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Some things just can't be fixed. Try as we might to spare the
expense of starting over, there is often no choice but to cut our
losses and start over again from the beginning. Whether it's a
project around the house or a much needed career change, there
are times when a whole new beginning is in order. You just don't
put an unshrunk patch of cloth on an old garment and think you
will thereby fix it. Put new wine in old wineskins and you will
burst them.
That's why Jesus brought about the epiphanies of what was new
in the life of the faith of his people. He didn't just tamper
with the traditions, he transformed the entire tradition of human
spirituality. He didn't suggest alterations in the garment of
religious belief and behavior. He totally redesigned the fabric
of humanity's religious nature and expression. How often we
tinker rather than transform. How frequently we prefer to
experiment with change rather than experience a prophetic
improvement of the whole thing. What we have in Christ is a whole
new epiphany, a manifestation to the world of God's entirely new
spiritual creation. Yet how hard the lesson is learned, how
tentative our own attempts!
Over the years of Advent and Christmas worship, for example,
many people fail to see the epiphany of what the Advent season
could be and tried to patch it up. The lessons of

the Advent season are, for the most part, dramatic references to
the coming of Christ. Not the coming of Christ at Christmas,
however, but the second coming in power and great glory to judge
the world and inaugurate the kingdom. The trouble is that to
preach the lessons of Advent while people are really getting
ready for Christmas is no easy task. It is downright difficult.
The primary figure of Advent is not the baby of Bethlehem but
John the Baptist. The message is not that of the sweet little
Jesus boy -- no crying he makes; but John crying -- "In the
wilderness prepare the way of the Lord." And the music! Not the
carols we are accustomed to singing at the time but melodies
seeking to awaken us because night is flying. How do you be loyal
to the liturgical tradition of Advent when on one of the Sundays
right before Christmas at the height of the culture's Christmas --
the text is John's "You brood of vipers ... ?"
Many worship leaders have tampered and tinkered with Advent
for years. Typically there will be the demands of some liturgical
purists in the congregation, on the one hand and some very
astute, theologically aware members of my family on the other.
How is it that you can play the carols in your home but can't
sing them on Sunday?
No amount of patchwork will do. 'Til finally you decide that
if the early church could get by for quite some time celebrating
Advent before it celebrated Christmas, maybe the two don't have
to be linked that closely after all. If we want to be loyal to
the important messages about the adult coming of the Christ why
not separate them entirely from the messages about the baby
Jesus. And since the church has some precedent for adapting (if
not adopting) the celebrations of the culture you might decide
that the cultural celebration of Christmas is too big to fight.
And besides, who needs 27 Sundays after Pentecost anyway? Maybe
23 or so would suffice.
Try taking Advent completely out of the Christmas season and
place the same lessons at the end of the church year -- right
before Christ the King. Then design the four Sundays

before Christmas to fit with the season the whole world is
celebrating anyway. You may try to get people to start
celebrating Christmas on Christmas but you are not likely to
prevail. That's when the liturgically proper want to start doing
Christmas. For many people, I am sorry to say, that's when the
trees start to come down and the people are moving on. It is
another case when we are trying to get ready after the deadline.
A simple attempt to patch up the garment with a new and unshrunk
piece of cloth will result in the tearing of the whole thing. Far
too often we would prefer to keep our patchwork of principles
pure and intact and fail to recognize that the garment is being
torn in the process.
Sometimes people experience in their personal lives what our
Lord was describing in the universe of spiritual tradition. There
are times when in therapy, treatment, counseling or pastoral care
persons must come to grips with the need to put new wine in
totally new wineskins. In many endeavors where the individual
needs to gather profound insights about themselves and accomplish
life-changing renewal, the new wine will burst the old wineskins.
The person must be willing to undergo a total and complete
renewal and rebirth of the self. I think there is good precedent
for that in the counsel of the New Testament.
Many of us have experienced profoundly important life-changing
episodes. Most of you have, I am sure. They are the kind of
growth-producing periods of our life that we would never have
chosen for ourselves. We found them painful to endure, but
wouldn't give them up now if we could. One begins to wonder if we
have to keep on working; keep on growing, keep on re-examining
and rebuilding our lives. I think the answer is yes and that the
language of our faith describes it in terms of satisfaction.
I'm not sure my trusted friend would have described it in
those terms, but the kind of change that is necessary was once
put to me this way. "Well," he told me one day when I thought the
process was getting too difficult, "you don't have to change
everything about yourself. You get to keep your name." The

line was a practiced cliche for him, but the point was important.
What often looms on the horizon of our life is the reality that
the old wineskin wasn't going to survive the newness that God was
producing. The excitement of what was being learned, decided and
practiced was about to require a whole new vessel.
And so it was when our Lord prescribed a whole new approach to
fasting. First he had to endure the complaints that always
accompany any epiphany. Then he contrasted the old with the new.
John and the Pharisees fasted in the traditional manner -- on
Monday and Thursday. Jesus was out to change all of that. His
followers needn't practice the discipline of fasting because he
was with them. When he was no longer with them, he explained,
they could fast on the day of his death -- "on that day," thought
to be the reason for the long practiced fasting of Fridays. The
point is that he was bringing about a whole new approach to a
tradition. His intention was not to tinker with it or tamper with
it but to transform it.
"So go ahead and fast if you like," he seemed to be saying,
after he would be gone. But do so for reasons that bring renewal
and transformation to life. Don't do it in a way that tries to
bring bold new spiritual fulfillment by only modifying time-worn
traditions. Fast if you like. It is a universally practiced form
of spirituality. It has served as a means of inducing spiritual
discipline, keeping the body in subjection, a symbolic
ritualization of repentance, attempting to influence God, or as a
way to relive portions of Christ's life. But unless your practice
of fasting is done in a format that transforms you, you will find
it, too, falls short of expectations.
Some even think fasting makes good sense as a modern approach
to healthier eating habits. So be it. I've even found a creative
approach to fasting in some of the attempts to translate fasting
into our diet-conscious, health-conscious culture. Others connect
the fasting tradition to the need for us to do something about
the appalling extent of hunger and starvation in our world. Now
if that can be addressed through fasting I'm all for it.

There might be all sorts of good reasons for doing it. You
might look at fasting as a way of disciplining yourself -- perhaps
to a specific routine or pattern of daily devotion. Fasting could
take the shape of kicking some bad habit. I've known people of
faith who used the term to describe their physical routine --
making the adjustments necessary so that physical matters would
not get in the way of the matters of the soul. All of that is
well and good.
Jesus was clearly not talking about fasting in the old
traditional ways. He wouldn't advise against it nor against any
other of the traditional forms that have their place. At the same
time -- every time -- our Lord would help people realize that you
couldn't use him to get back to the good old days of the way it
was. His key would always be spiritual renewal, the root of which
is the word new. Do what you used to do if you must. Do it at the
right time, in the right way, and for the right reasons. If it is
done in all those right ways, it probably won't look the same at
all. It may not even look right any more at all.
That's because change -- total change -- is the key. Fresh
garments and new wineskins.