New Wine, Old Wineskins

Transcripts are AI-generated and may not be 100% accurate.

My name is Matt Moberg. I'm one of the leaders here at The Table. We are thrilled that you are with us on this Sunday evening. As the seasons change, as sicknesses come, as all the different variables, there's something about seasons—I don't know why—today in particular, but also yesterday and Friday as well. I've been in so many different conversations with people who have been so bewildered and like overthrown and like, what do I do now because of wild variables that are always attached to seasons change. And so if that's you, I get it. There's a, there's a scratch in my throat right now, and so I get it. I can resonate with you to a certain extent. 

Listen, this is the space in our worship program that we put on every Sunday night where we try to sit down and we try to gain some kind of nutrients for our story from the scriptural story that we claim. We try to sit ourselves down inside, in particular, we go through the gospel of Mark this year, first time for us at The Table. It doesn't warrant a round of applause, but it is a, it's a bigger deal for us when it comes to planning, right? That, yeah, I mean like we're just going inch by inch, like what's next? What's next, come what may, we're not just hitting the highlight reels of Jesus in Mark. We're trying to go through it all. There's no flyover territory in this material right here. And so we're going through that as a community this year. And I have loved it thus far. 

Hands in the air. Have you loved it also, or is it just me? Okay, vast majority have hated it. They never wanna see it again. That is very clear. And um, next week we'll be talking about how to win friends and alienate people or what's the thing or something like that. Text tonight is coming up in a moment, but listen, if you get nothing else out of this space, I say it every week. I'm gonna say it once more, George. I at least want you to walk out of the room with this awareness. Who you are is more important than what you do even if what you do gets more attention than who you are. I don't care what you do in your nine to five, I don't care how you make your living or produce or perform, the stage you claim, that that does matter. There's substance in that. But don't lose sight of your essence. If you hear nothing else from me tonight, at least walk out of the room with that reality. Who you are is more important than what you do. Even if what you do gets more attention than who you are. 

Text tonight, Mark 2 reads like this. “Now John's disciples and the Pharisees were fasting and people came and said to him.” Him being Jesus, Jesus is on the road right now. He's going from town to town, from table to temple. He, he is, um, not intentionally, but he is building his brand. He's opening up blind eyes. He's healing crooked legs to go straight. All these people are following him now and they're trying to get a grasp around like this is no longer like somebody that we can just dismiss as a peripheral figure. It has nothing to speak to modern day times. Now he matters. There's enough people who are looking to him for information and wisdom, trying to figure out how they arrange their day in, day out of, uh, of affairs. 

So people are coming to him. “People came to him, said to him, why do John's disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?” Trying to understand, Jesus. Because I mean, we don't know much about you quite yet. We're only in chapter two, but from what we can discern, you're a disciple of John's, right? Like you went to John to get baptized by John. The only thing we know about you is that you are all about John. And so John's disciples did things like this. Why are you not doing things like this? 

Well, part of fasting as we understand it, not let's go into the deep end, then we'll go back to the shallow. But fasting is like, I'm gonna restrain from food to cultivate some kind of proximity towards God. There's something about like denying our innate, intrinsic desires, impulses for survival that all religions have seen as a valuable means of practicing towards like I'm awakened to the presence of God right now. And so the question that's coming at Jesus is in light of the practices that we're told by John and says, why aren't y'all doing that? And Jesus says that, “well, listen, if you guys are trying to cultivate the presence of God through fasting, what's the point of needing to cultivate something that's already here? I am the word incarnate. I am the word in flesh. I am God in presence. What you are looking for when God is right here, flesh in blood 30 years old in your presence right now.” 

“Can the wedding guest actually fast?” Can you actually be subservient and obedient to that false sense of reality? And pretend like the bridegroom isn't with you when he actually is. Next text is this, “As long as they have the bridegroom with them, bridegroom being Jesus, they cannot fast. It'll be a practice of delusional thinking. The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them. Then they'll fasten that day. 

I'm gonna read the next sentence in a second, but I want you to pay attention 'cause I think it's gonna be contributing to where we're gonna ultimately go at least according to my conversation with Maggie Keller today, I want you to pay attention that Jesus is responding to this critique at hand. Not saying that they're wrong. He's saying the timing is wrong, fasting does matter. He's not saying like, “y'all are fasting? There's no place for fasting. Why are you fasting?” He's not saying that at all. He's saying the timing of it though isn't lining up with reality right now. 

This is not a complete dismissal, a complete removal of the praxis at the hand when Jesus stepped onto the scene. It's important for us as church folk to note that right there. Then he goes on to say, no one sews a piece of shrunk cloth on an old garment. This is the part I wanna hone in on tonight. “If he does, the patch tears away from it. The new from the old, you know, worse tear is made.” You came to the tailor with a problem. You had hoped that the new piece would solve said problem, but it went from bad to worse.

“Matter of fact, no one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does,” Jesus is speaking to this to a people who understand. This is like common language, common understanding. When Jesus talks about wine, he does so multiple times in New Testament. One of the ways he talks about it is medicinal. You'll remember the Good Samaritan story. Where a good Samaritan pours ointment and wine onto the wound. He talks about it in the sense of celebration, the wedding feast in Cana, all these different things. 

But from Hebrew scriptures to Jesus's words, right here again and again, we have Jesus talking about wine as a metaphor for God's presence on the earth. That's what wine means to Jesus. It's like when we talk about wine, when we use these metaphors, we're talking about God's tangible, actual presence right now. Accessible not just to Jesus, but to each and every one of us on scene. 

“No one puts new wine into old wine skins.” Fermentation, the process of new wine would not allow it to be so, it would crack and it would spoil and burst wide open. “If he does, the wine will burst the skins and the wine is absolutely destroyed. And so are the skins. But new wine is for fresh wine skins.” That is Mark 2:18-22. 

I met, with a group of high schoolers this past week. Um, I think there were, uh, oh gosh, I'm Brent, I think Eagan high school. Is that a high school? In that area. Am I blanking this right now? I'm sorry, this is not like typical of me, but I've met with three groups of high schools for the past three weeks. Um, uh, I think it was Eagan or somewhere in that general vicinity. That's not the point in the message tonight. These are seniors who, um, are already thinking about where they're gonna go when their senior year is through and what they're gonna do and how they're gonna go about their work. And I started asking 'em like, have you already started to like, have conversations with different colleges or universities? I know you talk with big game. A lot of bark. Is there any bite behind that right now as is? And they said was actually super intimidating because the college application process asks very daunting questions. And I said, no, I know 'cause I also applied for college at one point. And then they said the questions out loud. And I said, yeah, those are the exact same questions. Settle down young man, young woman. 

But it made me bring to mind this man named, uh, Hugh Gallagher from years ago. I went to a conference down south in California and this, somebody just read this. They gave no explanation attached to it, but it always stuck with me. There's this guy named Hugh Gallagher senior in high school who was asked by NYU this question that many college applications ask each and every one of us. It says this: “Are there any significant experiences you have had or accomplishments you have realized that have helped to define you as a person?”

 Now again, I'm gonna ask you right now is to go back in time and try to remember like your experience as a senior in high school. Try to remember trying to write out in paragraph form in King James English how you were better than you actually are and make yourself sound real pretty. It was a different stage of life, right? Tons of anxiety. We gotta say this. We can't say too much. What I want you to see tonight, this is what, this is what Hugh Gallagher wrote to NYU one of the most prestigious colleges in all of our country. In answer to that question, he said:

I'm a dynamic figure. I'm often seen scaling walls and crushing I have been known to remodel train stations on my lunch breaks, making them more efficient in the area of heat retention. I translate ethnic slurs for Cuban refugees. I write award-winning operas. I manage time efficiently. Occasionally I tread water for three days in a row just to see if I can. I woo women with my sensuous and godlike trombone playing. I can pilot bicycles up severe inclines with unflagging speed and I cook 30 minute brownies in 20 minutes time. I'm an expert in stucco, a veteran in love, a outlaw in Peru. Using only a hoe and a large glass of water. I want single handedly defended a small village in the Amazon basin from a hoard of ferocious army ants. I played bluegrass cello. I was scouted by the Mets. I'm the subject of numerous documentaries. When I'm bored, I build large suspension bridges in my yard. I enjoy urban hang gliding. On Wednesdays after school I repair electrical appliances free of charge. I'm an abstract artist, a concrete analyst, and a ruthless bookie. Critics worldwide swoon over my original line of corduroy evening wear. I don't perspire. I'm a private citizen and yet somehow I received fan mail. I have been caller number nine and I've won the weekend passes. Last summer I toured New Jersey with a traveling centrifugal force demonstration. I bat 400. My deft floral arrangements have earned me fame. International botany circles and children trust me, I can hurl tennis rackets at small moving objects with deadly accuracy. I once read Paradise Lost, Moby Dick, and David Copperfield in one day and still had time to refurbish an entire dining room that evening. I know the exact location of every food item in the supermarket. I've, this is real. I have performed several covert operations for the CIA. A I sleep once a week. When I do sleep, I sleep in a chair. While on vacation in Canada, I successfully negotiated with a group of terrorists who had seized a small bakery. The laws of physics, they just don't apply to me. I balance, I weave, I dodge, I frolic and all of my bills are paid. On weekends to let off steam, I participate in full contact origami. Years ago I discovered the meaning of life and forgot to write it down. I have, I have made extraordinary four course meals using only a small oven. I breed prize winning clams. I've won bull fights in San Juan, cliff diving competitions in Sri Lanka and spelling bees at the Kremlin. I have played Hamlet, I have performed open heart surgery and I have spoken with Elvis and yet I have yet to go to college. 

That's it. That's how he answered that question right there. It's ridiculous. The reason I'm reading it out loud right now, the reason why you are laughing when you hear it out loud right now is because this is not how you're supposed to answer that question. Yes, it's comedic gold. Yes, it's beautiful. But this is not like a space where it's like Nate Bargatze on SNL opening monologue, like just letting his hair down and letting everybody in on his goodness. That's not what this is. 

This is NYU, a prestigious educational institution in our country. It's the context of where it's written that makes the content so important. It’s the context. You're not supposed to do this in this kind of space that makes us go like, “How did you do that in that kind of space? I'm saying this all right now because if we go further in Mark and we try to understand why all of the Pharisees have problems with Jesus, I want you to think of this essay right here. 

What Jesus is doing time and time again is he is not doing what rabbis and teachers of the Torah are supposed to be doing. He's not fitting neatly inside of their categories. He's baffling, he's overwhelming. He's moving towards the lepers that nobody would touch. He's hearing the cries of the blind. The blind who were told to keep quiet. He's going to the edges that the religious percent like of all places. You don't go there. You don't eat with those folk. You don't commune with those folk. You don't sit down at a well and have deep and intimate conversation with Samaritan women of all people. Again and again, when we try to understand a paradigm for how to why like the Pharisees in particular, but religious elites of the land at the time, are always like “Jesus, this is too much.” You have to understand that. 

And so when we see the scene at hand, Jesus is in another power struggle of sorts with the Pharisees and there's a tendency in us to go, “Well yeah, they're the bad guys, right? Like that's, that's who they are. They're the villains in the story. Like the, they're the ones who ultimately put Jesus down, right? That those are those that's, that's what they are, right?” What I would offer to you is they're very scared. Jesus is the threat to the status quo. 

Now we think of status quo, we think of like the big dogs on Wall Street or those who are like sitting in the corner offices like they're gonna mess 'em up. Business, something like that. That's not the Pharisees though. The Pharisees were a movement, a separatist movement that were born in a time of trauma. Came out of the Babylonian captivity, far removed from the land, wondering if they'd ever get back to the land. They lived there, they were born there. It all started there for them. Basic line of logic was this, at some point with somebody, we, we must have like disobeyed the Torah. Like we only took the Torah seriously to here. But like the gap between here and there was so wide that now we're in exile. Now that's how that, there's no other way we can logically keep us out of this current predicament we're in. 

Pharisees start in Babylonian captivity. Eventually by the time of Jesus, they do get back to Jerusalem. They're back in the land that was promised by God to these particular people. But they're also not autonomous. Not exactly free. Roman boots have walked into the land. Roman occupation, triple taxation, the oppression is heavy and hard. It's hitting them at every corner. 

And so the Pharisees are on edge 'cause they kind of feel like we had a brief taste of what autonomy and freedom might actually look like. And, and if we're gonna hold onto this, like we're gonna need everybody to be on the same page. Nobody can be messing around. Nobody can be like dialing up websites that you shouldn't be looking at. Nobody should be doing things that you shouldn't be doing. Whatever it might be. The Pharisees are like, we all need to be locked down serious. Like this are, these are the rules. This is how we go about it. If somebody fidgets or fudges with the rules like we're, we're toast. We're on the brink of Babylon again. We're already under like JV level oppression. What if we get completely evicted from the land and we have to go back to where we were, where we once swore we'd never go back to again. 

Keep that in mind when we think about the Pharisees. I know it's so easy to cast them as like Gaston or is that the only villain in Disney movie? Uh, Jafar or whatever, whatever. It doesn't matter. Oh gosh. It's so easy to just make it black and white and say they're bad guys. But understand that they're very scared guys. 

And so what Jesus comes onto the scene and he's doing all these things that we're not, you're not supposed to do. He has an elasticity to his freedom. He is a creative. I'm following the spirit that is not just like, oh, maybe that's a problem. It's more like you are threatening where we're about to go. And Jesus says in this moment, right here in Mark 2, should set some kind of paradigm as we read Mark 2 for the rest of the way. I understand why this is happening. 

Patti pull up the text one more time, the last part with the wine in particular. But here's what I want you to see. Pharisees, you firstborn folk who follow all the rules. I was talking to my wife about that actually right there. And she said like they just sound like they were kind of like the firstborns. I know like we're not big on stereotypes anymore, but firstborn, my firstborn at least like a rule follower, like don't you dare break a rule, especially don't you dare break a rule. I always feel like that's a cruel like trick of mother nature to convince new parents that you are like really good at parenting and so you'll reproduce and all of a sudden you have a second child who's a no-limit soldier and doesn't like sleep, and loves to slap a lot, you know what I mean? 

These firstborn parents though that Jesus is speaking to right here. He says, listen, I'm trying to bring about a new kinda wine again, redundant but scripture. Jesus carries it on and says, wine is the presence of God and the land that we are in. I'm trying to like be faithful to where God is leading me and us in this moment right now. And like if we're gonna have an honest conversation, 'cause I can't imagine we're gonna have many conversations. If I put it in that old wineskin, it's gonna crack, it's gonna bubble, it's gonna burst. It's not gonna work. 

So, so the Pharisees are wondering like if, if you keep on your way, Jesus completely disregarding all of the Torah-following ways, like will all the wine be gone, will God be gone? Will all the wine run out? Like if, if you keep doing this is Babylon actually the next stop for our people? Will all the wine be gone? 

And Jesus says, like if you could take your eyes off the wineskin for just one moment, you might actually get a glimpse of where the new wine's being poured. Spirit of God is on the rise, spirit of God is on the move bringing forth new kind of things, new kinds of life. But to those who are only interested in preserving and protecting the old institutions, the old way that the wine was dealt when it first came into the land, it's gonna feel uncomfortable. It's gonna feel like a disruption. 

I was talking to Maggie this afternoon. I have had, uh, my, my mom and my dad, they're like my A, my B when it comes to childcare resources that I tap into in emergency hours. I don't know why you're smiling at Mark right now, but I'm trying not to take that personally. They got covid and so they couldn't watch my kids today while my wife is at a conference and so I've been like trying to scramble to go like, man, I'm trying to make sense to this text right now 'cause it's hitting 10,000 different ways. And I called up Maggie Keller and in our conversation one of the things I said to her was I said, here's the thing that bothers me the most, for progressive Christian folk in particular, a tribe that like largely I find a home inside of.

When I read a text like this, it is all about the new wine being poured and the contrast with the old wine that needs to go. You know what I'm saying? Like that's how Jesus presents it. It's like there's a new wine that is coming in. So all y'all old wine, the old wineskins, your time is done. But when I read this text, that's not at all what Jesus says. I have nothing profound or particular to offer up to you but to say that I'm coming before you humbly to say that's not at all what Jesus says. Jesus is just as concerned about the new wine being poured as the old wineskins being taken care of. Jesus says like if, if we, if we don't actually allow the old wineskins to hold the old wine and we just insist on bombarding them with these new kinds of realities and truths that we suddenly have discovered, whatever it may be, you're gonna break the thing that does not deserve your denigration, does not deserve your disrespect. 

And so yes, there are things that are happening in the land that are like this can't be of God. Jesus is moving in these different kinda ways, straightening out crooked legs, opening up blind eyes, saying all kinds of truth that tastes like liberation. And yes, those people need to actually open up a little bit further to fully receive the glory of God presented in this word in flesh. But those skins also matter. 

Real talk: Let's get out of the scripture for a moment real quick. When we think about our church, when we think about our life together, you can make this personal. Sometimes, you know, with metaphors like wine, you gotta be very careful 'cause you take it too far, it gets really ridiculous. You know what I mean? Like you take the metaphor of David beating Goliath. One of my kids said this the other day, he said, “Dad, I won this Fortnite battle just like David beating Goliath.” I said, “That's not like David beating Goliath, bro. That's different. That's not the same thing at all.” 

Like metaphors can get weird and and silly really quick. But I do think it's worth being aware of right now when we think about our church still here, our church still growing, who we want to be, who we aspire to be. There is a tendency in a lot of churches like ours to go F the old, forget about what came before, like we're doing something new. That's not Jesus. You could play that game. That's not Jesus, to be clear, that's not what Jesus was about. You better know who you are, where you are, what you come from, and you better understand that new wine does not exist without the old wine coming first.

There's a reality here where Jesus is redundant. Even again, like when I mentioned it at the gates, when Jesus says, um, the whole thing about like, should we fast or shouldn't we fast? You know, like why are you guys all about that? He's, he's not saying like, don't you fast. He's saying the timing. It's the timing. You should fast. Fasting is important, it’s a spiritual discipline. Like that's the thing. It's not about right or wrong. It's about like there's a time and a place for these kinds of things. 

So as we even think about, you know, as you think about, I know we get a lot of different folk who come to our community inside of a space like this who are wounded, burdened, um, I mean we had recently had a conversation, Debbie and I, where we were talking about like the origins, like our stories. We keep kinda retouching the roots and figuring out where we're gonna go and who we're gonna be. Like this is an island for misfit toys. That's what The Table exists for people who have struggled to find connection to the truth without being wounded along the way. 100%. 

But also understand that as the new wand gets poured, as new wand skins get built, we have to do like the respectful work of recognizing the shoulders that we stand upon and the way that God is still moving. Jesus not once said that the old wine is no longer wine. Still is wine, still is presence of God on the earth. 

I told Maggie one of my hesitancy around like maybe I'm struggling to figure out how to like best like do this communication for all people in real time 'cause I know like y'all aren't thinking about church 24/7. You're thinking about work and life and relationships and kids and chaos and all of it. And I always wanted to speak into that space, but this text doesn't really lend its hand to speaking to that space. It's important for us right now. Jesus, the rabble-rouser who came from the sticks, that misfit toy, there were no categories for, the Hugh Gallagher who wrote that essay. It doesn't really belong in anything, Jesus insisting that like we need to recognize that there is a way that we're gonna go about this way and we will not take any enemies along our way. Prioritize the wine and not the wineskin, stay flexible, stay open, maintain the elasticity of Christ as we pursue what creative freedom looks like as Jesus invites us into abundant life. 

Is that helpful at all? This is what I've gleaned thus far. Honest to God. This is not typical of sermons, but like if it's not helpful, if I'm being confusing, will you raise your hand right now? 'cause I would love to talk about it further. Anybody? No. Yeah, go ahead. The whole sermon, um, last sentence you just said, I, I said this. Here's what I said is I said like, I think what I get from the second that's a great question. For me looking at a text like this because it is used, it's using metaphor and whatnot. Christians today and part of it, Debbie, like even this past week, we have had so many, we've had so many conversations the past five months in particular where we've met with churches that are closing, churches that have insisted upon like their wine skin over the new wine being poured and they're no longer existing anymore. 

Part of the call when the wine is being poured is you better be able to be humble enough about the wine skin that you hold, that you're not prohibiting the wine’s that's gonna come forth. And so what God is doing is gonna be probably be bigger and better and more beautiful than we, than what we even can conceive right now. 

And honestly, I would imagine just given human history that when I turn, um, 74 and a half or 74 and three quarters. I think that's probably the destined date I'm gonna like, there's gonna be things and be like, this is too far. Like this is getting ridiculous. Now they don't get it. That might be it, me catching the aroma of new wine and me trying to cling onto what's left of the old skin. 

But like at the gates, Mark, the first gospel, the one that Luke Matthew looked to to write their gospels, he wants to say that before we get into the full story and what's gonna come from it, y'all better pay attention and recognize it's gonna be different. It's not gonna settle in nicely. It should disrupt your categories, all preconceived boxes that you came into the story with. Expect them to be blown wide open. 'cause this isn't gonna fit like it once did fit. I'm not just perpetuating what was, I'm trying to introduce something brand new. There's a new wine being poured forth.

Lori? [Lori asks if Hugh got into NYU] He did, but Jesus got killed. Can we please focus, Lori? Okay, Hugh Gallagher did get accepted. I found that actually today upon deeper. Debbie. So gonna wrap it up. Okay, let me, uh, Let me, let me land this plane with Chris Pope Right here. Um, Let me pray us out. Hey, hey, I'm on the right pace. 

Jesus God, you are good, God, we are grateful. God, I I feel in myself when I encounter different ways that your spirit is going to move and is moving and is doing new things. I feel that same kind of resistance that the Pharisees felt in them. It's a fear-based thing. If I buy into that, then what? It's a slippery stone that's gonna send me back to my own proverbial Babylon. But God, I pray that you give us the courage to live humbly with the boxes that we've carved out for you and recognize that, uh, you're bigger than any box we could build. That God, you are going further than we could ever imagine. That God, you are taking this story to new kinds of places and you are an expansive God moving in expansive ways. And it's scary, but my prayer on behalf of our community God is that we'd have the bravery to follow it faithfully as best, as sincerely as we possibly could, in Jesus name we all pray. Amen.