Eighth Sunday of Ordinary Time
February 26, 2006


How comfortable are you with the status quo?

Last year marked the most active hurricane season in the Atlantic and Caribbean area in recorded history. (If you were in the Soulard area of St. Louis, I also hear that yesterday was the most active day in their Hurricane Season – but that’s another kind of hurricane and another kind of story…) After running through our English letters, we began running through the Greek alphabet. It was a stormy year. If there is an upside to all this, at least we now can see Hurricanes forming from a long way off, and can evacuate people, can do our best to prepare for them. We now know when the storm is coming.

Today’s gospel passage from Mark begins the ‘hurricane season’ in Jesus’ life. While the crowds are rejoicing in the various cures and healings and exorcisms and popularity of Jesus, the religious leaders were brewing a storm of jealously on the horizon. And it seemed such a simple question. “Why don’t the disciples of Jesus fast, like the disciples of John the Baptist and the Pharisees?” Deep down, it was not a question about religious practice, though. It was a question about identity. “Who are you, Jesus, to turn our world upside down with your teaching and your actions. How dare you upset our power base, our comfort level, and our status quo?” By his actions, Jesus was passing out new wine that needed new skins. The old wine grumbled… We’ve always done it this way.

If I am honest with myself, I too, am resistant to change. Perhaps we all are. There is a comfort level to same-ness. Try sitting at a different place at the dinner table tonight and see what happens… We know what we like. We like what we know. To have someone call us to change feels like a huge letting go. And that is precisely what Jesus was doing. There is a different wine, a new way of looking and seeing and living called the kingdom, Jesus tells us. Because I have seen it and tasted it, I will not stop. Because I know a different way to understand who God is and who we are together, like a ship in a storm, I have set my course right through the waves. Though I can see the storm on the horizon, there will be no evacuation from this course of action. Though the brewing storm would eventually cost him his life, though he could have avoided it, he stays…

But what is more tragic about the storm is that it need not have been. Those in power did not listen closely enough to Jesus. They concluded that Jesus did not care about the old, that he was the complete rebel, the complete iconoclast. Instead, his intention was to care for both – the new wine and the old wine skins. Don’t put the one in the other, because then BOTH will be lost. There is a value to tradition, there is a strength in time tested truth. And there is a power and inspiration in the new, an enthusiasm that works through the difficult issues of this world. Reform, don’t destroy. Let the old imbue the new. Let the new bring strength and vigor to the old.

In my own life, one of the places where I run into that is on the Archdiocesan priest council. On that council, I see both the old wineskins and the new wine, interacting, exchanging views, trying to be faithful, trying to love this Archdiocese. I see how good people can be threatened by the new, or challenged by the old. And like Jesus – I pray to know how to save both the wine and the skins.

A little earlier on tonight, those who were on the Awakening retreat did some reflecting on the experience of the ‘retreat bubble’. The retreat was like New Wine, perhaps, pouring in God’s love in a new experience. But once you got back, the old wine skins, the old habits sometimes get in the way. And you know the struggle of the gospel. What within needs to change, be adapted, so that this ‘old wine’ of habits will not miss the opportunity of grace before you? How can I keep what I’ve newly experienced growing in response to the offer of grace given? New wine, old skins. Old habits, new grace… how do I preserve them both?

So, this week, perhaps in preparation for the season of Lent, spend some time with the question asked of Jesus – about fasting – what will my practice be? But also spend time with the deeper question – how am I to love the old yet be open to the new. How will I become a newer wineskin for God to pour his love into? And then, whether it is a hurricane or a short storm on the horizon, we may keep our eyes fixed upon the one who comes to us here at this table – with new wine for our hearts and lives. Amen…