"A New Opportunity" (Mark 2:18-28)

Introduction

What a wonderful opportunity the Gospel gives us! New life in Christ … forgiven, saved, refocussed. But, of course, this is NOT just a personal thing. The Gospel of Jesus also brings with it the potential for the best experience of community imaginable. We now call that community … “the church”. Let’s look at this text at Mark chapter 2 verses 18-28. Clearly Jesus is distinguishing between old and new … old ways and new opportunities. Now this was very in-your-face, direct, and confrontative teaching, which just can’t be watered down or treated trivially.

Overview

Some people were wondering why Jesus didn’t have his disciples fasting when other religious people were fasting. Interestingly, it was general observers of certain religious behaviour that were asking the question! What is this all about, and why the difference? Why do you do what you do, or indeed don’t do certain things? “Why”? A good question deserving of an answer! Why do we do what we do … in preference to other things? Do we think about that? Jesus gave an answer that suggested that he, and therefore the Gospel, was not bound to rituals, especially if those rituals lacked meaning or relevance or the proper timing.

Nothing wrong with “fasting” – in the right time and for the right purpose, connected with repentance or discernment … fasting can be helpful. Yet not at this moment in time when Jesus was very personally launching a new kingdom. Fasting should not be a ritual that is blindly applied, but rather be a response to circumstances as led by the Holy Spirit. This was clearly the time to hang on Jesus’ every word, and reflect on his every action. Generally speaking, what Jesus is dealing with here, are forms and rituals that have been set in concrete and lost all relevance. They are being done for their own sakes (and maybe for selfish reasons) … devoid of real purpose and unconnected to mission. Jesus confronted this, for often adherence to ritual is connected to avoidance of change. You may have met people … who can have something reasonably explained, but will still never change their views. The point being made, is that while there are open doors of ministry (in the company of Jesus) … where there is a window of opportunity … get on with it!

So first … certain rituals can get in the way. Then (from verses 21-22), we think we can tack a bit of the new onto the old, and that will be good enough. We think we can keep what we like of the old and have the best of the new, and sort of hold that all together. This doesn’t work … not for long … not with any real growth … eventually it all falls apart. We wonder why some people have come to faith, seemed strong for a while, and then faded away. Here is the answer … there were new patches being sown on old cloaks, or new wine being poured into old wineskins. Implosion awaits! There is a complete lack of discipleship. This is tragic. We don’t judge those like this, we pray for them – that they will gain a new vision of Jesus … such that they leave the ‘old’ behind completely. Jesus is far too extraordinary (and revolutionary) to be restricted to “old wineskins”.

And then (from verses 23-28), Jesus would oppose any practices that blocked people’s access to God. There are certain rules we want to apply, that tend to quench life and block ministry and restrict neighbourliness. The Pharisees took that glorious idea of ‘Sabbath’ rest, and put rules around it, so that the people of the time couldn’t even pluck some grain. Even King David, many centuries before, had to break rules like this when starvation was a possible outcome. The ‘Sabbath’ was never meant to have a negative threat attached to it, rather it was designed to help facilitate healthy life – it was to give time to rest from normal responsibilities to celebrate and worship God. Jesus came to refocus us on what is central in responding to God in the world. Not rules, not empty ritual, but … spiritual freedom, inner healing and a new community. A few heads of grain … really!! Such a small issue compared with Jesus being in town!

Two Applications – personal and collective

We need to open ourselves totally to God. When we accept that great gift of Jesus from the cross … of grace and forgiveness … we need to give God’s Spirit access to everything. There will be guilt, and maybe some shame, to be dealt with … and Jesus is certainly up for that. There will be past hurts, the need to forgive others, and forgive ourselves … we can give all this to Jesus. We might carry all sorts of baggage about the church, God’s people here and there, and even God himself … but there is nothing that Jesus can’t apply grace and love to.

We can tinker with our lives (in our own strength), but still never really get anywhere; or, much better, we go for a total rebuild through God’s Spirit. This might still take a while … happen progressively over time, but we need to decide to go to the starting line. We can lay it out there … what needs to change, confess our sins to one another, and draw much needed community support. Band-aids just won’t cut it – they get wet, wear out, lose their adhesiveness, and fall off. To use yet another analogy … we wouldn’t pour beautiful clean water into dirty bottles. We would not want to cause this level of waste.

A bit of a patch-up job will not be enough. The new patch shrinks and breaks away from the old coat; and as the gases of the new fermenting wine expand, the old wineskin that lacks elasticity … it bursts. If we want to thrive, we can’t contain Jesus to old outmoded “wineskins”, or try to use him as a patch here and there on the problem areas of our lives. We might want to choose what we are still comfortable with, and what we will give Jesus access to; but Jesus doesn’t want to be our occasional ‘Mr Fix-it’, but rather our Saviour and Lord – thoroughly transforming us from the inside-out.

I was a little shocked listening to our friend Michael McCoy talk on “Dream Gardens” last Thursday night, when he agreed with the wisdom of levelling a seemingly decent cottage garden to make way for a very expensive contemporary garden with elaborate pool. On the spot, Michael felt that the old garden was tired and had reached its use-by-date; and that a grander vision which opened the house to a much larger view of the surrounding scenery, was very worthy. Rather than trying to remodel what is broken down or out-of-date, which probably never worked too well for us anyway, we need something entirely new. Jesus cannot be squeezed into old ways – rather he asks new questions and invites new faith.

Churches over the years have got stuck too … stuck in the past. Things that once worked have become deeply entrenched, and still abide even though they don’t work anymore. Things that are peripheral have worked their way to the centre. Just like in Jesus’ time, we can wrap ourselves up in non-essentials, and thus miss where the Spirit is really leading. We might call certain patterns of church ‘old forms’ or ‘old school’, but perhaps certain patterns should never have been there in the first place. What is really worldly and has no place in Christian community? From the fourth century, when the Christian church became politically acceptable and then nationally endorsed, all sorts of things crept in. The church, rather than being the missional movement it was meant to be, has sometimes looked more like an exclusive club – a place where we might push for superiority or fight for our personal preferences.

An exciting movement of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, has been often reduced to an institution that exists simply for its own survival. Rather than building the church on the foundation of Jesus, there is a shuffling of the deckchairs on the “Titanic”. We miss the point that the church is something we become, something together we are, not something we go to (whether regularly or occasionally). Christine Caine puts this most bluntly: Don’t turn church into an institution that competes for your time. It’s not something you go to. The church is who you are. You can’t have a relationship with God outside of His church, because you are born again into His church. That nails things very well.

Do we take this too lightly? Even with the demands of life, as they are, is this the most pertinent challenge we face?? How can we totally reorientate our thinking? What is at stake? Just the integrity of our whole sharing of the ‘good news’. [And this is what our elders and board of deacons have been turning their mind to.] New community, based on the ‘Gospel’ of Jesus, has to be well-modelled. It can’t be a sort of patch-up job, hoping that nobody notices. What we say is ‘good news’, has to actually be ‘good news’. The church, any church, needs to have the Holy Spirit sweep through it. Yet, as we are the church, Christ’s body, all being significant component parts … each of us needs that filling of the Holy Spirit that Jesus offers. The health of the church depends on our openness to a work of God in our lives. This would deal with any suggestion or possibility of just doing our own independent thing.

This is not to say that we are confined to church only – far from it. Most of our mission and ministry as Jesus-followers happens when we are dispersed through the activities of our daily lives. Yet, as part of the ‘body of Christ’, when dispersed throughout most of our lives, we represent not only Jesus, but also his bride … the church. It’s easy to run down certain churches at certain times, but it is much better to be part of setting a higher watermark. Just like that old song (based on good scripture), “We are one in the Spirit, we are one in the Lord; and they will know we are Christians by our love”. And of course this relates to how we view other local churches: “And we pray that our unity will one day be restored”.

A New Opportunity

The great thing is, and we can see this as a great thing, rather than spend all our energy resisting it … that in a very different cultural climate than generations past, we can now present Jesus as one who people are likely to be meeting for the first time (just like in the early church). As Jesus was new then, he is new now! People we encounter, or seek to befriend, may have some negative baggage about the church, but are likely coming to Jesus fresh. It is up to us to present Jesus in an unencumbered way, free of all the ‘tack-ons’.

Jesus seeks to simply draw alongside people, love them, bring them forgiveness, call them to discipleship, bring them into his church, and give them the Holy Spirit. They don’t have to believe what we believe until God prepares them and they are ready. They only need to know that God loves them, and we love them. The practice of love is our only ritual; not criticism, not fault-finding; only encouragement. If we expect others to come and join, we better have our modelling right.

As has been said often, we live in challenging, and sometimes confusing, times. We need the Holy Spirit’s guidance in discerning the difference between engaging the world (which is good) and adopting the world (which has always been problematical). What is healthy, and what might need to be critiqued? We don’t need the government’s help – they are more likely to get in the way of authentic mission (just like it worked out in the fourth century). We only need Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and each other.

The wholly “new creation” … which is us in community … will be experienced by seeing the fruit of the Spirit, concern for the well-being of others, love for God and neighbour, and a commitment to worshipping and serving God together. A new opportunity!