New Wineskins

Mark 2:22

And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the wine will burst the skins--and the wine is destroyed, and so are the skins. But new wine is for fresh wineskins.

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In our introduction to the Gospel of Mark, we noticed some of the unique characteristics of this gospel and it's overall emphasis upon the kingdom of God, as summarized in Mark 1:15. Now, we come to a somewhat cryptic verse about wineskins in chapter 2 which hopefully will shed more light on what this new kingdom is all about. We will approach this passage as a parable, since the version in Luke 5 explicitly calls it such. And, we will utilize the tools for parable interpretation that we learned while studying Matthew -- especially looking at the immediate narrative context and the synoptic parallels.

1. Immediate Narrative Context. Jesus is in the beginning stages of his Galilean ministry. He has dramatically healed a paralytic in front of a vast crowd, and in the process, claimed the authority to forgive sins (2:10). He has called Levi the tax collector to be his follower, and then proceeded to have fellowship with a whole room full of "sinners." And, the chapter ends with a shocking reinterpretation of the Sabbath, in which Christ claims to be Lord of the Sabbath and the final arbiter of its meaning and purpose. It is in this context of paradigm-shifting events and teaching that we find the parable of the wineskins.

What the context tells us about the parable confirms the interpretation of the wineskins as representing religious paradigms. In other words, the old wineskins represent the rabbinic customs and regulations that have been built up around God's law over the centuries; the new wineskins represent the kingdom of God which is being inaugurated by Christ. Christ's teaching is the new wine, and so we are here learning that we cannot fit His truth into our preconceived religious paradigms. We must conform completely to His reality, not the other way around.

2. Synoptic Parallels. Matthew's version of this parable is essentially the same, but Luke's version adds another verse which, at first sight, appears to contradict our initial interpretation:

And no one after drinking old wine desires new, for he says, "The old is good."

This appears to be an affirmation of the Jewish religious paradigm which was criticized in the previous verses! However, there is a simple explanation for this -- the statement is descriptive, rather than prescriptive. In other words, Jesus is describing the common experience of preferring old wine over new (or old teaching over new). He is NOT prescribing such a preference, but rather saying that the religious leaders have no desire for the new teaching, since they are entrenched in their love for the old. (If you are familiar with the interpretation of Solomon's Proverbs, you will better understand this descriptive/prescriptive dichotomy.)

While this passage about this wineskins is still bound to its cultural context and a rather foreign illustration to our modern ears, we do have tools to build a substantial understanding of what it means for us today. We can say with certainty that Jesus is using this illustration to critique the entrenched religious paradigm of the day. And, we can say with certainty that Jesus is calling each of us to question our own paradigm and make sure that we are not trying to fit Jesus' teaching into a preconceived religious mold. If we do so, the mold and the teaching will both be useless -- "the wine is destroyed, and so are the skins."