Mark 2:18-22
Treasures Old & New
Two images
On one occasion some people confronted Jesus because
he and his disciples partied a lot and drank wine, while John the Baptist and
his disciples fasted. He answered them by likening himself to the bridegroom at
a wedding. As long as the groom is present, the guests will eat, drink and make
merry. But the time will come when the groom will leave for his honeymoon (perhaps
a reference to his death), and that’ll be the end
of their eating, drinking and making merry (Mk
On another occasion some people confronted Jesus about
his `drinking problem.’ Responding with a remark about cantankerous people whom
you can never please he said to them, “You are like a bunch of kids playing in
the marketplace. One group shouts out to the other, `We played wedding music
for you, but you would not dance! We sang funeral dirges for you, but you would
not cry!’ I tell you John the Baptist came fasting and drinking no wine and you
complain saying, `He has a demon in him!’ Now I, the Son of Man, come eating
and drinking, and you all say, `Look at this man! He is a glutton and a
wine-drinker, a friend of tax collectors and outcasts’” (Mt: 11:16-19).
For the life of me I’ve never been able to see any
clear connection between eating, drinking and making merry while the groom is
present and what follows: the bit about a piece of new cloth tearing away from
an old coat or new wine corroding an old wineskin. There probably isn’t any clear
connection. Some editions of the bible indicate as much by simply dividing this
passage into two separate paragraphs. If there is any connection between the
two, it is perhaps a very loose one: wine seems to be flowing in both.
Meaningful
images
A new patch tearing away from an old coat and new
wine corroding an old wineskin are curious images. What in the world do they
mean? It took me a very long time to lay hold of a simple but forceful meaning for
those images. That came, at long last, when the Second Vatican Council burst
upon us Catholics in 1965 with a kind of vengeance.
In the days and
years immediately following the Council, we the church found ourselves trying
to sew new patches on an old coat. It just wasn’t working. Everything was being
ripped apart on us. We found ourselves trying to pour new wine into old
wineskins. It just wasn’t working. Old skins were bursting everywhere and the new
wine was being spilt. In the second half of the twentieth century, we the
church found ourselves engaged in a painful tug of war between the old and the
new. A tug of war between the new Council of Vatican II and the old Council of
Trent which took place in 1545 and by whose catechism most of us had been reared.
Yes, believe it or not, by the eve of Vatican II,
The tug of war within: nostalgia
In the post-Vatican II period, many eventually
found a tug of war between the old and new raging within themselves. They
were nostalgic for the good old days when churches were filled with statues of the saints, their
friends, with whom they could talk and plead when the going got tough. They
were nostalgic for churches filled with curly-cues and niches and exquisite
stain glass windows crafted by European masters—art forms good and bad-- with which
they could distract themselves especially
when the sermon (not the `homily’) was out-of-touch and boring, and therefore too
long (and that was quite often). They were nostalgic for the church’s
ancient chant replaced now with Michael Row Your Boat Ashore. They were
nostalgic for the good old days when there were no zealous liturgists to make
them pray and sing aloud with others but left them alone in silence and private
prayer. They were nostalgic for the good old days when churches were all aglow
with brightly burning vigil lights after Masses packed with people, assuring them
that faith was alive and well, and that it was good to be one of the believers.
The nostalgia for the church of the past rises partly out
of a feeling of insecurity caused by an age in which everything keeps changing
on us and nothing is stable anymore. We
feel we no longer have any terra firma
under our feet. We feel adrift at times and find ourselves demanding of the church
what we cannot demand of anything else: “For God’s sake, at least you, the
church, be for us the one sure thing we can depend on. Be for us a `rock of
ages,’ firm and unchanging.”
That, indeed, is a perfectly legitimate demand to make of
one’s church. But we remind ourselves that that `rock of ages’ must be something more substantial than statues,
stain glass windows, plain chants and brightly burning vigil lights, wonderful
and comforting as they all are.
We
remind ourselves also that nostalgia can sometimes be mindless. For on second
thought we find that the good old days weren’t always so good after all. We recall
the second-class citizenship of laity and women, the gross ignorance of human sexuality
and the terrorization of consciences in the church of the good old days. We
recall the sacrifice of human beings to laws of merely human origin and the
lack of Christ-like compassion and humility in the church of the good old days.
Nothing has changed
Although Vatican II has changed everything on us, at the
end of the day nothing has really changed. We still come to the Sunday assembly
in need of holy Viaticum (food for the journey), and we’re still fed with nothing more nor less than the Bread
of Life. At week’s end and Sabbath Rest we still come to the Sunday assembly
exhausted by the constant beat upon our psyches all week long that what’s here
is all there is, and the Bread of Life is still raised on high at the Elevation
of the Mass, proclaiming there’s more here than meets the eye. Nothing has really
changed.
And although Vatican II has changed many of the old words
on us, the parables of the Prodigal Son and the Good Samaritan are still read
to us with the same words of the past, and with the same eloquence those
parables still speak to us about our human waywardness and our human goodness. Nothing
has really changed.
The tug of war with others: division
The post-Vatican II era became a tug of war between the old and
the new not only within ourselves but also with others. With time we
found ourselves engaged in a fierce tug of war between those who wanted to keep
everything old and those who wanted to make everything new--between those who decided
to stick with the old wine of
This division between the old and the new, this
problem of a new patch tearing away from an old coat, is not just a church
problem. It’s a problem of our total human experience. It’s a problem of the
workplace which always seeks to update and renew itself and increase its
productivity. It’s a problem which parents have with their kids and their kids
with them.
Conclusion
Treasures old
and new
Up in
It’s also the perfect spot to pour the new wine of
Vatican II. New wine poured in a grand old church like Old St. Mary’s, each
enhancing and respecting the other, is marvelous symbolism. It says that the
old and the new, like justice and peace, can meet and kiss (Ps 85:10). It’s
marvelous symbolism speaking to us about where we’ve come from and where we’re
going. It’s marvelous symbolism which says we don’t have to chose between the
old or the new. It’s not a matter of one or the other but of both and. New wine
poured in a grand old church like Old St. Mary’s makes us like the wise house-holder
of the gospel who goes down into his cellar and brings up treasures old and new
(Mt