New wineskins
Luke 5 is one of those chapters that has a lot going on. Tired fishermen go fishing again and catch what they never expected. The Holy One touches and heals an unclean leper. A man who couldn’t walk runs in newfound forgiveness and leaves religious people debating whether that kind of stuff was even allowed under the Law.
Not one to back down from conflict, Jesus then went on to choose a hated tax-collector as one of his followers and challenged the prevailing wisdom on when, why, and how to fast. This Jesus probably isn’t the one we remember from Sunday School. From what I can recall, there wasn’t a lot of talk about the Disrupter in those spaces. That hour seemed to be reserved for the polite Jesus, the one who received little children and spoke of turning the other cheek. Make no mistake, he did those things, but he also came to disrupt the way we things were done, and Luke 5 is a perfect picture of that Jesus.
It’s at the end of this chapter that we find a passage that you have probably heard before. As with all scriptures that we’ve heard so often, it’s easier to allow our attention to be drawn to what we’ve always seen instead of leaning into the new thing Jesus is trying to show us. Let’s lean in.
“And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. For the new wine would burst the wineskins, spilling the wine and ruining the skins. New wine must be stored in new wineskins. But no one who drinks the old wine seems to want the new wine. ‘The old is just fine,’ they say.” (Luke 5:37-39 NLT, emphasis mine)
Because I cut my redeemed teeth in Pentecostal churches, the focus when these verses were read was almost always been on the wine. People would flood the altars and pray, cry, almost beg God for new wine, which meant a new move of the Holy Spirit. Not a bad prayer, right? It just missed the point that Jesus said he would never pour that new wine into old wineskins.
“New wine must be stored in new wineskins.” So much of our Christian experience results in frustration simply because we’ve asked God for the wrong thing, or at least for the right thing in the wrong order. We want to experience the new wine and yet keep our old wineskins. We ask God to stretch us out of our comfort zones, and yet God wants us to experience a new way of doing things that, while feeling different, isn’t unnatural. Can you imagine a day when you and I wouldn’t have to work up the courage to talk about the good news of Jesus with a friend? A day when talking about the good things Jesus has done for us was as normal as talking about the good meal we ate the night before?
That’s what can happen when we receive the new wineskin. The skin that is flexible and pliable, skin that can breathe and move with the wine that is poured into it. And who wouldn’t want to live a life molded in that way by the Spirit?
Apparently, according to Jesus, anyone who keeps drinking the old wine. The people who are content with the way things are, who see all the new ways that God wants to move in our world today and would rather stick with what they know has been good enough before instead of what will be better than they could ask or imagine now. “The old is fine,” they say.
[Tweet “Faced with something new, many would rather stick with what they know has been good enough before instead of what will be better than they could ask or imagine now.”]May that not be true of you and me. Lord, give us the new wineskins we need for the new wine that you want to give.
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Oh wow. I grew up in church with an organist mom. I’ve been in Presbyterian, Methodist, Baptist, Pentecostal, and non-denominational. I have heard the wine skin verses many many times but never had it spoken as clearly as right here. Thank you Paul, for this word.
God’s good, Michael!