:27-39, and let’s pray:

Jesu, Jesu, fill us with your love, show us how to serve the neighbors we have in you. Amen

Luke 5:27-39

And a reading from the gospel of Luke, the fifth chapter, beginning at verse 27.

27 After this, Jesus went out and saw a tax collector by the name of Levi sitting at his tax booth. “Follow me,” Jesus said to him, 28 and Levi got up, left everything and followed him.

29 Then Levi held a great banquet for Jesus at his house, and a large crowd of tax collectors and others were eating with them. 30 But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law who belonged to their sect complained to his disciples, “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?”

31 Jesus answered them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. 32 I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”

33 They said to him, “John’s disciples often fast and pray, and so do the disciples of the Pharisees, but yours go on eating and drinking.”

34 Jesus answered, “Can you make the friends of the bridegroom fast while he is with them? 35 But the time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them; in those days they will fast.”

36 He told them this parable: “No 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. 37 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. 38 No, new wine must be poured into new wineskins. 39 And no one after drinking old wine wants the new, for they say, ‘The old is better.’”

The gospel of the Lord. Thanks be to God.