Jesus said, “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 9:17
Drawing on Jesus’ teaching about the importance of new wineskins, Richard Rohr reflects on how difficult it is to be truly open to something new:
Christians have often preached a gospel largely comprised of words, attitudes, and inner salvation experiences. People say they are saved, they are “born again,” yet how do we really know if someone is saved? Are they actually following Jesus? Do they love the poor? Are they free from their egos? Are they patient in the face of persecution?
It’s not enough to talk about some kind of new inebriating wine, some new ideas. Without new wineskins—changed institutions, systems, and structures—I would argue that transformation cannot be deep or lasting. As Dorothy Day wrote in her inimitable style, “We need to overthrow … this rotten … industrial capitalist system which breeds such suffering.” [1] Personal “salvation” cannot be divorced from social and systemic implications.
It’s easier to talk about the wine without the wineskins, to talk about salvation theories without any new world order. Unfortunately, Christianity has not always had a positive impact on Western civilization and the peoples it has colonized or evangelized. So-called Christian nations are often the most militaristic, greedy, and untrue to the teacher we claim to follow. Our societies are more often based not upon the servant leadership that Jesus modeled, but on the common domination and control model that produces racism, classism, sexism, power seeking, and income inequality.
That’s not to say our ancestors didn’t have faith, that our grandparents weren’t good people, or that the church hasn’t done much good. But, with notable exceptions, we Christians didn’t produce radical change in culture or institutions or operate all that differently. Christianity has shaped some wonderfully liberated saints, prophets, and mystics. They tried to create some new wineskins, but often the church itself resisted their calls to structural reform. Take, for example, Saint Francis of Assisi, the father and founder of my own religious community. He was marginalized as a bit of a fanatic or eccentric by mainline Catholicism, as illustrated by no Pope ever taking his name until our present Pope Francis.
Even today many Christians keep Jesus on a seeming pedestal, worshiping a caricature on a cross or a bumper-sticker slogan while avoiding what Jesus said and did. We keep saying, “We love Jesus,” but more as a God-figure than as someone to imitate. It seems the more we talk about Jesus, the less time we have to do what he said.
References:
[1] Dorothy Day, “On Pilgrimage,” The Catholic Worker 23, no. 2 (September 1956): 6.
Adapted from Richard Rohr, Jesus’ Alternative Plan: The Sermon on the Mount (Franciscan Media, 1996, 2022), 30–32.
Image credit and inspiration: Earl Wilcox, Untitled (detail), 2021, photo, Unsplash. Click here to enlarge image. Like a potter creating a bowl out of clay, this moment shapes us.
Story from Our Community:
I volunteer for a program that provides emotional support and respite for caregivers of loved ones suffering from Alzheimer’s or dementia. We provide therapeutic art activities, movement, music, socialization. After a difficult day, my fellow volunteers and I joke about deserving a raise for our work. It makes us laugh, because, well, 10% of nothing is still nothing. Our true reward are things like sharing a simple smile with someone who has been struggling. My work here sometimes feels like a good example of paradox. It’s both difficult and so very easy. We don’t get paid and yet we are rewarded profoundly. Kindness and humor feel like the threads that hold us together.
—John M.
