A Reflection for Saturday of the Thirteenth Week in Ordinary Time
Find today’s readings here.
The disciples of John approached Jesus and said,
"Why do we and the Pharisees fast much,
but your disciples do not fast?"
Jesus answered them, "Can the wedding guests mourn
as long as the bridegroom is with them?
The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them,
and then they will fast.
No one patches an old cloak with a piece of unshrunken cloth,
for its fullness pulls away from the cloak and the tear gets worse.
People do not put new wine into old wineskins.
Otherwise the skins burst, the wine spills out, and the skins are ruined.
Rather, they pour new wine into fresh wineskins, and both are preserved." (Matthew 9:14-17)
There are times in the Gospels when it becomes clear that Jesus is very real.
I was at the Jesuitical retreat this past weekend providing some technical support. While there, I was privileged to be able to hear some wisdom from the show’s hosts Zac Davis and Ashley McKinless, and they answered a question about why they framed this retreat around the concept of storytelling. They said that, besides the fact that it seems that there is a dearth of writing among adults today, it was because Jesus himself was a storyteller. He could have chosen to deliver his teachings as speeches or as a lecture, but instead he decided to communicate them through parables, short stories meant to impart a lesson.
We love stories because we can relate to them. Jesus understood this, which is why he used parables so often. In this particular passage from Matthew, we see that Jesus utilizes the little relatable things that everyone gets. Everyone knows what it’s like to celebrate someone at a wedding, everyone knows what it’s like to try to mend something but then only make it worse, everyone knows what it’s like to waste a bottle of wine. In talking about these things, Jesus answers the question of why the disciples don’t fast.
It also points to another aspect of Jesus’ humanity: his focus on joy. He acknowledges that, yes, there is a time and place for sadness, but in the moment, one should focus on the good things. Never let the inevitability of hard times ahead get in the way of enjoying the present moment.
“People do not put new wine into old wineskins,” he says. “Otherwise the skins burst, the wine spills out, and the skins are ruined. Rather, they pour new wine into fresh wineskins, and both are preserved.”
It is one of my favorite things about Jesus, and proof of his nature as fully divine but also fully human, that he can point to these ordinary things. We are all born to be storytellers, from the moment we start excitedly telling our parents about bugs we found in the garden or when you’re in college delivering an essay or when you’re writing a Scripture reflection like I am right now.
Be like Jesus and remember: The best way to reach people is to relate to them.
