New wine, new wineskins

Jesus’ statement in Mark 2:22 “New wine in new wineskins!” is often taken to mean that the traditional understanding of faithfulness can’t be simply patched up to contain the new wine of the gospel. But today I am reflecting on what that new wine is; for the traditional commentators imply that the gpspel is a finished product, a known quantity; when in actual fact it is a way of living, and like wine it develops new flavors, nuance, and depth as it continues to live in its containers.
As the year ends, I think of the seeds of anger, confusion, grief, war, and greed that have been sown on our harrowed hearts. It is hard not to be oppressed by the bitter harvest that is in view, the bitter fruits already harvested.
It is upon us to seek for other fruits, fruits worthy of the transformed mind, heart, and faithful action (Matt. 3:8) by which we take up our renewed identity as citizens of God’s kingdom.  From these fruits, sought eagerly, gathered with care (because they are tender) from the Vine through which the divine, common life flows, other wine can be made that builds up, nourishes, and sustains.

To speak plainly: The Gospel is a live thing, and it is on us to live, work, and pray that we can come to understand how it tastes, sounds, means in our times, in our troubles, in our world as it is now, and is becoming.  The Holy Spirit, Jesus taught, would reveal more of what his teachings mean, as we are prepared to perceive them. It is in our times and in our travails that we can know what he would preach to us today, point us to the ways in which God’s message of compassion, reverence, and reconciliation are to be received and given form today, as we seek the healing of the world and of ourselves — which are not two but one.

Thus, our response in our living and thinking to the conditions of today, leavened with His life within us, must be put in vessels that not only contain the new life, but enable it to keep working and gaining in virtue, in active power. These are vessels of thought, of collaboration, of priorities or valuation, of hope and intention, of method and of celebration.  All depends upon the longing, the seeking, in the thickets and hedge-rows of our lives, the margins and tangles, for the fruits in which the new life can be tasted, and gives forth a heart-lifting fragrance. As the hart panteth for the water brooks, so longeth my soul for Thee!  Gather the fruit  at the right time, and press them out, concentrating them and setting them to work, in vessels and with tools that are shaped to hold the wine as a living thing.

The Vine says, Fear not, little flock, it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the Kingdom of Heaven. His friends are to live according to the love which sees everyone as our neighbor and treats the least among us as if they were the Lord himself, in the Spirit in which we can hope “to outlive all wrath and contention, and to weary out all exaltation and cruelty, or whatever is of a nature contrary to itself.”