New Wine

Gospel:  Mark 2: 18-22

We human beings are conditioned to make decisions and determinations based on the categories we create.  Typically these categories are ones of custom and tradition.  If something could be determined to follow standard custom and tradition, if it could be determined to be ancient, then it has legitimacy.  This way of thinking was standard in the ancient world, and it still forms part of our standard operating procedure.  

But along comes Jesus who does not fit any of the categories.  Today's Gospel presents us with two groups using both custom and tradition in an attempt to judge Jesus and his disciples.  But Jesus tells them that you are dealing with new wine which cannot be contained in old understandings.  Instead, he gives us a metaphor of love, a wedding image, that now becomes our standard of discernment.

No longer are we to determine the truth or goodness of a matter based on law, custom, or even tradition.  We are to measure truth and goodness based on love, which itself has no measure and which cannot be contained by any receptacle.  Love is as infinite as God, for God is love.  If we seek to be like God, then our only way is through love.