Wedding Guests, Patch, and Wineskin

Matthew 9:14-17

Jenelle Smith

 

 (New Revised Standard Version)

Setting

            Matthew's Sermon on the Mount in chapters five through seven states Jesus' new philosophy of living. In chapters eight and nine, Jesus lives this philosophy out by doing miracles and telling parables.  This collection of three brief (aphoristic) parables fits into chapter nine in which Jesus lives out his message.  Eugene Boring entitles this section of Matthew “Christ’s call generates opposition” (Boring 121).  Jesus’ philosophy of righteousness is much different than that of the Pharisees.  Jesus feasts with tax collectors and sinners, and does not fast like the Pharisees or followers of John the Baptist (Hagner 242). 

  Exegetical Analysis

Both Matthew and Luke follow Mark’s order at this point in their respective narratives.  Matthew follows Mark quite closely but more briefly.  Matthew simply states that "the Pharisees fast," while Mark and Luke say that the “disciples of the Pharisees fast.”  Matthew adds the word “often” when referring to frequency of the Pharisees' practice (v 14).  But then Matthew substitutes the word mourn for Mark’s fast when he has Jesus ask, “Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them?” (Aland 83).  This substitution highlights how absurd it is to fast or mourn for a bridegroom while he is still with the wedding party.  The presence of the bridegroom calls for celebration and fulfillment (Hagner 243).

Matthew omits Mark’s phrase of “in that day” at the end of verse 18, which leaves open the possibility of further fasting beyond the single day when the bridegroom is taken away.  Matthew also replaces Mark’s phrase “the wine perishes” with “the wine is poured out,” which shifts the emphasis from the loss of the wine to the destruction of the skins.  Finally, Matthew adds the phrase, “so both are preserved” at the end of the passage (Hagner 242).

The passage consists of two parts: first, a discussion about fasting, and, second, comments on combining the old and the new.  Part one contains a question by John’s disciples, and an answer by Jesus, using the language of a marriage festival.  Part two contains an analogy of the piece of cloth, and the analogy of the wineskins.  Both analogies state that undesirable results will follow if one combines the old and the new.

Fasting was strictly practiced by Jews and the disciples of John the Baptist.  “In early times fasting meant entire abstention from food for the whole or part to the fast day and, in the latter case a restricted diet” (Livingstone 599).  Fasting was observed by the apostolic church; soon days of fasting (on Wednesdays and Fridays) developed in the early church.

My mom is a seamstress, and she has always taught me about sewing.  Whenever she buys material, she first washes it in washing machine and dries it in the drier to shrink the cloth.  If she does not shrink the cloth before sewing it, when the garment is eventually washed, the material will shrink and the thread used to sew the garment will not shrink.  This will make the garment pull and pucker along the lines of sewing.  In the same way, the material of first century Palestine would shrink as it was used.  If someone wanted to patch the equivalent of their old, first century jeans, they would need to use a patch cut from someone else’s old, first century jeans.  If they bought some new material for the patch, it would shrink when the jeans were washed and pull away from the jeans. 

            My mom is not, however, a connoisseur of wine; so I have had to do my own research about wineskins.  New wine is grape juice before it has fermented, it must be put into new skin bags that are more pliable than old ones.  If old skins are used, in the fermentation process, “the skins will tear, the wine will pour out, and the skins will be ruined” (Hagner, 244).  In this case, everything is clearly ruined by mixing the old with the new. 

            Hagner suggests that the new wine must represent the new gospel, personified in Jesus.  The old wine stands for the old patterns of conduct that were supposed to be examples of the righteousness of the Torah.  Jesus' parable suggests that the good news he brings does not have to look exactly like ancient Jewish practices and patterns of conduct.  Jesus brought a new way to live, and it did not work if it was mixed in with the Jewish customs and rules that were the tradition of the day. 

            Message

Matthew sets these parabolic sayings of Jesus in a passage that begins with questions about the appropriateness of Jesus' practice of eating with sinners, or better yet, eating at all.  If Jesus and his followers are truly righteous, should they not observe the customary pious practice of refraining from eating? Jesus turns the accusing questions of John’s disciples into a teaching session in which he shows that his new teachings, just set forth in “The Sermon on the Mount,” cannot simply be encompassed into the existing practices of his Jewish contemporaries.  Jesus came to give an entirely new gospel. Certainly, his message depended on Jewish traditions and history, but Jesus proclaimed freedom and newness. He did not simply add something new to Jewish traditions (Hill 175-176).  “The newness which Jesus brings. . . cannot be contained within the conventions of traditional Jewish piety” (Hill 176).

 Application

“The new and old are not mutually compatible” (Hagner 244).  This could be applied to many things in our current time, but the first that comes to mind is the issue of worship within the church.  I grew up in a church where we sang through the hymnal every year or so.  I loved hearing the old saint Alfred state the hymn number, restate it by saying each individual number separately, and again say the whole number.  We would all turn to the page, listen to the intro, and sing away.  I have learned to enjoyed these hymns and appreciate them very much.  Within the last few years, the song leaders at our church have begun to realize that they were behind the times, and they started integrating some new choruses into the Sunday morning repertoire. 

Unfortunately Alfred, the old, saintly song-leader was pushed out of his position as song leader so a new, more-up-with-the-times song leader could be installed.  Yes, the singing became much more lively and up-to-date, but Alfred was left sitting in the pew with nothing to do after leading the singing for all those years.  Now I cannot imagine if someone would have given Alfred the music and words to the choruses and expected him to lead them.  Hymns were his thing, he was the old, and choruses were the new.  There was no way they would have meshed.