Wednesday, 22nd Week of Ordinary Time

Matthew 9:9-17
The Daily Office

Jesus’s parables of sewing patches and wineskins appear in Matthew, Mark and Luke.  But only Matthew adds to Jesus’s admonition about pouring new wine into new skins, “and so both are preserved” (v.17).  Remember that earlier, I pointed to 5:17 as the key theme of Matthew’s Gospel: “Do not suppose that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets; I did not come to abolish, but to complete.”  More than the other Gospel writers, Matthew wants to find common ground on which the Old and New Covenants can both stand.

And 2,000 years later, it is still the New Covenant, still offering “Good News for Modern Man,” as the Good News translation was once called.  And yet, it is still the same New Covenant that Jesus proclaimed then.  Here is another one of those Christian paradoxes.  As the way, the truth and the life, Jesus Christ and his message are unchanging.  Yet, it is always “new,” speaking Good News in different times and different circumstances.  And so, for two millennia, the Church has had to balance between faithfully handing down the faith it received, and rephrasing that faith so that it can be understood in a different culture.

Some churches try to make their worship “contemporary” and “relevant,” while others preserve a timeless and “traditional” worship.  Some Christians insist on strict faithfulness to the written word of the New Testament.  Others ask how Jesus would respond to situations that weren’t mentioned in the NT, and think they can detect the Holy Spirit moving the Church in a new direction.  Both are right.  Both are wrong.  The traditional and the innovative both need to be discerned in that place where the Gospel meets the world, “and so both are preserved.”