Mark’s gospel begins with John the Baptizer proclaiming that the prophesied coming of the Lord was about to become a reality. We know from the other gospels that his call to action to the people was: “Repent, for the Kingdom of God is at hand”. Mark tells us Jesus took up that call to action after John was jailed. What does that call require of us?
It is possible that we don’t quite feel the full impact of that call because we are not under the power of a king. Few people in this world are governed by a king. But even so, we all understand that there is a government that has significant power over us. Taxes, laws enacted, and the judicial system that enforces those laws, all remind us that our lives are constrained by that government: If we abide by its rules, we can prosper. If we resist or oppose those rules, we will suffer the consequences.
So, what happens when another government claims it has power over the same people, the same country? (That is what John’s and Jesus’ proclamation was all about.) Whose laws do we obey? Who is right and who is wrong? Wouldn’t that proclamation be the same as a declaration of war? But who is fighting whom?
If you had asked an Israelite of Jesus’ time, what evil kingdom was God’s kingdom coming to destroy, the answer would have been immediate: Rome. But that answer assumes that the enemy is “out there.”
If someone asked us today the same question, would our answer be any different? Wouldn’t most of us point to an enemy “out there”?
I think the answer is, absolutely, yes.
All we have to do is spend a casual amount of time perusing the news, scrolling through social media, or just listening to people talk (argue?) to realize that if God told us today He was coming here to destroy our enemies, most people would be ready to point the finger at someone and say “Amen”.
But what if our worst enemy is inside us?
The hardest enemy to defeat: Our self-righteousness
Mark 2:18 And the disciples of John and the Pharisees were fasting; and they come and say to him, Why do the disciples of John and [the disciples] of the Pharisees fast, but thy disciples fast not?
At first glance this seems like a strange thing to be arguing about. If the fast being referred to were an actual day when the community fasted, like the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur) or the day when the Jews remembered the destruction of the first temple, they would have a valid complaint. In such a case Jesus would be on purpose trying to offend them. But we know that is not how Jesus acted.
(We will see this later in Mark, when they come to Peter and ask him if (he and) Jesus were not going to pay the Temple tax. And Jesus tells Peter: Matthew 17:27 But that we may not be an offence to them, go to the sea and cast a hook, and take the first fish that comes up, and when thou hast opened its mouth thou wilt find a stater; take that and give it to them for me and thee.)
So, we know an official day of fasting is not the point of contention here. What is happening here is that this comment comes on the heels of those people’s prior complaint about Jesus eating supper with sinners and tax collectors. It is asked in the same spirit. It is easier to see this from Luke’s reporting of the same event: Luke 5:33 And they said to him, Why do the disciples of John fast often and make supplications, in like manner those also of the Pharisees, but thine eat and drink?
Did you see the word “often” there? That is the point and that is the problem. The Pharisees prided themselves on how righteous they were and thus made a great show of it. Jesus alludes to this in the Sermon on the Mount…
Matthew 6:5 And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites; for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets so that they should appear to men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.
And he made the rebuke even more blatant in the parable in Luke 18:
Luke 18:10-14 Two men went up into the temple to pray; the one a Pharisee, and the other a tax-gatherer. The Pharisee, standing, prayed thus to himself: God, I thank thee that I am not as the rest of men, rapacious, unjust, adulterers, or even as this tax-gatherer. I fast twice in the week, I tithe
And the tax-gatherer, standing afar off, would not lift up even his eyes to heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, O God, have compassion on me, the sinner.
I say unto you, This [man] went down to his house justified rather than that [other]. For every one who exalts himself shall be humbled, and he that humbles himself shall be exalted.
So, these people’s complaint is really a redoubling of their complaint over that supper with sinners. The Pharisees worked hard to be righteous and were proud of it. They thought it made them better than everybody else (see the parable above).
They would never let themselves get polluted by associating with sinners and tax-collectors. But here is Jesus, to whom everybody is flocking, who claims to be teaching about the Kingdom of God, who everybody holds up as a righteous man, and He has no problem with having supper with them!
They sacrifice themselves for God’s sake by fasting often, and here Jesus and His disciples are partying and enjoying themselves all the time.
They are offended on two levels: First, their definition of righteousness is being flagrantly ignored; their self-proclaimed authority is being questioned. But second, on a deeper level, they are offended because Jesus is exposing the fallacy of their lives: their righteousness has nothing to do with God.
Jesus says as much in that parable in Luke, where He says that the Pharisee prayed thus to himself. And He likewise says it in the Sermon where He calls them hypocrites because their prayers – supposedly to God – are really all show for men to see and praise them.
We are not that way, are we?
I mean, we would never go around comparing our lives with that of other people and complain to God that, “Hey, I work hard to do all the right things, live clean, tithe even when times are hard, avoid sin… I don’t go to those movies you know… and I’d never be caught dead in that bar… and yet those people, look at them, look at the way they live… (Look at all the money they have; everything always works out for them, and they aren’t giving enough to the poor.) And then they claim they believe in You. This isn’t fair, Jesus.”
We’d never do that…
We’d never think of ourselves as the Pharisees.
And the reason is because we love Jesus, and we know the Pharisees eventually became fully hostile against Jesus. They are the bad guys. And we are the good guys. But did you notice in their complaint that the disciples of John are also included?
The disciples of John the Baptizer… Ouch! Aren’t they good guys?
Double ouch… because this scene is the same that Matthew reports in his chapter 9:
Matthew 9:10-14 And it came to pass, as he lay at table in the house, that behold, many tax-gatherers and sinners came and lay at table with Jesus and his disciples. And the Pharisees seeing [it], said to his disciples, Why does your teacher eat with tax-gatherers and sinners?
But [Jesus] hearing it, said, They that are strong have not need of a physician, but those that are ill. But go and learn what [that] is—I will have mercy and not sacrifice; for I have not come to call righteous [men] but sinners.
Then come to him the disciples of John, saying, Why do we and the Pharisees often fast, but thy disciples fast not?
Ouch. Matthew tells us that John’s disciples had exactly the same question: How come I work so hard at being holy and you guys are all just having a good time?
Maybe, just maybe, we are missing the point of what it means to be holy and righteous. Holy means set apart to serve God. It has nothing to do with how “clean” my life is. It has nothing to do with how hard I work to make myself worthy and righteous.
Why? Because that “clean life” will happen automatically. If indeed I live separated from the kingdoms of this world to draw near to God, He will change me.
The fallacy of self-righteousness is three-fold:
- it thinks human willpower and strength are enough to change the human heart
- it thinks that that achievement will gain us something in the kingdom of the world
- it thinks that it holds great value in God’s eyes
If the Law and the prophets are all summarized by the two great commandments, “you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength” and “you shall love your neighbor as yourself” then self-righteousness is – by definition – a complete waste of time.
What part of self-righteousness loves God above all things?
What part of self-righteousness loves the neighbor?
That is the essence of the problem. The attitude with which Pharisees and Johns disciples approach Jesus reveals that, first and foremost, they are thinking about themselves.
The remedy to self-righteousness: a change of perspective
Jesus’ answer again sounds like one of those occasions where he answers a direct question indirectly. They have asked about the merit that their fasting has in this world, and Jesus answers with language that inescapably points to the end of this world: the end-time triumph of the Kingdom of God.
Mark 2:19-20 And Jesus said to them, Can the sons of the bride-chamber fast while the bridegroom is with them? As long as they have the bridegroom with them they cannot fast. But days will come when the bridegroom shall have been taken away from them, and then shall they fast in that day.
The picture of the wedding feast in God’s kingdom was a well-known allusion to God’s triumph, the coming redemption of Israel, and maybe even the resurrection. (Just peruse the times Jesus used it as a setting for a parable).
Jesus rebuttal says, first of all: “Here you are talking to me about the holy and righteous things you are doing… and that may be all fine and good… But I am rightly more concerned with what God is doing. The Kingdom of God is at hand. If that is true, doesn’t that mean that the wedding feast of the Messiah is almost here? Doesn’t that mean that Israel ought to be getting ready, like a bride gets ready for the bridegroom? Doesn’t that mean that we all ought to be getting ready, paying attention to God, so that we know what to do when we are called to do it?”
And second: “Why are you wasting your time on yourselves and on judging others? Because your eyes are focused on the wrong thing you are going to miss it. Not only will you not recognize the bridegroom, you will miss (and have missed already) the detail that the prophets have foretold, that He will be taken away! And on that day all those that love Him will be dismayed.”
How come the Pharisees (and John’s disciples) are blind to this reality?
Because they have blinded themselves to it. That is what happens whenever we become self-centered. We become blind and deaf and unable to learn anymore. Is that a surprise? If I think I already know all that I need to know, that I have achieved all the righteousness I need to achieve, I am no longer looking around to see… I am not able to see the active work of God unfolding right before me.
There is an important corollary to Jesus’ statement in John 5:17, My Father is always at his work to this very day, that is easy to miss…
Think about it: Jesus is talking about the Heavenly Father that in Genesis created the whole universe, all of existence. All of which is marvellous beyond imagining. And there in John 5:17 Jesus is telling us that that same Father is still at work to this day.
Is it even possible that whatever God is working on to this day is any less marvellous, any less monumental than the creation of the whole universe?
It is not.
God’s present ongoing work is infinitely greater because He is actively working to this day on the Plan to save all humanity. For the sake of that Plan, He was willing to sacrifice His One and Only Son.
Of hearts and wineskins
That is what we risk missing if we turn our eyes away from Him and focus on ourselves: God’s ongoing work. The Pharisees and John’s disciples were at risk of missing that, missing the fact that a new thing was unfolding right before their eyes. They were risking missing the fact that the Old Covenant had run its course and, as Jeremiah prophesied, a New One had to come to take its place:
Jeremiah 31:31-34 Behold, days come, saith Jehovah, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah: not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers, in the day of my taking them by the hand, to lead them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they broke, although I was a husband unto them, saith Jehovah.
For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel, after those days, saith Jehovah: I will put my law in their inward parts, and will write it in their heart; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know Jehovah; for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith Jehovah: for I will pardon their iniquity, and their sin will I remember no more.
Or as Ezekiel says it:
Ezekiel 36:26 (NIV) I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.
Talk about monumental!
But if we are blind and deaf to it, we won’t get ready. We will keep trying to cling to the Old, which never could save us, and we will miss completely God’s true eternal Plan.
And that is why the blindness of self-righteousness is so sad. We are happy with the Old Covenant. We want it to apply because we think we can meet all those requirements of the Law in our own strength. We “prove” to ourselves that we can do it by comparing ourselves to others around us. But the fallacy there is that if we are comparing ourselves to others, we are comparing the outside to the outside. The outside is all we can see as human beings.
But God cares about the inside, the heart, the spirit which He created in His image. That is the part of us that He requires to meet His standards. So, can you see your own spirit? Can I judge my own heart? God says in Jeremiah that I cannot even trust my own heart. So, if I cannot even tell where my heart is on God’s righteousness scale, and I certainly cannot see where your heart is, this whole concept of self-righteousness is completely useless.
This is why the Old Covenant could never save us… it cannot change our hearts. We need to leave it behind and embrace the solution that can, the Plan that God already put into place with the arrival of His Son: The New Covenant.
Why is this difficult? Because we are happy with the Old one; because to admit the Old one doesn’t work is to admit that our obsession with our self-righteousness has been a waste of time… it is to admit that we were wrong.
So, Jesus tells them:
Mark 2:21-22 No one sews a patch of new cloth on an old garment: otherwise its new filling-up takes from the old [stuff], and there is a worse rent. And no one puts new wine into old skins; otherwise the wine bursts the skins, and the wine is poured out, and the skins will be destroyed; but new wine is to be put into new skins.
He knows how stubborn we are. To ease our sense of failure, we are going to try to mix and match, to take some of the Old and some of the New and see if we can make it work that way. But Jesus tells us that such a choice is not possible. The New is so essentially different from the Old that they are fundamentally incompatible. There is no compromise possible.
New wine requires new wineskins.
That is good news. If my heart has become hard as stone from the years of living according to my own righteousness, do I really want to have just a little bit of that stone cut out and replaced with a little bit of a heart of flesh? How could that possibly work? Can you imagine a little bit of heart muscle trying to make a lump of rock beat with life?
It really is all or nothing. That’s what God said through the prophet Ezekiel. He promised to remove the whole heart of stone and replace it with a heart of flesh. And it is that heart of flesh that can be filled with the Word of God, with the Spirit, and Live and Love according to His Plan.
New wine requires new wineskins.