New Wine, Old Whines – Saturday, 13^th week in ordinary time – 4^th July 2026 – Matthew 9:14-17

Today, we are in the second teaching on discipleship. Jesus has called Matthew and now he and his friends are feasting with Jesus much to the disapproval of the Pharisees. But these attacks must not be seen in isolation. Chapter nine sees three sets of people attacking Jesus. It begins with the scribes in verse three, then the Pharisees in verse eleven and now in our text of today we have the disciples of John the Baptist himself.

The last group comes across as a shocker! Why would the disciples of Jesus’ cousin themselves criticize Jesus? Let us hypothetically, but rather safely put it down to sour grapes and a dwindling congregation. While we have sufficient evidence to show that the Baptists (followers of John) were certainly popular during Jesus’ lifetime, the fact that Jesus was drawing crowds could only mean that he was drawing crowds from their following.

They now join the Pharisees in taking on Jesus. Note the line of questioning, ‘why do your disciples not fast but we, the Pharisees and the disciples of John, fast?’ There are two things to observe here. First, they are not directly accusing Jesus but pointing fingers at his disciples. In short, they are subtly stating that the disciples are ‘bad’ because the master is bad. Guilt by association is the oldest trick in the critic’s playbook. Targeting the flock is a cowardly way to attack the Shepherd.

Secondly, this is a case of ‘spiritual one up-manship’. In making this statement, they are effectively telling Jesus, ‘We are spiritually better than you.’ The disciples of John clung so tightly to the voice in the wilderness that they missed the Word in the room. 

What really is the purpose of fasting? Jesus never explicitly gave specific instructions on fasting or on the days one ought to fast. He did though give a teaching on how we ought NOT to fast. In Matthew 5:16 he did tell us that fasting is not a matter of IF you fast but a matter of ‘whenever’ you fast. The ‘whenever’ may knock off the feeling of an obligation but that is not the case.

Jesus is taking to a Jewish audience and for them fasting was part of their religious DNA. He does however, correct the intention of their fasts; gloomy looks on days of fasting does not please God, especially if the fasting is done to win men’s favour. When it came to fasting, Jesus did not command the calendar, rather he addressed the heart. True spiritual disciplines are driven by hunger for God, not a duty to a date.

Yet the impression that one would get from today’s text would seem to indicated that fasting was a necessary and integral requirement of the Jewish law. While today, pious Jews are mandated to fast six times a year; the only fast that was stipulated in the Old Testament was the Day of Atonement. The fasting, practiced by the Jews at the time of Jesus, was merely a traditional religious practice. The Pharisees however observed additional fasts on the second and fifth day of the week and imposed the same on everyone else.

But the apparent public rap on the knuckles for Jesus was clearly an attempt to name and shame Our Lord in order to get him to fall in line with main stream religious leadership. The goal of religious peer pressure is never transformation; it is always subjugation. It is for this reason that Jesus is forced to take them on in response to their hostility.  

Jesus responds with not one but two examples to answer their claims. These are found in verses, fifteen to seventeen. Here is the point that Jesus was making. Jesus has come to bring the Good News of the Kingdom of God. This ‘GOOD NEWS’ was also ‘NEW NEWS’ and all things new are resisted at first.

The religious establishment wanted a rehearsal of the past, but Jesus brought a revolution for the future. Jesus understands their reluctance to accept his new message but insists that this new message needs a new and open mind just as new wine needs new wineskins. People will fiercely defend a dying system just to avoid a dynamic shift.

Is Jesus thus dismissing the Old Law and traditions? Absolutely not! Time and time again, and we read this in Chapter 5: 1, he has said he has not come to abolish the law and the prophets but to fulfil it. One of his examples in verse 16 helps us to understand his message better. Jesus says, “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.

The Greek word for patch is pleroma also translated as fullness and the Greek word for tear is schima from where you get the word schism. What Jesus is saying is that his message (the patch) is the fullness. The old coat is good but to take that and stitch a patch (new message of Jesus) would cause a tear when the patch ‘pulls away’, causing a tear (schism) between the Jews and the Jewish Christians.

In verse seventeen he reverses the order. No one puts new wine (his teachings) into old wineskins (the Jewish Law and Prophets). His new message cannot be force fit into the traditional ways of thinking. But lest you being to think that Jesus is dismissing one for the other look carefully, he is not. He is holding and preserving both while calling for a new way of thinking a new and personal approach to God.

The point of the illustrations, is to bring about a change in the approach to faith and religion in the minds of the religious establishment. This was not some novelty that Jesus was introducing for the sake of attracting people to his ministry. Our Lord was not hunting for headlines; He was correcting the heart.  This was good practical advice to his peers who were misguided by their own religious thinking and expressions of piety. His examples were common sense insights taken from daily life.

One should not assume that Jesus is merely some itinerant preacher running around trying to subvert traditional practices by introducing something completely new. He is here to align the real practice of the faith with what God wants for His people. Faith is not about maintaining a system; it is about maturing a people. These human religious traditions often have little to do with God and much to do with pandering to human need. Man-made traditions often serve human egos while starving the divine purpose.

Jesus’ teachings are new and bold and aligned with the will of God. They are not some patchworks of thought to be attached to the traditional practices of the Jewish establishment. They demand a newness of both wine and wineskins. As the teachings are ‘new,’ the receivers of this good news must also put on a ‘new mind’. The old boundaries cannot contain the new reality of God’s reign coming near in Jesus.

Reflecting on this, we need to find a balance in the way the Church grows. There is much in the rich tradition of the Catholic liturgy that is beautiful and very meaningful. Change for the sake of novelty is a danger. Yet to simply cling on to celebrating a mass at right angles can be the reason that hinders people from connecting to this community celebration. The beauty of the liturgy is meant to mirror heaven, not isolate earth. Virtue lies in the middle.

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