New Wineskins (Mark 1:21-45; Epiphany Sunday; January 3, 2016)

New Wineskins

Epiphany Sunday
Mark 1:21-45
January 3, 2016

Rev. John M. Caldwell, PhD
First United Methodist Church
Decorah, Iowa

On New Year's Eve in our home we went to bed at about eleven, pretty late for all of us. It was midnight in New York City and that was good enough. We said, "Good night" and "See you next year!" Ian got a kick out of that. But when we woke up on Friday, it was a morning like any other and, except for the calendars on our various electronic devices, we couldn't tell that it was 2016.

Why January 1 should be the first day of a new year is anyone's guess. Nothing is happening in the sky or anywhere else that says, "That was then, this is now." But we divide the years then anyway.

I like the idea—and I don't think I'm the only one—of a new year. Three hundred sixty-five or, in the case of 2016, three hundred sixty-six days, stretch out in front of me and anything seems possible. It's like a Monday only multiplied by fifty. We know, of course, that in no time at all, 2016 will be coming to an end and we will wonder where it all went.

But for now, 2016 is undisturbed by reality and we can imagine something new.

Maybe that's why we make resolutions. It just seems like a good time to make changes. Many of those resolutions seem to focus on practices that will lead to better health and fitness. "I want to lose weight and get into shape." Weight Watchers and Team Rehab will be glad to help you move in that direction. (This should not be construed as an endorsement of these or any other weight-loss or fitness programs. Results may vary. Talk with your health care provider before you begin any diet or exercise program. Some restrictions apply. Offer void where prohibited by law.)

Other resolutions have to do with our hopes to become better family members or better Christians. "I'm going to read the Bible every day." "I'm going to call my children every week." "I'm going to stop raking my leaves into my neighbor's yard in the middle of the night."

Most of the time we surrender to really existing life in the world and break our resolutions. Some of us have given up. I have a friend who has announced his resolution not to make any resolutions this year. And now he's not sure whether he's kept or broken his resolution.

Against the odds we stick with some resolutions. We make a change in the way we live our lives and it becomes a permanent part of us, something we can build on.

But even when we do, the changes are hardly what we can call revolutionary. A resolution to follow a fitness program isn't easy to take on. But it's ordinary enough that there are institutions and organizations that will help us do that.

In fact, I think I can say that eating well and exercising appropriately does nothing to threaten the system. Quite the contrary. The fact that a few people are eating and exercising in a healthy way makes it seem as if obesity, Type II diabetes, joint deterioration, heart disease, high blood pressure, strokes, and a host of other problems are the fault of the people who suffer from them and not the inevitable and intended result of a system that makes many people sick and a few people very rich. In fact, nothing about the self-help industry challenges the basic way things are. The revolution may or may not be televised, but if it is, it won't be televised on the Oprah Winfrey Network.

If we want to see something truly revolutionary, we might turn to Jesus' invitation to the rich man to sell all that he owned, give the money to the poor, and to follow him. That resolution calls into the question the value of money and *that* is a revolutionary move.

Almost all of our resolutions, though, will be basically harmless, however good for us they might be, however difficult it will be to keep them, and however quickly we abandon them. No one is going to try to talk us out of them. No one is going to threaten us with consequences if we follow through.

That wouldn't be the case if, instead of resolving to lose some weight, we decided that Palestinian lives matter enough that we will place ourselves among them, sharing the threats that they face. This sort of resolution upsets the whole notion of resolution-making. It presupposes a deep rupture with our old lives to make way for something that simply will not fit into our lives as we know them. There are times—in our own lives and in history—when what is called for is not slow steady "resolutionary" change, but the disruptive upset of revolutionary change.

The various events of our reading this morning show signs that revolutionary change is in the wind.

The reading begins with Jesus' teaching in Capernaum. He does not use the usual ways gaining authority for his teaching. We don't know what those ways were, except that they were used by the scribes and Jesus doesn't use them. Instead, his teaching seems to carry its own authority. Added to that, Jesus doesn't just teach; he demonstrates power and authority over the spirit that has bound the life of the man who walked into the synagogue during the sabbath service. The content and method of Jesus' teaching did not fit into any pattern that the Capernaum synagogue congregation knew or was comfortable with.

After the sabbath service, Jesus went to stay at Simon's house. Simon's mother was sick. Jesus performed a work of healing on the sabbath. Jesus' ministry overflowed the boundaries of time as it was structured in ancient Galilee. It didn’t fit into the calendar that they use.

Then Jesus healed a person suffering from a skin disease. (It may or may not have been Hansen's disease, the disease we also call leprosy). The Torah required that a person claiming to have been healed from any of a number of skin diseases submit themselves to examination by a priest and make an offering. Jesus told the man to do that, but the man refused to follow this legal structure and, far from submitting himself to a priestly examination, set off on his own preaching tour.

Jesus' core message in Mark consists of an announcement and a demand. The announcement is that the reign of God—God's dream—has come near. The demand is that Jesus' hearers should have a change of heart and put their confidence in the good news of God's dream. This message that Jesus is showing and telling, although a thoroughly Jewish one, will not fit into the framework of the Judaism of Jesus' day.

Jesus' life and ministry lay at the intersection of a movement of God's spirit that was doing a new thing and the institutions that existed to make sure that God's will was done, regularly and in an orderly way. In other words, Jesus came along at a time when the institutions of Judaism were no longer able to contain and channel God's spirit as it was acting.

This presented the guardians of the Temple and synagogue with a dilemma. They could decide that the God who was acting through Jesus was the God of Temple and synagogue. In that case the core message of Jesus was God's message as well. In that case the institutions must change or even be swept away to make room for God's action. Or they could decide that Jesus' God was not the God of Temple and synagogue. In that case Jesus must be silenced. What the religious authorities decide was that Jesus must be destroyed.

It didn't have to go that way. In the early thirteenth century, when Francis of Assisi presented a similar dilemma to the Catholic Church, Pope Innocent (who was most certainly not) granted him permission to form a religious order. This allowed the Spirit at work through Francis and his followers the freedom to flow and do its work.

There are times for resolution and there are times for revolution. The trick, of course, is to know which time we are in now, both in our lives as individuals and in our shared life in the church. *I* believe that we are living a time of revolution. As sign and symptom of this I point to the rising number of religious "nones" in our culture and perhaps even more tellingly to the rising number of "dones." "Nones" are those, including atheists and agnostics, who claim no religious connection. According to the Pew Foundation they number about 23% of the US population, up from 16% in 2007.[1]

"Dones" are people who have a religious background but no longer look to any institution to meet their spiritual needs. Some have been abused. Some are burned out. Some are convinced that, if they want to be close to God and be about God's work, they are better off staying away from churches. According to Group, some 9.5% of us are dones.[2] So, for somewhere between a quarter and a third of us (depending on how much overlap there is between the two groups), the institutions of Christianity no longer provide an adequate vessel for holding the work of learning to love God and neighbor.

In that context, we can take a look at our own situation. Our attendance has declined. It is more difficult to find the volunteers needed to run the institution. Financial support for the church depends on fewer people giving more. These are all signs of an institution that is struggling.

One way to respond is to rally to meet the needs of the institution. Find ways to increase attendance. Reduce the need for volunteers and make it easier to volunteer. Find ways to do more with less financial support.

If I am right about the times, though, if this is one of those times in history when the Spirit of God cannot be contained in the institutions of the Church, then our attempts to shore up the church as an institution will, even if they succeed, leave us with an empty vessel. God's Spirit will have gone elsewhere.

If I am right about the times, then our calling is to be clear about who we are as Jesus' followers, modest about how important the church is in God's schemes, open to changing directions quickly, grateful that we do have gifts to offer to the world, and determined not to allow the needs of the church's institutions to crowd out the possibilities for transformation in our community and in ourselves.

It's a new year. But more than that, it is an new era when we will discover new ways of being faithful to God. Often our course will be unclear. Often our journey will be hard. But we have each other as companions and it is God whom we are following. And that will make all the difference.

[1] Michael Lipka, “Religious ‘nones’ Are Not Only Growing, They’re Becoming More Secular,” Fact Tank, November 11, 2015, http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/11/11/religious-nones-are-not-only-growing-theyre-becoming-more-secular/.

[2] Josh Packard, “Exodus of the Religious Dones: How Many Dones Are There?,” *Refresh the Church*, August 6, 2015, http://wwv.group.com/refresh-the-church/blog/exodus-of-the-religious-dones/#.VohAD99ysUQ.

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