New Wine

There is a verse in Luke 5 that reads:

No one pours new wine into old wineskins.
If he does, the new wine will burst the skins, the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined.
No, new wine must be poured into new wineskins, and no one after drinking the old wine wants the new, for he says,

"The Old is better."

I don't know about you, but this is the interpretation I was taught as a Bible class student:

Jesus is the new wine and the Pharisees keep trying to make him fit into their old laws or wineskins, but Jesus cannot be contained by the old ways. He breaks the old skins and runs out, leaving the skins in ruins.

While that interpretation explained the conflict between the Pharisees and Jesus, in every other way, it is inconsistent with Luke's presentation of Jesus' ministry.

What if Jesus is the old wine? This already makes more sense just in the how Jesus claims the old is better and no one wants the new. But look at Jesus' claims about himself and his ministry. In Luke 4 he describes his ministry as preaching good news to the poor, proclaiming freedom for the prisoners, recovery of sight for the blind, releasing the opressed, and to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. Then when John sent his disciples to verify the validity of Jesus' Messiah-ship, Jesus affirms John by saying that the things listed in Isaiah are in fact being done by him.

Jesus is the continuation and fulfillment of what God has always been throughout history. God's original intent for his followers is that we would look after the orphans and widows, that we would give to those in need. This is nothing new. Throughout the gospels, the writers are constantly tying him to the old ways of God. His stance on divorce, his priority for the poor, his affinity for the outcasts, his spite for the haughty, and his relentless sacrificial love for his people all point to God's original intent. In John, Jesus puts it bluntly by saying, "Before Abraham was born, I AM" Not I was, but I AM. He uses the covenant name of God as revealed to Moses to describe himself and his ministry.

God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. He is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and end. Jesus is definitely the old wine. The religion of the Pharisees was the new. They tried to fit their priority for appearances and legalistic pseudo-righteousness into the wineskins of God's original intent for his people, and it was tearing it to pieces. Jesus, being the old wine was a perfect fit.

In our denomination (yes I will call the churches of Christ a denomination so long as we keep using distinctive practices to distinguish and separate us from other Christians), we are often guilty of "seeking the old paths" which are not old at all, but fairly new innovations. Most of what is considered our heritage and tradition only dates back 50-200 years. What if instead of seeking to restore the church of the 1950's, we sought to restore God's original intentions for his people, the old wine that dates back to the creation of the world?