SOMETHING OLD — SOMETHING NEW

October 27, 1985, 11:00 a.m. Worship Service.
John M. Buchanan..
Fourth Presbyterian Church, Chicago

"No. one puts new. wine in old wineskins; if he does the wine —
will. burst..the skins, and the-wine: is: lost., !-- Mark 2:22 (RSV)

Scripture

Isaiah 43:14-21

Mark 2:18-22
* : “ : ; oe
Do you remember the marvelous moment in "Fiddler on the Roof" when Lev Tevye
sings --."Tradition, tradition: who, day and night, must scramble: fora’
living?. Feed a wife and children, say his daily prayers? And ‘who has the
right as master of the house, to have the final word at home? The papa...
Tradition... © Who. must know the way. to make a proper home, a quiet home,
a kosher home?» Who must raise’a family and run the home so papa's ‘free’ to
read the Holy Book? The.mama... Tradition," a ;

Tevye has his problems with the impulse to change the traditions around which
his life is organized. Bap De _ : ae

Institutions resist change. So do people. My father was a railroader anda
teller of good stories. One of my favorites was about the: fireman with whon
he worked and who, everyday at noon, opened his lunch pail and complained about
its contents...everyday it was the same thing; a-bologna sandwich. .he didn't
even like bologna, hated its look and smell and taste, One day ny father, or
so the story went, gently suggested that he might speak with his wife about
this matter and tell her his feelings about bologna sandwiches. Whereupon

the fireman became indignant: told my father to mind his own business. He
wasn't married...had been making his own lunches for years.

People resist change. So do institutions. Tradition becomes entrenched.
People organize their behavior on the basis of customs long after the original .
reason has been forgotten. Sometimes people die for the traditions without
ever raising the issue of their viability, their appropriateness. And in
every age, to ask the question, to raise the issue, to press the human com-
munity to move beyond its traditions is to engage in very risky business.

A columnist wrote recently in The New Yorker: "I'm becoming convinced that |
change is obviously the most basic dynamic in our universe. Kant talks about
time and space as pre-existing categories...and I'd consider change: in that
same light. That's obvious. What's not so understandable is how much intel-
lectual energy we waste by trying to avoid the fact." (Artist Robert Irwin
in The New Yorker, 9/30/85, p.28)

In the fourth decade of the first century of the first millennium of our era
there were living a people of tradition at the eastern end of the Mediterranean.

-2-

They believed that their existence in that time was attributable to their
tenacious hold on their traditions. As their political existence as a people
became more and more fragile, their hold on their traditions became more deter-
mined, unyielding, unchanging. One of them, one who loved the traditions,
challenged that dynamic. He taught. that the most important tradition, the

most: elemental organizing principle was the love of the living God who had
called them into being, led-them out of captivity and given them their land.

And. when he-had the audacity.to invoke that living God's love to challenge

the desperate hold his people exerted on the tradition, he found himself crit-
icized, villified, despised, arrested, and executed. That is the theme of the
first accounting of his life to have been written, the Gospel according to Mark.
A record of mounting conflict between Jesus and the guardians of cultural and
religious tradition which results in his crucifixion. The theme is as relevant -
as today's newspaper.

The. Law of Moses prescribed fasting on one day of the year, the Day of Atone-
ment. In Jesus's day the tradition was for the very pious to fast much more
frequently than that. In fact, the most devout were fasting twice a week.
Among the more rigorous fasters were the disciples of John the Baptist and
the Pharisees. One day, one of them raised a question: “Why are the Pharisees
and the disciples of John the Baptist fasting, Jesus, but your disciples are
not?" On another occasion they would ask him why his disciples ate with
unwashed hands, why he broke bread with sinners, why they flouted the Sabbath
customs. All of it is variation on a very familiar theme: "By what right,
or what authority, do you question and break the tradition?"

That is the situation to which Jesus addressed three marvelous little parables:
~ People don't fast. when the bridegroom is present,

~ It is not a good idea to patch an old garment with a piece
of new cloth.

- You don't pour new wine into old wineskins.

The first of those parables tells us a lot about Jesus's own religious style.
The sense of it is that religious tradition had become grim, determined, joy-
less obligation. Jesus suggested that God's love for his people is a very
happy.phenomenon: that if you know how good. the news is, your ‘religious
observances are going to look and feel like a party, a real celebration,
something of what those who were privileged to be in this sanctuary last .
Sunday night experienced when the Apostolic Church of God Choir presented its

concert. :

_ In the second and third parables, Jesus said something very provocative about
the new and the old, about new truth confronting traditional customs.

These are homey vignettes. He had watched his mother patching his own garments.
She had told him that if you want to patch a hole in an old and venerable pair
of britches, you must use old cloth. If new material is used, it will shrink
when the garment is washed, and the original tear will be bigger,

~3-

He had seen how wine was stored. The fermentation process continued after
the wine was. declared suitable. One of the products of. that process is ‘gas. -
If. you put. new wine into containers that are not elastic, the pressure will
cause them to break. One can almost imagine the ‘childhood excitement when a
wineskin exploded at an inopportune moment. New wine is placed in new-skins,
Old wine is kept in old skins.

Jesus was telling his people that their traditions had become-too. important,
The wineskins, after all, exist for the sake of the wine. The wine is ‘what
you want to. preserve and protect. In religion, it: is Cod: God's love and
will, God's truth and-God's moral imperatives that matter, not: -the: particular
forms in which people respond to and express themselves on the subject. ©The
Pharisees in the first. century had forgotten that. The customs and rituals
and traditions of religion had become more important. than the will. of God.
Religion had become an end in itself,

The word of God here is clear... The Gospel of Jesus Christ is dynamic, alive,
It cannot and will not be contained in anybody's favorite customs and traditions. ~~
The Gospel transcends the very religious forms it inspires: _it measures and ,
judges the structure and traditions people devise to express it. Therefore,
the Gospel is always slightly at war with institutional religion, for it: is

the very nature of institutions to want to nail down once and for all.that
which cannot be nailed down permanently. The Gospel judges us when our
loyalty to Protestantism or Catholicism or Presbyterianism or Lutheranism
becomes. more. important to us than our loyalty.to Jesus Christ... Jesus. bécomes
judge when our commitment to the: forms, the traditions, becomes synonymous with
or a substitute for. our commitment to him: .

This is Reformation Sunday. . On October 31, 1517 an Augustinian Friar by the
mame of Martin Luther nailed 95 theses to a church door in Wittenberg, Germany,
and tn the process of starting the Reformation, reminded the whole church
that the truth it celebrates is bigger than its institutional expression:

that the church is charged to express that truth -in ways which. are. relevant

im each new age: that the church is inclined: to confuse the wine with the
wineskin, and to make itself, its traditions, .the object of its veneration

and adoration. The spirit of the Reformation is reformation, a:dynamic
principle which suggests that God's people in every age are responsible for
re-forming the church. /

Once that principle got loose on the world, once both Prestant and Catholic
cultures began to feel the effect’ of God's liberating, recreating love, the
impact was enormous. Even secular historians tip their hats to the lively

periods known as Reformation and Counter Reformation. . Professor Jaroslav

Palikan of Yale University, in a-new book on the subject of Jesus's impact

on the history of cultures, notes: : : :

"The Reformation enriched ail areas of culture,, literature, art..-
‘and music ~- and on the other hand...the political order." (Jesus
Through the Centuries, P150).

Western culture and western civilization were profoundly changed bythe
Reformation: art, literature, language, education, economics and political
philosophy -- all were reformed and reshaped once the old traditions were

challenged.

- Part of the word here is that the lively Gospel of God will be in tension
with the traditions of the culture. In Calvin's Geneva, centuries of
tradition were overturned in the political arena and the results included
“public education, child labor laws and a dynamic and revolutionary rationale
for representative rule. By challenging old traditious of power and privilege,
rank and status, the Gospel -- through the incisive logic of John Calvin --
would stimulate the development of new ideas — and a new system -- called
republican democracy. coe

Several centuries later the Gospel began to challenge traditional ways of
thinking about slavery, about the:reles of men and women, and today. much of
the persistent ferment for new ways of thinking about human rights, hunger,
peace are coming at the insistence of peoples who know something of the
lively power of the Gospel.

The world needs that, and we who are the stewards of the Gospel need to
remember that it is the nature of the Gospel, even though it is always an
irritant. Roman Catholic theologian Matthew Fox observes: "The capitalist-—
socialist debate pales before the survival issues that the global village
faces. today, and heated rhetoric from either camp only makes the situation
less open to creative solution...a new kind of economics and a new kind of
social linkage are necessary." (A Spirituality Called Compassion, P179)

The political leaders of the world gathered in New York this week to celebrate
the 40th: anniversary of the founding of the U.N. The fact that the celebration
took place: that heads of. state, who in their respective capitals plot one
another's demise, sat down together, broke bread, and talked, is cause for
hope. The sobering reality is the traditions of nationalism, racism, pride,
imperialism:: the tradition of war which has been expressed 130 times since
1945, and the 16 million people who have-died because the human tradition

of solving problems by force is stronger than any other tradition.

With customary directness Norman Cousins notes that our number one problem in
the world is that the richest, most powerful nations are using most of their
resources preparing to destroy one another. Our number two problem is that
our best: minds aren't working on our number one problem,

The Gospel is new wine. The hardened, brittle traditions of religion and
culture could not contain it. It found -- it created -~- new forms, new
religious traditions, new cultures. And yet it is an oversimplification

to characterize Jesus as. an iconoclast. He was not the enemy of all tradi-
tion. There is no evidence that: it ever occured’ to him to withdraw from

the Judaic tradition into which he was born. In Luke's version of our text
there is an intriguing additional sentence. In addition to the warning about
the new wine and old skins, Luke reports Jesus saying: "No one after drinking
old wine desires new: for he says, 'the old is good'.” That sheds a whole
new light onthe matter. Some scholars suggest that by the time Luke got
around to writing his Gospel, three or four decades after Mark, the Christian
‘community already had developed its own traditions, and the Gospel was already
fermenting, disturbing, causing conflict. Luke, the argument goes, added this
‘statement to soothe: the early Christian traditionalists. I prefer to assume

-5-

Jesus said it. You don't put: new wine in old skins. But that fact deesn't
alter another fact which everybody knows, namely: that old wine is superior to
new wine, Just because the old containers have lost elasticity doesn't mean
they are worthless. In fact, then their purpose is important. They are what
you store oid wine in until you need it for an important occasion,

The opposite of a culture imprisoned in its own tradition is one floating
around loose, with no roots. .-In one of his: delightful essays, the late.

E. B. White, whe died just a-few weeks ago, discusses the relative merits

of the wood stove and the electric range in ‘his Maine: farmhouse, He writes:
"Many of the commonest assumptions, it seems to me, are arbitrary ones: that
the new is better than the old, the untried superior to the tried, the com-
plex more advantageous than the simple, the fast quicker than’ the slow, the
big greater than the small, and the world as remodeled by Man the Architect
functionally sounder and more agreeable than the world as it was before he
changed everything to suit his vogues and conniptions...if we had to decide...
we would choose the wood stove...because of the: quality of its heat, the scope
of its talents, the warmth of its nature. (It can dry. sneakers, warm the dog,
and it makes a companionable sound on cold mornings) .' {Essays of E..B. White,
Coon Tree, p.40)

Jesus was no simple revolutionary. The opposite of a | religion entrapped. in
its own rituals and traditions is. one‘which acknowledges no past, celebrates.
no history and therefore has no more vitality. than.a bunch of cut flowers --
colorful, flashy, short. term. Sociologists worry that. a generation obsessed
with instant gratification will forget that humanity does continue to learn
down through the generations, that truth is sometimes handed from one to the
next, Jesus did not advise discarding the old wineskins,.-He did not deny
his own history... He: simply taught: that the containers sometimes become more

important : than what they contains

/ on Reformation Sunday, 1985, it is ‘appropriate to “acknowledge that: the Christian
church isin the middle of a very critical period. A barrage of media articles
and documentaries: point to the decline of what was once "Mainline Protestantism"
and:the vigor of new religious organizations; the phenomenon ofthe electric
church, and.the continuing secularization. of the culture itself. In the middle
of that, the. human propensity is to hold-on tothe past’ for dear: life, and in

. the process to allow the wineskin to replace the new wine of the Gospel.

Someone characterized the church as an institution "driving blindly into the
future with its eyes locked on the rear view mirror." Martin Marty once quipped
that "The Seven Last Words of the Church" will be ~-.'We never did it that way
before" -Elsewhere Marty wrote: "I believe this thesis to be defensible, that
ordinarily Christian people produce institutional: forms in-each century which
are well adapted to the needs and occasions of the last century." (What's
Ahead for the Church, p-1l) :

The result is that fewer and fewer people expect the church to be relevant.
Religion is regarded as antiquarian, curator of the customs of the past,
having no connection with the daily activity, the struggling and working
and playing and laughing and weeping and loving that constitute life for

~6-

most of us. Churches become museums in this world, not just because hostile cot
governments make thea into museums but because nothing that goes on in them
has to do with what is going on outside them, .

‘he church cannot afford to look back. A new and sometimes frightening world
requires a faith big enough and secure enough to be fresh, innovative, relevant —
to ask the embarrassing questions, to be a fly in the ointment, to challenge the. .
Status quo.to defend -itself.---without denying the validity and nobility of its
past. We deny our Lord and we miss the power of the Gospel to change the world,
and to change us, when we insist that the wineskins are sacred, that our way
is the once-and-for-all-way, that whatever else changes around us, we will nor. |
As. I prepared this sermon I kept recalling the words of a fine old hymn. I
looked up the poem upon which it is based; This Present Crisis, James Russell

~ Lowell, 1844. Lowell felt like his world was coming apart...he wrote:

"New occasions. teach: new duties;

Time makes ancient good uncouth.

They: must upward still, and onward, who
would keep abreast of truth;

Lo, before us gleam her campfires! We
ourselves must Pilgrims be,

Launch our Mayflower, and steer boldly
through the desperate winter sea,

Nor attempt the Future's portal with the
Past's blood rusted key."

(Complete Poetical Works, James Russell Lowell, pp. 67-68)

"No one puts new wine into old wineskins..." The word here comes personally

too. In a sense it is easier to read it and hear it and preach it corporately.
But it addresses the soul of the individual as well as the soul of the church.
The word is for you and for me. It is, as always, judgment but also grace.

It is, as always, the stirring challenge of the Lord Christ to let go of a past
that needs to be discarded, and to cast one's life, one's hopes and dreams and
aspirations, one's future on him and his Kingdom. It is also, as always, the
graceful bidding to find our security in him instead of customs, behavior pattern:
traditions which have outlived their relevance and their usefulness to us.

The word here is that God is ready to do new things with your life: that you
and I need to be prepared to be changed as individuals in relationship to this
Christ. The word here is that we do not have to be limited by past structures,
by traditional patterns of behavior. The propensity of the Gospel is to do,
in our lives, precisely what Jesus did in the life of his culture: challenge,
confront, change. You and I can become new.

In Jesus Christ, God is willing to forgive what is past: to free us from the
dead weight of guilt. In Christ, God will make all things new -- will give
us strength to be free of the dead weight of inertia, the patterns, the ideas,
the traditions which have become inflexible in our most personal lives.

Who among us doesn't need that? Who among us hasn't accumulated personal
traditions which have become petrified and inflexible? Who among us does
mot need the liberating, graceful power of Christ to start something anew,
to begin afresh, to strike out on some new and noble venture?

In Jesus Christ, God has called us. The call is an invitation to follow:
to think new thoughts, to walk new roads, to become a new person, The
Promise is that into the old facade of our lives God will pour something
new and exciting and fresh. It is called our salvation.

Amen