Luke 5:36-39
He also told them a parable: “No one tears a piece from a new garment and puts it on an old garment. If he does, he will tear the new, and the piece from the new will not match the old. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the new wine will burst the skins and it will be spilled, and the skins will be destroyed. But new wine must be put into fresh wineskins. And no one after drinking old wine desires new, for he says, ‘The old is good.’”
The new does not mix with the old. The above passage does not say that the old and the new don't have some compatibility, but it does say the transition between the new and the old will be a struggle. Jesus, in the parable, tells us that His new message (contained in the Gospel) will not mix well with the old message of the Pharisees and religious leaders (their "interpretation" of the Law). Since a new piece of cloth has not yet shrunk, due to washing, the new piece sown onto an old garment will tear away the old when the two are washed together. The old doesn't have the flexibility of the new. The new doesn't have the stability of the old. Jesus expands that thought be talking about new wine skins and old wine skins. An old wine skin has already been stretched to its fullest and is past the point of flexibility. However, new wine needs to expand. If you put new wine into the old wine skin the "stability" of the old can't handle the "expanding" nature of the new. In the garment parable of Jesus words, we read that new things shrink. They adjust over time and diminish in their flexibility. In the parable of the wine, we learn new things expand and will expand the old ... they will stretch the old ... sometimes beyond the capacity of the old. The lessons in this parable for how we bring new thoughts and new methods to old organizations and old systems are many. Jesus, of course, is referring to Himself and the fact that the gospel (His offer for salvation by grace through faith, to all men, by the work He will soon do on the cross) will not mix with the man-made-works-based-salvation spoken by the religious leaders of the day. The new will expand the old. The new will tear at the old as it settles into place. If we think of this principle in the context of organizations or systems or process it speaks volumes as to what happens when we integrate the new with the old. We ought to expect some tearing. We ought to expect some expanding ... that might even cause some bursting. Christ's words are warning us about the foolishness of such a thought. The religious leaders of the day couldn't take their interpretation of life and fit it into Christ's reality for what life should be and will be. The last line of the passage gives us a clue why they so resisted the thought of a change in system and change in thought. Note again what it says: "But new wine must be put into fresh wineskins. And no one after drinking old wine desires new, for he says, "The old is good." Jesus knew that the message of the Gospel, the "good" news, would be rejected by the old guard because the old guard liked their old wine. They had become used to it and it had seasoned with age. Yet, Jesus was the new wine and the new was not going to fit into the old. The concept of "love your neighbor" was not going to fit into the Pharisees plotting to kill the one who was teaching that concept. When we attempt to "change" systems and organizations and thoughts of people, we must remember that, like the Pharisees, they have become the old wine in the old wineskin. They will burst with the new. Jesus is not telling us to avoid the new, but rather to be aware of the process of the shrinking of the new as it is incorporated and the expanding of the old as it is implemented. In some context you might say, based upon this parable, there is no such thing as a "smooth" transition. The nature of change does not always allow the old and the new to interface the way we hope.
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