You Can’t Pour New Wine Into an Old Life

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

In today’s Gospel, people come to Jesus with a complaint: “Why do the disciples of John and the Pharisees fast, but your disciples eat and drink?” In other words, “Jesus, why aren’t Your followers doing things the way we expect?” And Jesus gives them an answer about a wedding feast, an old cloak, and new wine. At first, it can sound like three separate ideas. But Jesus is really saying one thing: when God is doing something new in your life, you cannot keep insisting that everything stay the same. New wine needs new wineskins. A new life with Christ requires a heart that is willing to be changed.

Most of us want Jesus to improve our lives without disrupting them. We want Him to give us peace, but we may not want Him to change the habits that steal our peace. We want a deeper prayer life, but we do not want to give Him more of our time. We ask Him to heal relationships, but we still hold tightly to pride, resentment, or the need to be right. Sometimes we want the “new wine” of grace while protecting the same old wineskin. But Jesus did not come simply to make the old version of us a little better. He came to make us new.

There is also something very honest in the final line of this Gospel: “The old is good.” That is often our reaction to change. The old is familiar. The old is comfortable. Even our weaknesses can become comfortable because at least we know them. And then God begins asking something new of us, and suddenly we become nervous. Maybe He asks us to forgive. Maybe to surrender a relationship. Maybe to return to confession. Maybe to let go of something we have been controlling for years. And our first response can be, “But Lord, I’m used to the old.”

Yet following Jesus always involves becoming new. The saints were not people who simply admired Jesus; they allowed Jesus to stretch them. And sometimes being stretched feels like breaking. An old wineskin cannot expand. A new wineskin can. So maybe the question today is not simply, “Lord, what are You giving me?” Maybe the better question is, “Lord, what in me needs to change so that I can receive what You are giving?” Because sometimes God is already answering our prayer, but we are still clinging to the version of ourselves that cannot carry the answer.

So today, perhaps Jesus is inviting us to stop protecting the old wineskin. We do not have to be afraid of what He wants to change. Whatever Christ asks us to surrender, He asks because He wants to give us something greater. The Christian life is not about becoming a slightly improved version of who we have always been. It is about allowing grace to make us new. And perhaps holiness begins when we finally say: “Lord, I am tired of asking You to fit into my life. Teach me instead how to let my life be shaped by You.”

Prayer: Lord Jesus, sometimes I want Your grace without Your change. I hold on to what is familiar, even when You are calling me to something new. Give me a heart that is flexible in Your hands. Show me what I need to let go of, and give me the courage to trust what You are doing in me. Make my heart a new wineskin, ready to receive the new wine of Your grace. Amen.

– Homily by Rev Fr Patrick Agbeko