Bishop’s News - June 2024

Jesus 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. 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, ‘The old is better.’” [Luke 5:36-39]

This weekend past, I attended the Women’s Leadership Day in Palmerston North so wonderfully organised by Rev Annette Cater, Rev Wendy Scott and Ven. Julie Rokotakala. It was such a blessing to be there along with women leaders, lay and ordained, of many different contexts. And so much great soup!

 I shared with this group Luke 5:27-39, in which Jesus dines with the Pharisees at the house of Levi the tax collector and tells the parable of the old and new wineskins.

 Jesus changes everything, and change is at the heart of this passage. We see the Pharisees challenging Jesus over his disciples’ rhythms (or lack of) fasting and praying. Something new is happening, that the Pharisees don’t understand, but instead of genuine enquiry their response is one of comparison and judgement.

This passage is a reminder that to be part of the new thing that Jesus is doing, we must be willing to part with what we are familiar with. We see this at the beginning of the passage when Jesus calls Levi. Levi gets up, leaves everything and follows Jesus. He is willing to leave everything that is known, everything that is precious, everything that he has, to be part of God at work in the world. And as the world around us changes, we too will need to be people who are willing to leave the familiar for the unknown.

I chose Luke’s version of the story because it’s the only one with the obscure last line and I wanted to wrestle with it. “And no one after drinking old wine wants the new, for they say, ‘The old is better.” Is Jesus saying that old wine is better? I don’t think he is. I think he is speaking to our natural human tendency to prefer what we know. There is comfort for us in the familiar and the predictable. But whether we like it or not, things are changing around us.

It’s an important lesson to remember in our current context. I recently read a staggering prediction. According to futurist writer Ray Kurzweil when writing in 2005, the next century will hold the equivalent of 20,000 years of change. Whether the prediction is exaggerated or not, as we look across the world, we can see that things are changing rapidly. And this is where we, as Jesus’ disciples, find ourselves.

One of my prayers for myself, and for us as Movement, is that we would be people who are able to see clearly the movement of God, especially when it comes in ways that are unfamiliar to us. May we not miss out on being part of what God is doing.

We do not need to be afraid. God is faithful. God goes ahead of us. If we have faith to believe that to be true, then we will faithfully seek where God is already at work. And I think Jesus would implore us - based on his response to the Pharisees – that now is the time for us as Jesus’ disciples to fast and to pray. So that we remember not only that God is with us and that God has gone ahead of us but so that we might better see the transformative power of God at work, to see the Kingdom of God breaking through, and to participate in the new ways that God is entering history to bring about God’s redemptive work.