Can Old Dogs Learn New Tricks?
Read Mark 2:18-22
“No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. Otherwise, the new piece will pull away from the old, making the tear worse. And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins.” –Mark 2:21-22
As Jesus spent time among “tax collectors and sinners,” the religious leaders began to criticize him. Look, they said, his disciples don’t even keep religious practices like fasting! Jesus responded to their criticisms with one of his more cryptic sayings about “unshrunk cloth” and “new wineskins.”
First, let’s understand the two illustrations. Clothing shrinks when it is washed. So if you patch a garment with new cloth, that patch will shrink when washed and then tear an even greater hole in the garment. “New wine” operates in the exact opposite direction of “new cloth”—it expands rather than shrinks. As new wine ferments, it produces a lot of carbon dioxide gas. Old wineskins, which lack the elasticity needed to expand with the fermenting fluid, end up bursting and wasting the new wine upon the ground.
Now let’s consider the debate about the meaning of these symbols. The most common interpretation is that Jesus was contrasting the “new wine” of his Gospel (grace and love) against the “old wineskin” of the Torah (the law). This is the first of three consecutive stories in which the Pharisees and Jesus come into conflict about religious practices (the next two focus on Sabbath observance instead of fasting). In each case, Jesus emphasizes the importance of love (spending time with “sinners”; healing a man on the Sabbath) versus a legalistic understanding of faith.
Other interpreters see in Jesus’ word a maxim about cultural disruption. The world is constantly changing, requiring new ways of living and thinking, and doing business. Adapt or die, the saying goes. Some pastors apply this lesson to the church—unless we’re willing to change with the culture, the “new cloth” will inevitably tear away and leave us behind.
The problem with both these interpretations is that Jesus was not anti-Torah; he did not teach a supersessionist Gospel where the “new” does away with the “old.” Rather, Jesus understood his ministry to be the fulfillment of the law and the prophets (see Matt 5:17). The “vessel” in his parables refers not to the Torah itself, but to the students receiving his teaching. Remember that they were the ones that the Pharisees directed their criticism against: “Why don’t your disciples fast as other disciples do?”
I found an interesting article that compared Jesus’ parable to a rabbinic parable from a similar time period (Avot 4:20). The rabbinic parable uses the analogy of a clean versus a smudged piece of paper. When you teach a lesson to a new student, the parable goes, it’s like writing on clean paper. When you teach a new lesson to an older student, it’s like writing on smudged paper. The lesson gets lost because the older student has already been “written on” before!
The point is, a new teaching requires previously untrained students in order to be accepted. So consider this “rewrite” of Jesus’ parable, substituting “lesson” for “cloth,” and “student” for garment.”
No one takes a new lesson and tries to teach it to an old (already educated) student. If he does, he will fail to teach the new student, and the lesson meant for the new student will be rejected by the old student.
As I shared in a previous devotion, Jesus’ disciples were not formally trained. They were fishermen and tax collectors. They feasted and drank too much. They picked grain on the Sabbath. They were not versed in the finer points of the law. Which is precisely why Jesus chose them—because he had a new teaching, a new way of understanding God’s law, and he needed new students who were ready to accept it. (Versus students who had already learned the Scriptures one way and couldn’t see a new way of interpreting them.) The disciples were like a fresh, unsmudged piece of paper for Jesus to write upon.
We have our own way of expressing this wisdom in our culture. You can’t teach an old dog new tricks, we say. But of course, this dichotomy between “old” and “new” is false. Older disciples are still learning–and can learn from the “new”–just as those who are young in their faith would do well to listen to the wisdom of those who have gone before. To me, it’s a question of mindset—whether we think we know all that we need to know, or whether we’re open to learning more along the way. As long as we’re willing to expand, we won’t burst.
So as we begin a “new” year, what “new” things are you willing to learn? What “old” views are you willing to reconsider? In what ways can we become like a fresh, unsmudged piece of paper for Jesus to write His story upon?
Teach me something new, O Lord. Open my mind to more of your Word. May I never grow tired of meditating on the wonder of Your love. Amen.
[For those who would enjoy the full article which I quoted above, go to: New Wine and Old Wineskins