At the Seams - Luke 5:27-39

These are things I am not ready to write about,
but if I don't put them down now, I'm afraid I will lose them.


Today on my way to the Library, I experienced an oddly visceral shearing force. I was intensely admiring the subtly dramatic upward spiral of some striking green-mossed trees and feeling my own gratitude and inability of this physical and emotional frame to contain the joy of taking in the world simultaneously with the agony of my inability as a discrete human being to spill over and share what I could not contain for myself.

That's not all. I'm trying to analyze this in retrospect before I forget how it felt to feel simultaneously so clear and so stirred as I was drawn and quartered between the extremes of both the myriad joys of the world and their associated sorrows. Walking between the large-pebbly sidewalk between ODB and Eliot Circle, I thought I would tear in half.

Yesterday,
we studied Luke 5:27-39


27 And after these things he went forth, and saw a publican, named Levi, sitting at the receipt of custom: and he said unto him, Follow me.

28 And he left all, rose up, and followed him.

29 And Levi made him a great feast in his own house: and there was a great company of publicans and of others that sat down with them.

30 But their scribes and Pharisees murmured against his disciples, saying, Why do ye eat and drink with publicans and sinners?

31 And Jesus answering said unto them, They that are whole need not a physician; but they that are sick.

32 I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.

33 And they said unto him, Why do the disciples of John fast often, and make prayers, and likewise the disciples of the Pharisees; but thine eat and drink?

34 And he said unto them, Can ye make the children of the bridechamber fast, while the bridegroom is with them?

35 But the days will come, when the bridegroom shall be taken away from them, and then shall they fast in those days.

36 And he spake also a parable unto them; No man putteth a piece of a new garment upon an old; if otherwise, then both the new maketh a rent, and the piece that was taken out of the new agreeth not with the old.

37 And no man putteth new wine into old bottles; else the new wine will burst the bottles, and be spilled, and the bottles shall perish.

38 But new wine must be put into new bottles; and both are preserved.

39 No man also having drunk old wine straightway desireth new: for he saith, The old is better.


I've never really gotten the old garment/new patch/new wine/old bottles parable.
I still don't really get it.

But I think I've gotten it enough to tell some ways that it may be important.

I'll try to be brief since a lot of my thoughts on this subject are a casting about,
but I think the section preceding the parable is important.

The general idea seems understandably acceptable. Jesus is introducing a new religion and asking people from old traditions to adopt new mindsets of sorts. And people tend to prefer their old ways over new ways. ok. So what does this actually practically mean?

I typed up the following:
A new translation of the parable,
and text from my Intro to Islam class reading:

****

Luk 5:36 And he spake also a parable unto them; No man uses a piece of new wool to patch the old; if otherwise, then both the new shriveleth in the wash becoming uncomfortable, and the piece that was [taken] out of the new doth not fit the old.
37 And no man runneth a new program on an old operating system; else the new software may not fit system requirements, and be wasted, and the computer shall be obsolete.
38 But new applications must be run on new systems; and both are preserved.
39 No man also having drunk old [wine] straightway desireth new: for he saith, The old is better.

“The Koran says that once dead, summoned by God, a man has departed this earth forever; and Malinke custom assigns the head of a family his own patriarchal; hut within the compound. No doubt about it then. There was the spacious hut left empty since Cousin Lasina’s death, that had housed all the great Dumbuya ancestors. Fama need only open it up and settle in. But among the Bambara, the unbelievers, the Kaffirs, one must never sleep in a dead man’s room without performing a small sacrifice to ward off spirits and shades. The fetish priest and sorcerer Balla, the village unbeliever reminded Fama of this infidel’s custom. In spite of his deep faith in the Koran, in God and in Mohammed, Fama spent the whole night in a little hut, huddled between some old water jars and a mangy mongrel. A most unpleasant night! It had to be that way. Nothing is good or evil in itself. It is speech that turns a thing into good or evil. And misfortune always, inevitably, follows the transgression of a custom, if the culprit was warned that such a custom existed, especially in the case of the customs of a village in the bush.”
Suns of Independence, Kourouma, pg 72

***

(Yes, I did the new translation myself, and I think I have found translation errors already. If I understand it better, I will fix them.)


The way I think I can apply this is that though Fama believed strongly in the teachings of the Koran and Mohammed, it wasn't enough to counter the view of the world he'd been raised with and he spent the night between a dog and some water jars when he could have stayed in a large hut. I consider this as a metaphor for our experience of life and living.

The Pharisees questioned Jesus' dinner with the tax collectors because Jesus was introducing a perspective of humanity blind to traditional societal ideas of who should be associated with and what sort of people were worthy of the attention of others. Jesus brought a new vision, a new dream for the way the world could be, and the Pharisees saw only that piece of it in the midst of the tradition they'd been raised in. It didn't make sense to them. And their view didn't make sense to him. ...If I adopt a vision cut from an entirely different cloth, will I the world and I be so separate and misunderstand each other?

The way I'm reading this is that Jesus did not bring good ideas to fit into the way we already live. The new wine goes into new bottles. Don't patch an old garment with a piece of the new, else the new patch will shrivel and not only will the old garment be disproportionate and uncomfortable, but the new garment now has a hole in it and has been judged on the basis of one incorrectly used patch.

You might as well just wear the new garment.
Jesus did not come to patch the world.

But unless it can all become new at once, we will always live in a mix of old and new. Am I capable of being completely new? Will that completely disconnect me from the environment of old that I grew up in?

When Jesus is telling Nicodemus that he must be made completely new - born again - he says, The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit. Is this what it is like to see a completely new person through the eyes of older traditions? Their actions don't make sense because they are 'walking to the beat of a different drum,' if you will?

And ultimately, Jesus brought his new vision and poured it out into an old world. Until the world can become completely new, will we always feel this disproportionate stretching tension? This longing after a vision while trying to live in the world we know?

Lord, I'm stitching my world together as I gain the experience to see what is old and what is new. I want to be new, but I cannot see it all at once -
I am made of patches,
-living after the vision while living in the world I know-
and I think that perhaps
as I walked to Eliot Circle,

I was tearing apart at the seams.