Over the years, I’ve learned to go to the reception. I’m not a party person. So as a young pastor I had the notion that I could perform a wedding, wish the couple God’s blessing, say goodbye and then go home and be done. I would skip the reception with all its waiting for the bride and groom to show, too rich and/or too sweet food, loud music, and silly traditions like tossing bouquets and garters.
I quickly discovered that skipping the reception left me out of something key to that man and woman’s lives at that moment. Pastoral care was not complete with just the wedding service. It was important to join in the celebration, to eat some wedding cake (which I really don’t mind) and to lift a glass of punch in a toast. Some wonderful and new was beginning there and it was not right to hold oneself aloof from the joy being expressed.
Something like but deeper than my lesson about wedding receptions was being taught to those who questioned Jesus about why His disciples did not fast, as we read in Mark 2:18-22 this week.
The inquiry probably came from ordinary people who observed that the disciples of John the Baptist and the disciples of the Pharisees both observed a traditional weekly fast, on Mondays and Thursdays for the Pharisees. However, Jesus’ disciples did not join in this practice. The implication was that the ministry of Jesus must somehow be suspect if His followers were lacking in this visible measure of devotion. Fasting, along with giving alms and prayer, was one of the pillars of Jewish practice at the time.
Jesus took the opportunity to highlight the uniqueness of His person and ministry with three brief parables. First, there’s the image I began with, that one does not abstain from or at a wedding feast. Jesus the bridegroom is present and so His followers join in the party. Then there are a couple of tiny parables about not sewing a patch of new cloth on an old garment or putting new wine in old wineskins. The point is clearly that the fresh beginning found in Jesus could not be confined to the old forms of the Judaism of His time.
The question for us is what application to make of these little parables and the overall story about fasting. It’s easy for those who are young and iconoclastic to suppose that Jesus was giving license here for the overthrowing of all tradition and structure in Christian life and worship. They suppose that an exciting encounter with Jesus must always dispense with old garments and be poured into fresh containers of practice, song, etc., leaving all the old ways (and the old folks) behind.
However, in verse 20 Jesus clearly assumes that there will be a time after His ascension when the traditional practice of fasting will resume among His disciples. The call for new wineskins to contain the Good News of the Gospel is not a total iconoclasm and rejection of the past. Jesus is not declaring that forms and traditions are bad, only that His mission of redemption takes precedence over them.
The point of the text is that we not miss the joy of life in Christ because of an inflexible adherence to established practice. We must especially avoid a rigid legalism regarding our spiritual disciplines. It’s a good thing to remember in the midst of Lent.
The Bridegroom has come. Let’s not miss the reception.