7th September 2012 Luke 5:33-end

They said to him, “John’s disciples often fast and pray, and so do the disciples of the Pharisees, but yours go on eating and drinking.” Jesus answered, “Can you make the friends of the bridegroom fast while he is with them? But the time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them; in those days they will fast.” He told them this parable: “No one tears a piece out of a new garment to patch an old one. Otherwise, they will have torn the new garment, and the patch from the new will not match the old. And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the new wine will burst the skins; the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, new wine must be poured into new wineskins. And no one after drinking old wine wants the new, for they say, ‘The old is better.’”

Jesus is explaining how the fasting is about the past and how He is about the future. He is referring to himself as the new and to the rituals of the Jewish faith as the old and explaining how it was not necessary to follow the rituals when the disciples were with Jesus. But now we are in a place where the rituals are old and Jesus is no longer with us on earth; how then do we read this parable? We read it knowing that the Holy Spirit is still with us and that through the power of the spirit we worship, we do not need the old rituals, we are renewed.