The Word Today.

Luke 5:33-39

Some people asked him, “The disciples of John fast often and say long prayers, and so do the disciples of the Pharisees. Why is it that your disciples eat and drink?” Then Jesus said to them, “You can’t make wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them. But later the bridegroom will be taken from them, and they will fast in those days.” Jesus also told them this parable: “No one tears a piece from a new coat to put it on an old one; otherwise the new will be torn, and the piece taken from the new will not match the old. No one puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise the new wine will burst the skins and be spilled, and the skins will be destroyed as well. But new wine must be put into fresh skins. Yet no one who has tasted old wine is eager to drink new wine, but says, ‘The old is good.’”

Jesus paints himself as the bridegroom in his response to the question asked of him in our Gospel passage today. While the bridegroom is present, the wedding guests do not need to fast. When one is with Christ, the bridegroom, there is no need for anything else but what pleases the bridegroom.

It is only when the wedding guests are separated from the bridegroom, when the bridegroom will be taken from them, that the guests need to fast and sacrifice. We can be separated from Christ by sin. In these occasions, we need to do all things within our power, including fasting and sacrifice, to remove the things which separate us from Christ, so that we may again be like wedding guests in the presence of the bridegroom.

Jesus was teaching things about God which the people of his time found to be different from the things they were previously taught. Countless rules and practices were taught as part of the worship of God. Matters of personal hygiene, like washing the hands before eating, prohibitions against eating fish without scales, and other matters like these became part of religious rituals and obligations. The teaching of Jesus was like a “new coat.” To tear a part of it would damage the new coat and would not match the old one. What Jesus taught was like new wine that would burst an old skin. But those who have learned and gotten used to the old teachings would say, “The old is good.” And they went to the extent of crucifying the one who taught the really important things about God.

Lord Jesus, give us the grace to walk with you always, and remove the things which may separate us from you.