8th Sunday of Ordinary Time

Gospel Reading: Mark 2: 18-22

18 One day when John's disciples and the Pharisees were fasting, some people came and said to Jesus, "Why is it that John's disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not?"

19 Jesus replied, "Surely the bridegroom's attendants would never think of fast­ ing while the bridegroom is still with them? As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they could not think of fasting.

20 But the time will come for the bridegroom to be taken away from them, and then, on that day, they will fast.

2l No one sews a piece of unshrunken cloth on an old cloak; if he does, the patch pulls away from it, the new from the old, and the tear gets worse.

22 And nobody puts new wine into old wineskins; if he does, the wine will burst the skins, and the wine is lost and the skins too. No! New wine, fresh skins!"

Meditation

Today's passage teaches us an important lesson about our rela­ tionship with God - it must be rooted in experience, the joy of knowing that we are loved unconditionally.

Without this experi­ ence, religion becomes joyless, and fussy, even cruel - a matter of keeping laws. This is true not only of religion but of all our deep relationships with other people or with a cause to which we have given our lives.

The story of Jesus is a living lesson of this truth, and nowhere more clearly than in today's passage - this is why it is found in all the synoptics.

A lot of the above thoughts come home to us as we think about the situation in the world today. We have our own threats of war, and of unimpeded authority.

These exist not merely in Iraq but also in the former Yugoslavia , in the Basque Countries, Israel/Palestine, in the former republic of the Congo , in Sudan , in Sri Lanka and India / Pakistan.

The passage is in two sections:

•  verses 18-20: a controversy between Jesus' disciples on the one hand and the Pharisees and John's disciples on the other;

•  verses 21-22: two parables taken from everyday events.

The first controversy has two protagonists whom we can recog­ nise from experience.

1. Jesus is the wise and compassionate leader. He is able to keep the balance between

•  experience, the time of celebration, a wedding feast (a cele­ bration of love) when the attendants 'have the bridegroom with them';

•  rules and discipline (fasting), appropriate for the time when 'the bridegroom is taken away.'

He is also the kind of leader who knows he can trust his follow­ ers to find out for themselves when 'the time of fasting' has come.

We remember times when people in bondage tried to fit our free spirits into their narrow categories. We have all done this,

•  as parents, denying to our children opportunities that we ourselves enjoyed;

•  as leaders of communities (including religious communi­ ties);

•  as teachers, spiritual guides, friends.

2. John's disciples and the Pharisees. In Mark's version, by the way, it is not merely the Pharisees themselves who complain but 'some people' who share their narrow-mindedness. Their reli­ gion knows nothing of experience, they only know about disci­pline. As a result, they are narrow-minded, resentful and bitter.

We can see these complainers as people who have become stuck in their ways. We can see them as people who have stayed with positions which we ourselves have long abandoned.

It is better, however, to see them as representing a stage we all go through. The passage then traces our spiritual journey to maturity. We start off in bondage, making discipline an end in itself; we become resentful of those who are having a good time.

One day, Jesus calls us to freedom; we learn how to enjoy our re­ lationship with God, fully aware that another time will come later on when 'the bridegroom will be taken away'. The journey is ongoing.

We constantly fall back into the bondage stage and God must always be sending us Jesus to call us back to freedom. We must feel some compassion for the complainers; we have been there, and there is still something of them in us.

Verses 21 and 22 can be read on their own or as an applic­ ation of the teaching in the previous verses. They refer to two everyday incidents: patching a cloak, and putting new wine into new wineskins.

Here again, the two metaphors are both in story form and we must enter into their movement, feeling the pain of those who do not follow the story and, on the other hand, the joy of those who do. Our church as a whole has had to make this journey.

We have been part of that journey ourselves. We too want to put on a new patch and graft it onto the old, have tried to patch a cloak by adding some old cloth or to put new wine into old wineskins.

Leaders of social movements commit this fault too when they lose the enthusiasm of their first conversion; they be­ come self-important, suspicious and authoritarian towards those they are in charge of.

We feel the pain and hurt of 'both new and old being spoilt'. The narrow-minded suffer from what is said to them and so do the free spirits who are now being held back.

Prayer 

'All I have written is as straw compared to what I have seen.'
St Thomas Aquinas

Lord, we thank you for moments of grace

•  when, in prayer, your presence is very real, almost tangible;

•  when we and our spouse or a friend feel at one with each other;

•  when we experience harmony in the workplace or at home;

•  when everything comes together in our team;

•  when a project on which we have worked hard eventually starts working;

•  when our party gains a resounding victory at the polls.

At such times, we do the right thing spontaneously without anybody telling us what to do, without having to make an effort, without needing rules.

It is like being at a wedding feast, with bride and groom going around to all the guests, the music playing and everyone having a good time being free and spontaneous.

We thank you for wise people like Jesus

- parents, priests and religious, friends, employers

•  who encourage us to enjoy these good times,

•  who don't spoil things by reminding us that the euphoria will not last.

They know and we know that a time will come when the feast will be over, bride and groom will take off for their home and we will have to get back to rules and discipline.

'When you don't know what to do, have a party. '
Jim Wallis, Christian campaigner for non-violence in the US

Lord, you often send us free-spirited people, in our church communities, neighbourhoods, and within our families.

They ignore the rules but seem very happy and fulfilled and attract many people, while we who have kept rules don't enjoy ourselves as they do.

We are resentful, like John's disciples, the Pharisees and those who accompanied them when they complained to Jesus about his disciples not fasting.

Send us wise and compassionate teachers like Jesus who will help us to understand that we have forgotten the purpose of rules, and will invite us to celebrate the beautiful relationships we have and remember the times when life was like a great wedding feast.

'We are so busy doing things for God that we don't have any time for God.' Michael Hollings

Lord, you know how easy it is for us to get our priorities wrong, in our families, church communities, neighbourhoods, schools, workplaces:

•  we focus so much on good order that people don't feel at home with us;

•  work becomes an end in itself rather than a way to achieve wellbeing;

•  spontaneity is stifled by rules.

Send us Jesus who will show us that the most effective way of ensuring the right balance is to have moments of feasting, and when these are finished, then we will have our rules.

'Some men look at the world as it is and ask, 'Why?' Others dream of worlds that have never been thought of and ask, 'Why not?"
George Bernard Shaw

Lord, there are always those among us who do things differently, work out new solutions, dream new dreams, put forward possibilities that we never thought of.

Forgive us that as a church, as parents, or teachers, we try to fit them into our categories

* like unshrunken cloth on an old cloak which pulls away the new from the old, so that the tear gets worse; or like new wine into old wineskins which bursts the skins . the wine is lost and the skins too.

Send us wise teachers like Jesus who will remind us

That a cloak must be patched with new cloth

And new wine is for new wineskins.

Lord forgive us that like the Pharisees and John's disciples we allowed your joyful world to become a sad place where only those who work hard and produce are honoured, and ev erybody must conform to the norms and be respectable, with little room for spontaneity,.

Social mov ements we embraced with enthusiasm in time have been corrupted by ambition, anger and violence.

The glorious message of Jesus we have turned into a joyless list of do's and don'ts.

In our church we have become suspicious of one another the world, and especially of those we see enjoying themselves.

Forgive us especially for bringing up young people into our ways, projecting our fears onto them, patching a cloak with old cloth and putting into old wineskins this sparkling new wine you have given us.

We pray that our church will be a place of freedom and festivity, a great wedding feast, where fasting is a temporary exercise that keeps us awake as we await the joyful return of the bridegroom.