Overview:

Saturday of the Thirteenth Week in Ordinary Time

A Reflection for Saturday of the Thirteenth Week in Ordinary Time

“People do not put new wine into old wineskins.
Otherwise the skins burst, the wine spills out, and the skins are ruined.
Rather, they pour new wine into fresh wineskins, and both are preserved.”

Find today’s readings here.

Today’s readings on this American holiday offer some thoughts on wine, among other things. The prophet Amos predicts fruitful days ahead for God’s people, citing the Lord’s promise of the juice of the vineyards dripping down mountains and running through hills. “Plant vineyards and drink the wine,” says God, vowing that the people will never again “be plucked from the land” given to them. 

Then Jesus encourages his disciples to be merry, like wedding guests celebrating a bridegroom’s big day. Wedding feasts, like the one at Cana, involve a lot of wine. Jesus knows that he will be leaving his disciples and that hard times are coming. Maybe he wants them to hold onto the joy of his presence while they can: There will be time for mourning.

 In the face of the John’s followers’ discomfort—Partying instead of fasting? Breaking with time-honored traditions?—Jesus uses the imagery of old cloaks and old wineskins to illustrate that he is doing something new. But the condition of the cloaks and wineskins is not really the point Jesus is making. Perhaps a reading of Amos with new eyes would have given his doubters a different perspective: God’s people are no strangers to rebuilding and reimagining what had been ruined. The new wine in the new wineskins symbolizes the hope of a new covenant and a new generation. 

As a member of an aging generation, I understand our tendency to think everything was better in days gone by: you know, we roamed the neighborhood unsupervised and drank from the garden hose and all that. I also know that this sentiment is not quite true. It’s just that our memories tend to gloss over the bad parts and embroider the good parts of the past. My childhood encompassed frequent political assassinations and race riots and the generation gap and the Vietnam War along with the warm hose water: not exactly idyllic. Not much was better in the 1960s, just different problems and challenges to recognize and overcome. 

Today Amos and Jesus focus our thoughts on new beginnings. If we older folks keep in mind that we have been trusted with building the Kingdom of God here on earth, maybe we can find the grace to bequeath that mission to younger believers. They now tend the garden of the Lord. They are the new wine. They’re going to need new wineskins, just as they’ll need our love and goodwill. They’ll need to have fresh faith that, as the psalmist promises, “Kindness and truth shall meet; justice and peace shall kiss.”

And sometimes everyone has to start over from scratch. Like Jesus did.

Valerie Schultz is a freelance writer, a columnist for The Bakersfield Californian and the author of Till the Moon Be No More: The Grit and Grace of Growing Older. She lives on the Oregon Coast.