New Cloth, New Wine

Gospel: Matthew 9: 14-17

The early church faced a dilemma of the ancient world that relied upon tradition and antiquity for support of religion and institutions.  The fact is that Christianity was a new religion; it did not have a tradition to rely on as the Romans and Judaism.  Despite the attempts of some apologists to argue otherwise, the Christian movement was indeed something new.  

In today's Gospel portion, Jesus provides assurances that what is new should not be feared, nor should it be shunned just because it is new.  A cloth patch has to be something new attached to what is old, while new wine must be poured into a new wineskin.  In both cases the new is necessary for the continued survival of the item in question.  

We human beings continually fear the new to which God calls us.  We cling to our own ways and habits, deifying them with the word 'tradition'. But we would have remained in Ur and not gone to Canaan. We would flee to Tarshish and not go to Nineveh. And we would be still be on a fishing boat in Galilee instead of on the way with the Lord Jesus.