Daily Lesson for January 16, 2015

Today's daily lesson comes from Mark chapter 2 verses 20 through 22:

 20 The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast in that day. 21 No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. If he does, the patch tears away from it, the new from the old, and a worse tear is made. 22 And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the wine will burst the skins—and the wine is destroyed, and so are the skins. But new wine is for fresh wineskins.”

In the first church I pastored there were some old timers who were born in the early decades of the 1900s who when speaking about going to church called it, "Sunday go to meetin'".  The language sounded archaic, but was formed by strong theological conviction. They did not go to church because the church was not a building. The church was the people. The church went to the meeting house on Sundays - "Sunday go to meetin'".

Those old timers knew something that we would do well to understand today: There is a difference in form and substance; and if the form changed or was destroyed or had to be left behind the substance would still be there. 

We are mighty comfy with our forms. Jesus said that's why we can't give up an old coat - because its so comfy.  It conforms to us and we conform to it. And the same thing happens with our pew, and our practices, and our ways of thinking.

But at some point in life we are all called to get out of our comfort zones, to take off our old coats, to leave the old meeting house, and to begin to think anew. This is the literal meaning of the Greek word for "repentance".  "Metanoia" literally means to "think again".

To be eternally bound to old forms is to be stuck in the past and stagnant in the future. Preservation of the form becomes the end all be all. So rituals become unintelligible, structures inevitable, church buildings museums - devoid of the real church, people.

The church has to be ready to think anew when it goes to meetin'.  We have to be ready for the new thing God is doing, and open ourselves to new forms for it to be done.

For as Jesus said, "New wine cannot be poured into old wineskins because the old skins will break and both the skins and the wine be lost."

Busting an old wineskin can be irksome and exasperating; but it is not a tragedy. The real tragedy is doing everything we can to preserve the old wineskin but having nothing of substance worth serving.