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Week 3 September 2024, Devotion Part 1

But the new wine must be put into fresh wineskins. And no one after drinking old wine desires new; for he says, “The old is good.”  Luke 5:38-39


New wine sits unpretentiously in squat jugs on supermarket shelves. Old wine reposes in solitary splendor in dark secret places where the genteel dust of time leaves its singular caress. New wine boasts of fun flavors and gives snobbish tastes the boot. Drink it with pasta or pizza or pheasant under glass. The bouquet of old wine is rhapsodized in pseudo-spiritual language that borders on veneration.


As the contemporary citizens of a brave new world of unprecedented innovation, we have a growing affinity for the new. First it was the food processor and then the word processor. Pity the poor secretary who mixed up the two and kept mincing her words. The advertisers are not joking when they carefully choose theirs to separate the “administrative professional” from her paycheck. Our electronic age offers a veritable cornucopia of gadgets designed to entertain and enslave us. The computer has magically superseded the country fair where once upon a time a newfangled potato peeler might have caused excited folks to twitter with glee.  (Part 1 of 2)


Comment:  As many know by now, some possibly even rolling eyes, this devotional writer is big on “context” and reading whole chapters.  At the end of “Devotion Part 2” next week, Luke 5 in bold print will be another gentle nudge in that direction.  However, since today’s key text shows up as the last verse in the chapter, I had to bite the bullet early to see why it sums up Christ’s teaching. We learn that He calls His first disciples, heals a leper and a paralytic, eats with a tax collector, and is constantly being badgered by the Pharisees and their ilk who pride themselves in their superior religious pedigree.  They probably stared blankly when He told them that no one tears a patch from a new garment to sew it on an old one. Did they flinch when He accused them of acute Vivumnovumphobia? I just made up that word, but if you happen to be saddled with Arachnophobia, feel free to recoil that I like to save doomed spiders that fall from a small window into my bathtub.  As for the Fear of New Wine, we can handle it because it contrasts the Old with the New Testament - the letter of the law with the spirit of the law, which favors the Christian.  We value the Old Testament for its historical, prophetic, and wisdom content, but recognize it as the “shadow” versus the “substance” of the New Testament.  Best of all, formerly God’s Law was inscribed on tablets of stone, but now is written on our hearts of flesh.  Still, new wine can be hazardous as I found out. In 1982 I visited with my Dad in Switzerland and he took me to Vienna, where his good philatelist friends invited us to a Winzerfest.  It celebrated the Federweisser, the first white wine of the year.  Carnal me was born loving sausages and all the smoked meats that were liberally served with crusty bread.  By the time we walked out, it wasn’t the Wurst, but the Wein that made me wonder what happened to my wobbly legs.  It was a delightful evening in great company, but no charming stamp collectors could ever convince me again.to have their famous Featherwhite wash down copious amounts of salty red meat.  This leaves the question: what’s the biblical buzz on new wine?

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