More Than One Way to Skin a Wine

Some more fasting talk.

Shoot. Here goes Matthew talking about fasting again. Must mean it’s something we should consider.

Context matters. New wine. New wineskins. Old wine and new wine are both wine, but they are also apparently different. And the skin in which they do best…is necessarily different. Not only that, new wine will ruin old wineskins.

Notice that Jesus, while he sets the story straight for his disciples who are not fasting, does not ridicule John’s disciples or the Pharisees who are.

There’s more than one way to skin a wine.

Matthew 9:14-17

At that time John’s disciples came and asked Jesus, “Why do we and the Pharisees frequently fast, but your disciples never fast?”

Jesus responded, “The wedding guests can’t mourn while the groom is still with them, can they? But the days will come when the groom will be taken away from them, and then they’ll fast.

“No one sews a piece of new, unshrunk cloth on old clothes because the patch tears away the cloth and makes a worse tear. No one pours new wine into old wineskins. If they did, the wineskins would burst, the wine would spill, and the wineskins would be ruined. Instead, people pour new wine into new wineskins so that both are kept safe.”

Prayer

God,

Give me a wide berth for people who do things differently than me.

By your spirit & in Christ,
Amen.