A church has a lot of plates to keep spinning. Is there money in the budget? Is it time to call someone to work on the plumbing or A/C? Does the bulletin have all the information we need? Do we have enough teachers for Bible class? Do we have enough volunteers for the service being done both inside and outside the church building? Are we checking on the people who need checking on? Do we have everything we need for a Sunday morning to happen in the ways it needs to?
These are good concerns to have, good things on which to spend our time and energy. However, something important can get lost in all this:
Are we experiencing the presence of God?
In Matthew 9, we get three consecutive stories about Jesus inviting controversy. He forgives too quickly, they say. He shouldn’t eat with tax collectors, they say. And now, why doesn’t he engage in the cherished practice of fasting (Matthew 9:14-17)? In showing us these controversies, Matthew is shining a light on the inadequacy of religion to show us the fullness of God the way Jesus shows us the fullness of God. Religion needs one to jump through a series of hoops before a conversation about forgiveness can be had. Religion needs at least the appearance of holiness before it invites “tax collectors and sinners” to the table for dinner. And religion cherishes its plethora of practices (like fasting, like Sunday mornings, like Bible class) that are good, but are ultimately no substitute for God’s very presence.
And so, Jesus replies to the question about fasting by saying: you wouldn’t mourn for someone who is still with you, right? You wouldn’t sew an old cloth onto a new cloth, would you? And you wouldn’t put new wine, which will ferment and expand, into an old wineskin that has no more room to expand, would you?
Jesus is here. And that is enough. Do not mourn him as if he is not here. Be careful what you “sew” onto him. Be careful what kind of container you try to put him in. He’s given us this image: fabric tearing. I bet you can practically hear the sound of it as one piece of cloth slowly rips away from the other. That is the sound the presence of God makes when we try to attach it to… anything. At the end of the day, a religious practice or tradition, even a good one like fasting, is not capable of delivering to us the fullness of God’s presence. Any vessel by which we experience the love, joy, and peace of God is just that – a vessel. At some point, the vessel will show its inadequacy in giving us what our hearts most truly desire – God himself. We just might start loving the vessel so much that we forget what’s inside it.
Like rain that falls day after day, season after season, the presence of God is saturating the deepest places in our hearts. And like an old wineskin with no more room to expand, the presence of God is cracking open and breaking any and every practice, tradition, and priority that we come to love too much.
Let us explore our Christian religion for all its beauty (and there is much of it). But there is just no substitute for simply being with God. So, let the prayer of our hearts constantly be for God to break every vessel that can’t hold him and to give us his fullness.