New Wine

Our Worship Pastor, Ted Yuen, preached this morning. "Fasting, Feasting, and Fermentation." Hmmm, sounds like a Good Friday/ Easter Vigil juxtaposition. The long and short of it is this: We all yearn for more in a church experience.

When I was younger I often heard that Christians were hypocrites: saying one thing and doing another. I now do not think that most Christians are hypocrites, or at least the vast majority of those in my congregation, but I do think that most of us only go just so far in our Christian walk. We are timid Christians. A bit more than Sunday-only-Christians, but not radical Christians. The word 'radical' comes from the Latin root 'radicalis' and 'radix' that means "root". To be a radical means to get to the root of a problem, an issue, the core of humanity. So we shy away from radical Christianity. A radical faith. It would demand too much. And I share that fear.

Pete Walker, a friend of mine, gave me the honor one day of calling me a radical. I only wish I deserved the accolade. Perhaps I may be becoming one. I think that my problem (that stops me short from becoming at my very roots the truest of Christ-followers) is fear and my sense of propriety. As our worship pastor preached and talked today, I wanted to stand up (literally!) for him, stand beside him and invite others to stand up beside him when he was preaching about new wine in new wineskins. But I remained in my seat, voicing a muted "Amen" at times because I didn't want to stand out or be conspicuous.

We have a very basic problem as Christians in America: Comfort. We want to be comfortable and we like being comforted. One of the congregations in town invites people to its services with the promise that they will find it 'fun, relaxing and inspiring.' Now when I saw this invitation (that one may guess might include an espresso bar in the foyer, and an upbeat band weaving harmonies together on the front stage) I thought that I never recalled hearing that discipleship, as presented by Jesus or any of His apostles, was supposed to be "fun." Fun: we worship it. Every kid in school will lament and deem their cause just that what's wrong with school is that it isn't fun enough. Fun has become the chief contemporary virtue: indeed the litmus test of a viable and valid experience. If something isn't fun, it isn't okay.

You see, fun is something that happens outside of us. It happens to us. Like Disneyland: we pay an admission and want to experience fun: entertainment, diversions, surprise and excitement. And in our church experience we desire the same thing. So much of worship has become performance based. We come into the sanctuary to the uplifting beat of drums, strumming of guitars and the jingle of tamborines. It's a love-in. It's groovy. It's comfortable. Everyone pours themselves a cup of java, saunters in with their blue jeans and polo shirts, relaxes in their cushioned pews, laughs and chats with their neighbor and then has the worship team do music to them and for them. One song flows seamlessly into another song, even prayers have background music. It's nice, no denying it. And very comfortable. And...maybe...just maybe too comfortable.

I don't know. What am I arguing for? Less comfort? Wooden pews within drafty, cold sanctuaries where hellfire-and-brimstone sermons are pounded (not expounded) from the pulpit? No coffee, no praise band, and a cappella hymns? No. I'm not. I'm not saying that contemporary praise songs deaden a living faith. But I believe I am saying that a performance based worship (that is increasingly more pervasive throughout evangelical churches) may be more insidious, or at least dangerous to our maturation as Christians, than has been heretofore granted.

Our problem is that we want things outside of us to change and improve. But change only really occurs if it takes place within us. We want more out of the church, but too often we refrain from putting more into the church. We want to receive, but withhold our whole-hearted giving.

We want God to perform or change things, but would really rather not be the instruments of his transformation. We want to be "done to" but not "done through." Too often our cry is this: "Do something to me, Lord, but please don't try to do something through me."

Fermentation

Jesus is putting new wine into new wineskins. The new wine is His Spirit, His sovereign salvific will. New wine is too potent for old wineskins. If the new wine is His Spirit, indeed, Himself, what are we to say is meant metaphorically by wineskins? Jesus cautioned about old wineskins, by which we can guess He meant the old way, the old rituals, the law and its rigid structure, or perhaps the traditions of the Pharisees that kept people oppressed. But what do old wineskins mean for us today? Century old rituals? Rites and Creeds? or perhaps church structures, hierarchy and organization? Are these old wineskins outside of us, or are they us ourselves? Are the old wineskins the church or religion at all? Perhaps all these things need renewal...most importantly ourselves. Nonetheless, unless I am renewed and consent to His making me a new creation, I will burst once His Spirit dwells within me. Perhaps I must burst and be destroyed. Every old wineskin must be discarded for a new wineskin.

God wishes to ferment within us His Spirit and Power and Purposes. He doesn't so much want to do His will to us, act on us, but wants to use us as New Wineskins to hold His fermentation process (called sanctification) in and through us. He wants to expand us and transform us. Our problem is we don't really want enough. We don't want God to go far enough. We've placed humility in the wrong location. It should be in our egos, but we've placed it in our wills: the place of our volition. We aspire too little. Instead of desiring to have ferment within our oaken souls the choicest of Pinot Noirs we settle for Welches grape juice cocktail: not even 100% unfermented juice.

And so I am reminded of some lines from T. S. Eliot's poem, "Little Gidding":

The one discharge from sin and error,

The only hope, or else despair

Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre--

To be redeemed from fire by fire.

We must burst. We MUST be destroyed. WE MUST DIE. And be consumed by the Fire that is Inexorable. There can ultimately be no comfort in that, or at least at first. Death precedes Life Eternal. "For our God is a consuming Fire." All that is shakeable MUST be shaken so that only the unshakeable can remain. (Hebrews 12: 27--29) We are called to a much more dangerous, exciting, upsetting and resetting life of discipleship. To follow Jesus is a summons to war, to battle the forces of evil and redeem the people of God. To follow Jesus is the challenge of a lifetime, the mountain unscaleable, the depths unfathomable. Jesus demands, extols, admonishes, exhorts, woos, confuses, upholds and lays low, revolts and redeems, and only when we need it, comforts. But only He knows if we need comforting. Most times, I think we don't.

New wine in new wineskins. Yes. Amen.