- Father Bob Williams, C.S.B. -

One day John’s disciples and the Pharisees were fasting; and people came and said to Jesus, “Why do John’s disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?”

Jesus said to them, “The wedding guests cannot fast while the bridegroom is with them, can they? As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast. The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast on that day.

“No one sews a piece of unshrunken cloth on an old cloak; otherwise, the patch pulls away from it, the new from the old, and a worse tear is made. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and the wine is lost, and so are the skins; but one puts new wine into fresh wineskins.” (Mark 2:18-22)

The above passage is part of an escalating conflict between the religious authorities and Jesus. In it we find some people in the crowd confront Jesus directly for the first time with the challenge, “Why do John’s disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?”

According to Mosaic Law there was only one day in the year prescribed for fasting, which was Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. It was a solemn day of repentance for sin, marked by profound sorrow. Public fasts were added later on occasions of national mourning such as the death of a leader and in time of natural disasters such as plagues. These fasts were also intrinsically associated with occasions of sorrow. Private fasts were a matter or personal devotion, often performed in preparation for an important task or to seek God’s aid and forgiveness. Jesus fasted forty days before beginning his mission; the early Church fasted for special intentions. Pharisees fasted publicly twice weekly.

In asking why his disciples do not fast, the scribes and Pharisees infer Jesus is lax as a religious leader. Jesus replies in marital imagery, referring to himself as a groom. He asks how the wedding guests can fast while the groom is still with them, conjuring up some of the human heart’s happiest memories: those of a wedding feast.

In Scripture the kingdom of God is often compared to a bridal banquet because humankind is at its happiest and best when surrounded at table by the family and friends they love. With this direct allusion to a wedding feast and himself as groom, Jesus informs his antagonists that the kingdom of God has in fact dawned upon the world in his very person.

Since the Jewish people had also come to identify messianic times with the abundance and overflowing typically associated with a wedding banquet, Jesus further suggests he is the Messiah. In light of the good news that the kingdom of God has broken forth and messianic times have arrived, therefore, there can be no time or cause for fasting. Only later when he is taken away (a reference to his death), will fasting be an appropriate response.

Jesus then follows up with two parables about cloth and wineskins, each of which draws a contrast between the new and the old. A pressing problem for early Christians was whether they were obliged to observe the Mosaic Law as well as the Christian law, to follow the old and the new. These parables about old and new helped toward the solution. Jesus had come to fulfill Old Testament law, not to destroy it. But his teaching went so far beyond the Mosaic Law that the old ways often could not keep up.

Moses had taught an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. He did so to introduce a note of proportionality and curb the excessive vengeance and violence prevalent in his day. When Jewish ethics fully accepted the idea of proportionality, Jesus then invited people to a higher morality: turn the other cheek, walk the extra mile.

The Old Testament says love your fellow countrymen. With twelve disparate tribes, that proved difficult at first. The Exodus experience helped to pull the tribes together but it was not until David that all twelve tribes finally united as one nation. When they came to accept each other, Jesus then challenged them a mighty step further: love your enemies, do good to those who hate you.

In these and in so many other areas, what Moses began and the Jewish people eventually accepted as normative, Jesus brought to completion, eventually summing up all of the Old Testament law and prophets in the two commandments of perfect love: love of God and love of neighbour. Since all the Old Testament is directed precisely at this goal, Jesus thereby fulfilled the law and prophets. Thus in fulfilling Jesus’ law of perfect love, Christians came to realize they also fulfilled all the essentials of the Mosaic Law. Jesus and the Pharisees, however, couldn’t have been farther apart in their approach to religion. The Pharisees’ compulsion for specifics complicated religious observance and led to an endless multiplication of laws and requirements.

Jesus on the other hand, worked to simplify religious practice by identifying basic attitudes that would cover all eventualities. The two approaches were completely incompatible and simply could not coexist, as Jesus explains with the two brief parables in today’s Scripture reading. Both makes exactly the same point but each is gender-specific.

The first image is intended for women who in those days were responsible for making and maintaining their families’ clothes. Cloth in ancient times did not come preshrunk, if one tried to use new cloth (Jesus’ approach) to patch old cloth (the Pharisees’ approach), the new cloth would shrink at the first washing and tear the old cloth apart. Every women in the audience would immediately grasp the folly of the endeavour.

The second image is directed at men whose task it was to grow the grapes and make the wine. Wine was fermented and stored in animal skins. New skins were pliable and could withstand the pressure of fermentation. But old skins dried with age, lost their elasticity, and were apt to explode under pressure. No vintner would entrust new wine (Jesus’ teaching) to old skins (the Pharisees’ tradition), as all the men in the audience would fully understand.

The point of today’s Gospel and its two parables, then, is that Jesus came to build, not to destroy. But his message was unfortunately incompatible with the rigid Pharisaical norms common at the time. Let us pray that we not insist that God conform to our ways as the Pharisees did but rather that we always be docile to the Spirit and humbly submit to God’s will in every aspect of our lives.

***