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Sunday, March 18, 2007

New skin

"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." (Matthew 9:17 ESV)

This parable was told by Jesus to disciples of John the Baptist who questioned him as to why Jesus' disciples, unlike John's disciples and the Pharisees, did not fast. It was also right on the heels of Jesus answering the criticism of Pharisees for his fraternizing with "tax collectors and sinners," after he ate at Matthew's house.

The Pharisees (which means literally, the separated) were a sect of pious Jews that arose as a response to the Hellenization of Jewish culture after the Macedonian conquest by Alexander and the ensuing diaspora. The extreme apartheid character of Pharisaic practice and teaching was instrumental in preserving Hebrew identity, language and cohesion, and we can probably thank that system for the continuity and rigorous conservation of the foundational scriptures (or in Protestant terms, the "Old Testament"). But the drawback can be seen in conditions at the Temple to which Jesus would later react in his only display of violence when he overturned the moneylender's tables and drove out the animals installed there for sale. The key to his indignation can be found in his statement, "It is written, 'My house shall be called a house of prayer,' but you make it a den of robbers." (Matthew 21:13 ESV) The place where all this buying, selling, and money-changing was going on was the outer court of the Temple, called The Court of the Gentiles, named so because this was supposed to be where Gentiles "who feared God," as we read in a number of places in the New Testament, such as the Centurion who came to Jesus and requested healing for his sick daughter (Luke 7), and Cornelius whom God spoke to host Peter (Acts 10), would be able to gather and pray, hear teaching of the Law, and participate in worship of the one true God.

In his most recent book, Cities of God; the real story of how Christianity became an urban movement and conquered Rome, Rodney Stark recounts how this was common, and indeed many people of the day found Jewish monotheism compelling, and converted to a degree, worshipping, attending synagog, but unwilling to undergo circumcision and other aspects of the Law. This relegated them to a second-class and marginal rank within Jewish religious life.

The Court of the Gentiles was meant to be that place in the Temple where Isaiah's proclamation could be realized, "I will make you as a light for the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth." (Isaiah 49:6 ESV), but Pharisaic apartheid, and commercial opportunity had crowded it out. This is what infuriated Jesus.

In the parable of the wineskins Jesus refers to the practice of that time and region of fermenting wine in skins, rather than casks or tanks as we do today. As the wine ferments the living cultures produce gasses that make its volume expand. A new skin will expand with its volume of wine, but an old skin has already gone through the expansion process; it will rupture if subjected to the expansion required by a new fermentation.

Two lessons come to mind from this illustration. The first, on a macro scale, is that Jewish religious life, in its effort to save Hebrew culture and identity, had become so rigid and exclusionary that it could never be the vehicle through which God could fulfill the prophesy of Isaiah. A new "skin" was necessary to contain the new message. The second lesson is on the micro, or the personal level if you will; and that is that the individual must be a new person to contain the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. As Jesus told Nicodemus, "...unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God." (John 3:3 ESV), and Paul said, For if a man is in Christ he becomes a new person altogether--the past is finished and gone, everything has become fresh and new. (II Corinthians 5:17 Phillips translation) Why? Because our old natures are too brittle and unyielding; it's necessary to have a "new skin" that can expand and take the shape of that which is within. But all of us who are Christians have no veils on our faces, but reflect like mirrors the glory of the Lord. We are transfigured in ever-increasing splendor into his own image, and the transformation comes from the Lord who is the Spirit. (II Corinthians 3:18 Phillips translation)