Dear one,
Recently I read a line, which I had no recollection having ever read. In this instance, I don’t think it was a question of a mental relapse; rather, it most probably was a line I sped beyond, determining that it might well lie in the dust. Either that, or for a moment I had become functionally illiterate, to which in certain circumstances I am fully susceptible.
The line is this: “And no one after drinking old wine desires new wine, but says, ‘The old is good.’”
In no way am I a wine aficionado, but I can well imagine that an aged wine is rich and mellow, smooth and “full-bodied”—I at least know the lingo; whereas a new wine has zest and zing, and is lively and light—perhaps I really don’t know the lingo …
At any rate, the afore-mentioned line is Jesus’, words He spoke in response to a question regarding fasting and prayer. That is, He’d been asked why His disciples did not fast and pray, like those of the religious leaders. In essence He said: “You don’t sew new, un-shrunken cloth to old cloth already shrunken; and you don’t put new wine in old wine skins. If you do, you invite unnecessary problems and loss.”
In the context of Luke 5:27 – 6:5, Jesus was establishing a marked contrast between Himself and the religious leaders; between new and old; between “gospel” and “law,” and was clearly identifying Himself as “the new” … and then He offered: “And no one, drinking old desires new, for s(he) says, ‘The old is good.’” (Luke 5:39, my translation.)
The word translated “good” (χρηστός/ chrestos) can also mean “useful,” and “kind.”[1] However, and as playful speculation, the word “good” is very close to the word “Christ” (χριστός/ christos), and so perhaps He was intimating that the religious leaders’ “old Christ” was not who He is as the “new Christ.” Whether or not playful, Jesus nonetheless indicated that the old is good, perhaps even pleasing and comfortable, but—and now shifting beyond parable and metaphor—if one wants to truly be alive, then the new of His way will engender life, whereas the old won't.
Certainly for the decades of my life, we Americans have been enthralled with “the new.” After all, we are “the new world,” and in our newness we regularly ask: “What’s new?” or “What’s the news?” revealing our preoccupation with the latest style, catastrophe, gizmo, or scandal. And yet, in 1850 Nathaniel Hawthorne exposed the lie of our “newness,” when he published A Scarlet Letter, portraying American behavior, mores, and tendencies as differing little from those of “old” Europe. Admittedly, some of our American differences are “better,” and yet, in truth Hawthorne was echoing that Old Testament cynic: “There is nothing new under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 1:9)—and Washington D.C. regularly displays this Old Testament perspective.
If you and I desire whatever is “rich and smooth,” then the “old” may well satisfy, until the bottle empties; but if we desire the “new” Jesus offers, then we will do well to follow Him and His “new-world” way—a way the “old” continually tries to “mellow-out.”
Stan
[1] A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, Danker, ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), p. 1090.