Daily Devotional • October 8
A Reading from Matthew 9:9-17
9 As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax-collection station, and he said to him, “Follow me.” And he got up and followed him.
10 And as he sat at dinner in the house, many tax collectors and sinners came and were sitting with Jesus and his disciples. 11 When the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” 12 But when he heard this, he said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. 13 Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous but sinners.”
14 Then the disciples of John came to him, saying, “Why do we and the Pharisees fast often, but your disciples do not fast?” 15 And Jesus said to them, “The wedding attendants cannot mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them, can they? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast. 16 No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old cloak, for the patch pulls away from the cloak, and a worse tear is made. 17 Neither is new wine put into old wineskins; otherwise, the skins burst, and the wine is spilled, and the skins are ruined, but new wine is put into fresh wineskins, and so both are preserved.”
Meditation
Jesus tells the parable of the wineskins in response to a question about the legalistic fasting practices of the Pharisees. As wine, stored in animal skins, ferments, it expands and stretches the animal skin. Fresh wineskins are supple and flexible, and can stretch as needed; old wineskins are stiff and brittle, and will burst rather than stretch, spilling out the wine. Therefore, new wine must go into new wineskins. Jesus is signaling that his New Covenant is radically different and won’t fit neatly within their old ways. To embody Jesus’ new way, the disciples–and all of Jesus’ followers–must be willing to stretch and grow and become something entirely new.
In Greek, there are two words for “new”: “neos” and “kainos.” Neos suggests something that is new in a temporal sense–something very recently made. Kainos suggests something that is new in a qualitative sense–different from anything that existed before it. In this parable, Jesus says that neos (recently made) wine must be put into kainos (new in nature, unprecedented) wineskins. Similarly, Paul declares that in Christ, we are a kainos creation (2 Corinthians 5:17). And in Revelation, we are told that our Lord is making all things kainos (Revelation 21:5).
For followers of Christ, being made “new” is not a do-over, like the restoration of a classic car to its original state. It is a process of transformation, continually stretching and reshaping us into something kainos, something radically different. This is an ongoing process, if we allow it to be. It is up to us to keep our wineskins soft and flexible–through prayer, study, sacrament, humility and openness to change–so that Christ may continue to work in us, revealing new things in us: new growth, new understanding, new purpose, new faith. Every day, a kainos creation
Monica Coakley is an Assisting Priest at Luminous Parish in Franklin, TN and also provides pastoral care to men on Tennessee’s death row. She lives with her family on a small farm and hoards books and yarn.
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Daily Devotional Cycle of Prayer
Today we pray for:
Church of the Holy Trinity, Vicksburg, Mississippi
