Got Any Wineskins?

My morning time today used the image of putting new wine into old wineskins and how that "won't work" because evidently new wine is still "doing its thing" and the fermentation will break open the old wineskins. I've never talked to anyone who owned wineskins but I think I get it.

I like routines. I usually go the same way home over and over again. Betsy is always wanting to take a different route to the beach...me...same way all the time. "Why don't you try a different way," she says? "Cause I want to get there and I'm comfortable with not having to think about where I'm going."

Meanwhile she's over in the driver's seat looking at the map pondering and suggesting alternate ways. I just keep driving...the same old way.

The truth is I get there but I do miss what might be something along the way that could be, according to Betsy, exciting. I guess I don't want to put anything new in my "non-existent"old wineskins.

This might be OK for travel routes but when it comes to the "explosive nature of a new gospel" one has to be willing to shed the old and try the new. The religious historian Jaroslav Pelikan once wrote, "Tradition is the living faith of the dead while traditionalism is the dead faith of the living."

I love certain traditions but I don't want a dead faith that holds tight to old wineskins at the expense of daring to try some of those risky things that Jesus asks of me. So I might still take the same way to the beach but I'll try to remain open to the fermenting nature of a gospel that often asks more of me than my safe old self wants to do.
jody jseymour@davidsonumc.org