Word to the Wise
Saturday, July 2, 2016 - Saturday in the 13th Week in Ordinary Time
[Amos 9:11-15 and Matt 9:14-17]"People do not put new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise the skins burst, the wine spills out, and the skins are ruined. Rather, they pour new wine into fresh winseskins, and both are preserved." [Matthew]
One of the pleasant surprises of moving out to the city of Lubbock, TX, in West Texas, is that it is in the middle of a wine territory. In fact, one of the major wine festivals of the state takes place just south of here and some parishioners in our university parish are grape growers. In a state that is better known for growing cattle and cotton and oil wells, a wine industry is indeed a surprise. It does provide local support for Jesus' image of the new wine and the matter of wineskins. Matthew's version of the image, however, does not include the line about those who do not desire "new wine," preferring the old! [cf. Luke 5:39]
Our faith contains eternal truths that must be incarnated over and over again in ways that human understanding, which is always changing, can grasp them. The "old wine" and "old wineskins" are still enjoyable but they are not, in themselves, renewable. I can read the Church fathers of the first centuries of Christianity with great benefit, but their ways of expressing the faith would not always be suitable for today's audiences. We don't use wineskins in the U.S.A. very much at all. However, the wineries do not re-use the wine bottles, either (unless they have gone through a total recycling transformation). New wine goes into new bottles every day.
This can be a challenge for preachers and teachers and parents who are trying to pass on the great truths of our faith to an audience accustomed to an incredibly fast pace of change. Both wine and bottles ("skins?") are subject to a changing consumer. The Holy Spirit has to work hard in this environment. AMEN
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