I, Wineskin: Part I

OK, so I lied. Well, at least I failed to live up to a well intentioned statement: I'm putting up another long, two part post. The following is the first half of a paper I wrote on the parable of the wineskins found in Luke 5 that I thought went well with the last post.

As you may have noticed (at least, I hope you've noticed), I've been stricken with and convicted by the topic of the Kingdom of God and how we, how I, am supposed to be living in light of it. I know that I haven't really delved into the "practicality" aspect of it yet, and I do plan to, but, first, I really want to lay a firm foundation of why I believe we need to discuss the practicality aspect of it. As I said in a previous post, I'm no longer content in my life to let eschatology be one of those things that "isn't really important" because "whatever's gonna' happen is gonna' happen." I believe the Scriptures show us that the Christian identity now is rooted in the fullness of the Kingdom to come, and all that we do must attend to both that identity and the Kingdom. In Luke 5, Christ likens that identity to a new wineskin. Also, I know I haven't really put up any "discussion starters" as of yet, but if you have a comment, a question, a complaint, whatever (about this or any other post), please, throw it out there. I don't begin to presume that I have it all right, and covet your points of view, unique wisdom, and am just generally curious as to what folks are thinking!

With that, here's my take on Luke 5....


It must have been quite the scene; as a tax collector, well, at least a former tax collector, with his stipend and all the “fringe benefits” of being a publican, Levi most likely had the resources to throw a good party. Good food, good drink, and a raucous crowd. And there He stood in the midst of them, with a few of His new fisherman friends, laughing and conversing. Yet, wasn’t this man was supposed to be a good Jew? Hasn’t He demonstrated the ability to heal and even claimed to be able to forgive sin? How could He be partaking of such a feast and associating with the likes of tax collectors? Hypocrite! Where was His respect for the Law, where was His piety? The Pharisees couldn’t believe what they were seeing, for they had never seen anything like it before. And, little did they know, that was precisely the point.

In an act of judgment, the Pharisees posed two questions to Christ at Levi’s feast. Actually, the first was to His disciples, but Christ stepped in and offered the answer. The first question, “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and ‘sinners’?”, was answered by Christ in that He said these were precisely the kinds of people that He came to save. The second question, which was more of an accusation really, received a much more involved answer, and it is that answer in which we are interested.

Let us look at the question: “John’s disciples often fast and pray, and so do the disciples of the Pharisees, but yours go on eating and drinking”, (Lk 5:33). The Pharisees and Scribes challenge Christ by comparing the behavior, the “righteousness” if you will, of His disciples to those of John the Baptist and, indeed, their own disciples. They had heard Christ pronounce the forgiveness of sin, they had seen Him make a paralyzed man walk, and now He has said He has come to save tax collectors and sinners; how can He do any of these if there are others that are more righteous than He that can not do them? How can He serve God if He does not keep God’s Law? From the very start, Christ’s answer contains language of newness, “Can you make the guests 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,” (5:34-35). In using marriage as the metaphor for His answer, Christ invokes the meaning of a new beginning; just as the friends of the bridegroom celebrate the imminent, new union to his bride, the disciples are celebrating the presence of Christ and His ministry. Christ continues answering the Pharisees with the first of two parables, that of a patch of new cloth. Here, He continues to invoke the image and feel of newness, and new quality. “No-one tears a patch from a new garment and sews it on an old one. If he does, he will have torn the new garment, and the patch from the new will not match the old,” (5:36). While the specific meaning of Christ’s example here is that a new piece of cloth has not been shrunk and the old has, and to put the new on the old, and then wear and wash it as normal, would cause the new cloth to shrink and tear the old again, resulting in the old cloth, the old garment being worse off than it was before it was patched, and the new garment also being ruined as it has had a patch cut from it, the general theme is the comparison of the old versus the new. Christ’s next parable will continue the conflict between old and new.

“And no-one pours new wine into old wineskins. If he does, 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,” (5:37-38). During the fermentation process, new wine releases gasses and needs room to expand; it requires a container that will stretch and adapt, one that will grow to contain the wine. As old wineskins have been through the process before, they have lost their elasticity and will not expand, rather would tear during the fermentation process resulting in both ruined skin and wasted wine. New wine skins, on the other hand, are fresh and pliable; they will stretch and expand, and accommodate the new wine. What Christ was saying is that something new, new wine, new cloth, a bridegroom, has come, and it requires room to grow, to be prepared. But what was Christ speaking of? What is the new wine? What are the new and old wineskins? What were the Pharisees and Scribes to understand from hearing these parables? To get a better idea of what Christ was saying, we must look at the place in the story where the well ordered, carefully investigated Luke places this parable. Starting at Levi’s party, we will go backwards.

Immediately preceding the account of his feast, Luke, in 5:27-28, records Levi’s calling to discipleship under Christ. There he was, sitting at his booth, and up comes Christ and speaks two simple words to him, “Follow me,” (5:27). And he did; Levi left everything and followed Christ; he abandoned the old and took on the new. Prior to calling Levi, Christ had forgiven the sins of the paralytic, as recorded in 5:17-26, and, in a confrontation with the Pharisees, made him able to walk. Another healing, that of a leper, is recorded in 5:12-26. In the section of Scripture preceding this account, Luke records yet another call to discipleship. Here, in 5:1-11, Christ calls the fishermen Peter, James, and John. In response, just like Luke would later say of Matthew, they, “ left everything and followed him,” (5:11). This brings us to the beginning of the chapter, However, we shouldn’t stop here; we must continue backward through the narrative to engage the full context of the wineskins parable in verses 37-39. A theme of “newness” stretches back from the parables of 5:33-39: new wineskins, new wine, new cloth, new disciples with new lives, new legs and new life for the paralytic as well as for the leper. All of these, like Levi, left the old and took on the new. We must continue backward through Luke’s Gospel to determine where this theme is introduced so that we may understand why it is there.

Chapter 4 of Luke, proceeding backward from the start of chapter 5, tells us that Christ was preaching the good news of the Kingdom in the Judean synagogues (4:42-44), and that He had cast out demons and healed the sick with new authority (“What is this word?” 4:36) (4:31-41). However, it is in the text preceding these accounts in which we see the introduction of the theme of newness. Luke 4:16-30 tells of Jesus in the synagogue in Nazareth. Here He reads from the Prophet Isaiah, announces its fulfillment on that day, and declares the inauguration of the Kingdom of God, a new Kingdom. Luke tells us in verse 16 of chapter 16 that “The Law and the Prophets were until John; since then the good news of the kingdom of God is preached…” (emphasis added). John preached of the coming of the new, and Christ actually brought it. This account defines the context of newness and qualifies the use of the theme in the following verses stretching to the parable of the wineskins in 5:37-39. Christ’s authority is new because it is seated in a new Kingdom; the leper and paralytic have new health and new spiritual quality because the power and authority of a new Kingdom has been exercised over them. The lives of the disciples are new because they are servants of a new Kingdom. Simply stated, the new Kingdom of God makes things new.