It’s now Jesus’ turn to be asked a question. In 2:16 it’s the pharisees question Jesus’ disciples about why he’s eating with tax collectors and sinners. In 2:18 they, potentially generic people, ask Jesus why his disciples fail to fast. When compared with the previous questioning, it appears that Mark is having a bit of fun with us as the disciples are questioned about Jesus’ actions and Jesus is questioned about the disciples’ action. In fact, if you go back to the healing of the paralyzed man in 2:1-12, there are questions floating about, directed at no one in particular, that Jesus answers. So, there is a movement from 1) questions directed at no one, 2) a question directed at Jesus’ disciples, and then 3) a question directed at Jesus. Jesus tries to clear the air by pointing out that the guest of honor is in town and you wouldn’t hold a fast when you were supposed to have a feast. The time for fasting will come, but the time now is to feast. Jesus even answers their question with a question, “The wedding guests cannot fast while the bridge groom is with them, can they?”
The fasting that the disciples of John and the Pharisees are asking about is the kind of legalese fasting required by Jews, fasting twice a week on Mondays and Thursdays. Perhaps this fasting is an attempt to follow an extra-biblical command in order to bring about the new Kingdom of the Messiah. In other words, it was by fasting, by pulling away from sinners, that the Kingdom would be inaugurated. What Jesus declares with his emphasis on fasting is the very thing he decrees in Mark 1:14, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near, repent, and believe in the good news.” The Kingdom does not come through fasting, but, it’s in the act of feasting with those at the margins that God’s Kingdom is celebrated.
Jesus then puts two comparisons in front of us, one about old and new cloth and one about old and new wineskins. His overall point in using these illustrations is that no one would ever think about putting something new on something old. You don’t put new cloth on old cloth to repair a tear because it would end up making the tear worse. You don’t put new wine into old wineskins because they’ll burst the wineskins, ruining the wine and the wineskins. What do we make of this?
I think staying with the original question posed to Jesus about his disciples is important for understanding Jesus’ use of these illustrations. Even in Matthew and Luke’s accounts of this encounter, while there are a few variants, the question posed to Jesus about fasting is attached to the reference of old and new. Perhaps these examples are an indication that, yes, God was doing something new and wondrous in their midst. That, yes, the inauguration of God’s Kingdom is filled with feasting in anticipation of the final feast we’ll share with the Messiah. Yet, there’s also an element about who’s fit to be entrusted with this Kingdom message. Jesus is stinging in his indictment that it’s not John’s disciples, or the Pharisees, because their religion has made them unfit t0 be vessels of God’s Kingdom. The old would have to be made new again.
Instead, it’s those untainted by religion, those unsullied from years of thinking they have it right, who are entrusted to be God’s heralds. It’s those who are still flexible enough to handle the new cloth and the new wine. If we take Jesus at his word, the Kingdom message would have been ruined, along with John’s disciples and the Pharisees, if they had been entrusted with his message. It becomes all too clear why Jesus chose those with no formal education and no background in temple life to be his closest disciples.
Jesus is questioning the old versus the new, the flexibility of those he’s calling to handle his Kingdom message, and taking on the impossibility of legalese religion to bring about God’s Kingdom. Jesus teaches us that rigidity and a position of exclusion from those God is reaching out to has no place in God’s Kingdom.
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