"No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. If he does, the new piece will pull away from the old, making the tear worse. And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the wineskins will be ruined. No, he pours new wine into new wineskins." -- Mark 2:21-22

I'm not one who typically sews, and I've never tried sewing a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment.  Nor do I carry a wineskin, so have never had the need to pour new wine into it.  But what I hear is that neither approach works, because they are old solutions to new problems.  When the garment was new, the new patch would have worked, but the garment has changed, and what you used to be able to do will not work.   As the world changes, new problems emerge.  It takes creativity to come up with new solutions.  A hammer and duct tape work for most, if not all, challenges, but some things are just more sophisticated now and  require more specialized tools.   Likewise, the way people learn and communicate has changed.  Jesus was speaking to common people in ways they understood.  He was the new wine being poured into a new skin.  The Pharisees had great difficulty connecting.  Today, the generations coming up are wired so much differently than the Gen X-ers, Boomers, and back, and to connect with them requires new language skills and new means of connection.  If we want to stay relevant to the generation being born now, we must continually grow with the advances around us.  We might be getting older, but we don't have to become stale.  We can stay fresh, and continually communicate the stories of God, which are always fresh to new ears.

Readings:  Leviticus 4:1-5:19; Mark 2:13-3:6; Psalm 36:1-12; Proverbs 10:1-2