Reflection on Saturday, the 13th week of peacetime
Check out today’s reading here.
Today’s reading is a parable from Matthew’s Gospel, in which John’s disciples ask Jesus why his disciples do not fast. Christ questions the Inquisitor as usual (“Can the wedding guests mourn while the bridegroom is with them?”) and then shows a series of images: a worn cloak mended with “unshrunk cloth,” unfermented wine ruining used wineskins. Jesus then tells John’s disciples to “pour new wine into new wineskins” so that they can both be saved.
First, why parables? A Catholic hearing this Gospel passage from his church pew today might think, “That’s wonderful. Yet another strange story to interpret.” After all, Jesus’ answers to his disciples’ questions come across not as direct answers but as three metaphors that carried different cultural meanings for the primary audience of Matthew’s Gospel, Jewish Christians in the late first century. Protestant New Testament scholar C.H. Dodd points out that parables were commonly used by Jewish teachers in Christ’s time and would have been received only as obscure allegories by non-Jewish audiences. Kingdom ParablesDodd provides perhaps the best known and most concise overview of this particular way of telling a story.
“In its simplest form, a parable is a metaphor or simile drawn from nature or everyday life, which captivates the hearer with its vividness or strangeness, leaves sufficient doubt in the mind as to its exact application, and stimulates active thought.”
For Dodd, the sometimes frustrating ambiguity of the Bible’s parables is a feature, not a flaw, that invites critical thinking and engagement with the text rather than handing the inquisitive person a straightforward answer. In today’s story, Jesus is saying that fasting, which would mean mourning, is not necessary because the Bridegroom, Christ Himself, is still alive. Biblical scholar Craig S. Keener clarifies that Jesus is not condemning the practice of fasting, but is saying that now is not the time (see Ecclesiastes 3).
According to Dodd, Christ’s objection to fasting during a wedding feast is “absurd” because marriage celebrations in Jesus’ day lasted a whole week. Who would fast for seven consecutive days? It would be equally absurd to tear an old cloak by patching it with new cloth, or to burst a wineskin by pouring new wine into an old one.
Dodd writes that Jesus’ call to newness is more akin to Jesus’ public ministry, in which he “brought something entirely new that could not be fitted into the old system.” References to the newness that will come with the Lord’s coming are abundant in both the Old and New Testaments (see Isaiah 65:17; Ephesians 2:15; Hebrews 8:13). For example, in Isaiah 43, the prophet foretells Jesus: “Forget the former things, and do not behold the things that are past: behold, I am doing a new thing!” (18-9).
What does it mean for us as Christians to be new in the Lord? How do we rethink our own bad habits and flawed thinking that, like a worn-out cloak or an old wineskin, cannot nourish the freshness and vitality of God’s living Word?
