The New Wineskins

As I found myself being drawn toward that passage about new wine requiring new wineskins (Matthew 9:17),  I felt a need to run to the commentary for language about wine is like reading another language.  I have no experience with wine.  Well, actually there was a time when I was a young preacher and had some wine every month for two years.  The occasion for drinking wine was Holy Communion.  The Tennille United Methodist Church, unlike most churches, had a long standing tradition of using wine instead of grape juice for Communion.  But, it was no ordinary wine.  As the communion steward often said, "It is imported from the Holy Land."     

So, being such a novice when it comes to wine, what I might surmise about wine and wineskins may not be absolutely accurate.  What I figure is that new wine has to have room for continued fermentation, or growth; thus, the old wineskins would burst under the pressure.  New wineskins would have more flexibility and could handle the chemical change taking place with the new wine.  While research may reveal a more detailed explanation, the simplicity of my suppositions works for me.    

In the broadest sense Jesus was surely talking about this new message we know as the gospel and the way it could not be contained within the old religious structures.  It was new and would require new ways of thinking, new ways of being, and a new way of understanding the way people were to live with one another.  The Kingdom of God which He preached would require something more than the Temple and the old ways it caused people to embrace.  Something so new was happening nothing would ever be the same.