With an accusatory tone, the people surrounding Jesus at Levi’s house queried, “The disciples of John fast often and offer prayers, and so do the disciples of the Pharisees, but yours eat and drink” (Lk 5.33). They demand an explanation for all of this feasting when it is obvious to them that it is supposed to be a time for fasting.
Jesus doesn’t give the inquisitors a nine-point explanation concerning the necessity of feasting in messianic eschatology. Instead, he talks about a wedding, garments, and wine. Their questions are being answered, but they are answered with rich biblical imagery, which leads the listeners to conclusions about who Jesus is and what he came to do.
Yahweh was married to Israel. At Mt. Sinai Yahweh took Israel to be his wife, bringing her under the wing of his garment, the Tabernacle (see Ezek 16.1ff; also Jer 31.31-34), and feasting with her on the mountain (see Ex 24). Just as in all marriages, Yahweh and Israel were one flesh, wrapped up in one garment together. Malachi, describing divorce, speaks of it as doing violence to your garment (Mal 3.16). To be married is to share a garment.
When Jesus speaks about not ripping a piece of new cloth and putting it on an old piece of cloth, he hasn’t left off speaking of marriage. He is telling his inquirers who he is and what he came to do.
Through her unfaithfulness over the years, Israel tattered the marriage garment. Yahweh promised that he would not ultimately forsake Israel. He had to forsake her for a while. But he would come again, and Israel would be called “My Delight Is In Her” and her land “Married” (Isa 62.1-5). Jesus is saying that this time has come. He is the Bridegroom in the flesh who has come to redeem the marriage.
But the redemption of the marriage can’t be patchwork, putting new cloth on an old garment. Yahweh and Israel need a new garment altogether. The old marriage will have to die. The one-flesh garment embodied in the Bridegroom will have to be torn. Jesus will take death upon himself for the bride, be ripped, and rise again in a transformed body, a new flesh-garment under which he will take his bride to be one flesh.
Paul says it this way in Romans 7.1-4:
Or do you not know, brethren (for I speak to those who know the law), that the law has dominion over a man as long as he lives? For the woman who has a husband is bound by the law to her husband as long as he lives. But if the husband dies, she is released from the law of her husband. So then if, while her husband lives, she marries another man, she will be called an adulteress; but if her husband dies, she is free from that law, so that she is no adulteress, though she has married another man. Therefore, my brethren, you also have become dead to the law through the body of Christ, that you may be married to another– to Him who was raised from the dead, that we should bear fruit to God.
The same message is conveyed in the wine and wineskins. The old skins can’t handle new wine. All of the old forms, practices, and structures are not able to handle the new kingdom-wine that will mature well past all of the boundaries of the old. With the new marriage, there will have to be new wine for the wedding feast. Jesus will drink the old wine down to the dregs. This cup will not pass from him until he drinks it in full. But in his resurrection Jesus will be a new wineskin, having a transformed body and filled with the new wine of the Spirit.
We who have been baptized into Christ have “put on Christ” (Gal 3.27). We share his garment. As a part of the church, we are one flesh with Christ (Eph 5.25ff.). We are new wineskins filled with the new wine of the Spirit (see Ac 2; Eph 5.18). This marriage calls for a celebration of feasting! Each week we come to the Feast with our Bridegroom for a foretaste of what is to come at the consummation of all things.
Let us, therefore, keep the Feast!
