March 22, 2026

GOD’S WORD FOR TODAY:

“No, new wine must be poured into new wineskins. And no one after drinking old wine wants the new, for they say, ‘The old is better.’”

(Luke 5.38-39)

TODAY’S REFLECTION ON GOD’S WORD:

Why did they accept the call of Jesus to be His disciples? Jesus said to them “Follow Me!” and they followed Him. Quite honestly, the word used in the test of the gospels was far greater than Jesus just saying it, He commanded it. They felt His authority. Jesus, being fully God and fully human, had a commanding presence. It repelled some and compelled others. It wasn’t just the way He said it or how He said it, it was how He projected Himself into their lives. He not only declared the Word of God, He was and is, as John so eloquently recorded it, the Word of God. He will always be the incarnate Word of God for us and in us. He is the Word of God through us in bodily form to the whole world. So when, in the Synoptic Gospels, Jesus said to Simon and Andrew, James and John and to Levi, “Come, follow Me,” it was a complete experience of heart, mind, soul and body at at once. That very statement in those ordinary extraordinary circumstances has caused me to wonder “why.” Why did they so utterly and completely in the moment say “Yes” to Jesus? I have considered that His call to them was not out of the blue; at least for those five. I believe He had cultivated a relationship with the fisherman because He was around them due to His step-father’s business in Capernaum. I have shared that possible story of Jesus and Levi being visual available to one another. Each of them would have been verbally aware of the other. They shared those things in common in a very informal type of relationship. Levi, Matthew, might have said, if asked about the relationship, “It’s complicated.” Perhaps, except Jesus made it easier for them to respond. What they were responding to, however, was truly complicated. So how can I explain the why they said “Yes”. I wasn’t there. I didn’t talk to them. We have no record of their responses emotionally to it except they left everything they had behind. We don’t have testimonies for them as we do with Nathanael who, when amazed at Jesus’ vision of him under a tree, he said, “Truly you are the Son of God, the King of Israel’ or the woman at the well testifying “He told me everything there was to tell about me.” What we do have from the Synoptics comes after Levi’s accepting the call and it relates to new wine and old wineskins. It may give us a clue, perhaps at least in part, as to why.

Unlike modern soft drinks, fruit drinks, coffee or tea and milk, wine tastes better with age. (Yes, many hard liquors, too). When Jesus said, “For no one after drinking old, that is aged, wine wants the new, barely fermented, wine saying ‘The old is better.” We have the testimony of the master caterer in John’s story about The Wedding in Cana, who marvelled at the bridegroom who went against conventional practice and served the very best wine at the end of the wedding banquet instead of at the first. Of course, the earthly bridegroom had no idea what the steward of the feast was meant. Of course, he, the bridegroom served the best wine he had at the very first. It showed how much he honored his guests to give of his very best. After they had become “drunk” with good wine, then less fermented and less expensive wine would be served because everyone had the taste of the good wine on their tongue and in their minds. However, Jesus changed everything. He was, and remains, the steward of the feast, the heavenly feast of the Lamb and the Church united in spiritual union. When Jesus turned the water into wine (a hint at the transformative power of baptism?), He set in motion the primacy of the gospel. The new wine wasn’t actually “new” wine at all. It was the restored wine of the covenant made in His blood as a foretaste of glory divine. It was also a taste of that first wine in the Garden before “the grape was exchanged for an apple,” parenthetically speaking. It wasn’t so much that Jesus was bringing something new into our spiritual lives but something renewed, revitalized and returned or reestablished.

So, when Simon, Andrew, James and John as well as Levi got a taste of the new, old, wine, they would obviously respond that the old is better than the new. The fear of the “old guard” and traditionalists such as the High Priests, the Pharisees, the elders and the teachers of the Law was that the gospel was that something new and not of the old. They missed the truth of the matter in that the wine of the Gospel was the renewed covenant wine made in the blood of the Lamb that was slain in the Garden for the remission and forgiveness of Adam and Eve’s sins. The disciples, save for Judas of Kerioth, experienced that new old wine and were ready for more. This is our reminder, I believe, for what we should remember and be ready for when we share communion every Lord’s day. It calls to understand “Come, follow Me” without equivocation. Jesus was, is and will always be the “real deal;” the wine of “God’s will be done on earth as it is on heaven.“

TODAY’S PRAYER OF THANKSGIVING:

Father, in these days we are finding the need to believe even more than ever before. We all have known trouble, some in greater ways than others, but You are offering us the assurance that we will not be consumed by it forever. Regardless of the “time” we are in and the “time” we have been given, we ask for Your Holy Spirit which Jesus asked You to share with us, to lead and guide and direct us in the paths we should go. Teach us what we still need to learn. Empower us to put that learning into action. Bless our actions not as a works righteousness but as righteous works of faith, hope and love in Jesus’ name. AMEN.