Dear sisters and brothers in Christ,

I hope this email finds you and your loved ones doing well as we continue to walk through this challenging time. At times I find myself forgetting the significance of what we are living through. While not without historical precedent, the COVID-19 pandemic is unprecedented for many of us today. We are living in a history making moment. I was reminded of that this past week when I read a story about how the vaccine was so quickly developed. Here is a link to that story. The timing of many factors aligning in a way which allowed the vaccine to be developed so quickly is one of the things which stood out to me in that story.

This Sunday we continue our sermon series from the Gospel of Mark. We are going to pick up in Mark’s Gospel where we left off last week, after Jesus healed the paralyzed man as a demonstration of his authority to forgive sins. I encourage you to read Mark 2:1-3:6 before Sunday or to listen to Max McLean’s dramatized version of the Gospel.

When we outline these stories from 2:1-3:6 in Mark’s Gospel a particular structure becomes apparent.

2:2-12 Controversy over healing/forgiving sins of paralyzed man

2:13-17 Controversy about eating with tax collectors and sinners

2:18-22 Jesus’ questioned about fasting

2:23-28 Controversy about eating / plucking grain on Sabbath

3:1-6 Controversy about healing a man on the Sabbath

At the center of these stories stands Jesus’ sayings/micro-parables in response to the question about fasting. You may have heard these sayings before. “No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. If he does, the new piece will pull away from the old, making the tear worse. And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the wineskins will be ruined.” No, he pours new wine into old wineskins.

You may have heard a preacher, maybe more than once, use these texts as an argument for abandoning old traditions or expressions of faith, in favor of some new wineskins. Okay, I will confess in my younger years I probably would have used the text in just that way. But notice the old garment is not to be thrown away, it is to be repaired. The goal is not to ruin the old wineskins the goal is to preserve the wineskins and the new wine.

Something more is happening here in this text than just a conflict between old and new. What else is happening here? Well, the issue with Jesus’ opponents, the issue with even his followers is that they do not know “What time it is.” The question for you and me is do we understand what time it is when it comes to Jesus, his ministry and our following him.

See you on Zoom on Sunday!

Pastor David

 

 

David Braneky

Pastor

Grace Baptist Church of Blue Bell

P.O. Box 122, 437 Skippack Pike & Lewis Lane

Blue Bell, PA 19422