Daily Lesson for October 7, 2015

Today's Daily Lesson comes from Matthew chapter 9 verses 16 and 17:

16 No one puts a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, for the patch tears away from the garment, and a worse tear is made. 17 Neither is new wine put into old wineskins. If it is, the skins burst and the wine is spilled and the skins are destroyed. But new wine is put into fresh wineskins, and so both are preserved.”

This is a lesson for leaders of churches and other organizations and businesses and their reformers.

We always have reformers among us -- people who have a gift for dreaming and putting together new things. The status quo is never sufficient for reformers. Jesus himself was a reformer.

The problem reformers sometimes have, however, is that while the vision they bring requires an altogether new organization to accomplish it, what they either choose or are forced to do is to try to fit the new dream into the old structure.  They are trying to put the proverbial new wine into old wineskins and the results are predictable.

But in fact, it isn't always quite that obvious. Actually, Jesus' other metaphor in today's lesson is actually more common. The garment (church, organization, business) is torn -- always. Reformers who don't yet see themselves as reformers come offering to fix the garment, but what they bring is new cloth (ideas) not shrunk to fit (this particular time, place, and people and their history).  After not very long the new cloth (reformers and their followers) begins to tear away from the old garment (church, organization, business) and a worse tear (disaffection, dissension, struggle for power) is made.

Two questions reformers would do well to ask themselves: 1. Is the wine we bring so new and so strong that new wineskins are inevitable? Or, 2. Are we willing to be shrunk to fit and mend the frays and holes in the old garment?

Deciding on this first will spare a lot of old, but still salvageable garments and a whole lot of good wine.