Wineskins II

     In chapter 16 of Matthew, Peter ‘makes the great confession’ - Jesus he says is the Son of the Living God. At Covenant, when someone wants to become a member or to be baptized, we ask them who Jesus is and we expect this response. Peter is correct when he says this, but it is not clear that Peter (or the other disciples) understood the ramifications of his statement. Following Peter’s statement we find a series of incidents that make us wonder just how much Peters actually believed what he had said.

    In the first instance, Jesus compares Peter to Satan. Jesus tells his disciples that he is going to Jerusalem and there he will die. Peter exclaims that he will not let that happen; Jesus will not be killed. Peter is expecting great things from Jesus as the Messiah, the Son of God on behalf of Israel and he cannot fit Jesus dying into his hope for a greater Israel under this Messiah. This cannot happen, he reasons. Jesus’s response is a harsh rebuke—” Get behind me, Satan!” Peter is trying to make all this work within his own frame but Jesus has been trying to show them that what they think needs to happen does not and will not happen. This is more of the new wine in old wineskins—it just does not work well. 

    The next incident is at the Transfiguration. Jesus has taken Peter, James, and John with him up a mountain and what they see is Jesus, Moses, and Elijah speaking together. In response, Peter wants to build three shelters for them. This is understandable from a human perspective. Here we have Moses, the great prophet, the deliverer of the nation, and Elijah, the one who must come before Messiah and who was translated without dying. If Abraham is the father of Israel, these two are her greatest prophets in her history. I have always wondered why David was not included in this group. I suspect that his exclusion was to make a point-the Kingdom of God is not about and will not be about a physical kingdom, a great nation in the sense of political power. No, that old wineskin will not work either. 

    The third instance is the Temple Tax story. Peter has been accosted by a Jewish interlocutor who has challenged Peter with an accusation in the form of a question—Does your rabbi pay the Temple Tax or not? Peter is likely caught a bit off guard but in any case, he quickly responds with a version of “Of course he does!” This gives Jesus another opportunity to open Peter’s eyes and so he asks, “Who do the kings of the earth collect their tax—from their own children or from other people?” Peter again answers correctly, “From the other people, of course.” Jesus responds to this with another, “Yep, you are right and that means the sons are free.” We cannot tell whether Peter gets the import of this statement because Jesus sends him out to find a coin so as “not to cause offense.” What Jesus does not say out loud here is that Peter’s response to his interlocutor was a bit misplaced. Jesus doesn’t have to pay the tax. Jesus is the Son of the Living God, the incarnated God, the Temple himself. He does not need to pay tax and by extension, neither does Peter. Peter too is a Son of God. Temple Tax, like the old wine skin, is not compatible with the new wine. 

    Between the Transfiguration and the Temple Tax episode, we have another deliverance story. A man comes up to Jesus so he can have his child healed. Part of his story is that he had asked the disciples to heal him, but they failed; Jesus does not. After the child is healed, the disciples ask Jesus to explain why they could not heal the child. Jesus’s response, after Peter’s confession, is “Because you do not have enough faith.” Their faith does not even reach the size of a mustard seed. They may agree with Peter that Jesus is the Son of the Living God, but they do not know what that means. They all still think the ministry of Jesus is about the liberation of Israel as a nation. Their thinking, their mental schemas will not hold the new wine of the kingdom Jesus is bringing. 

    When we ask whether someone believes that Jesus is the Son of God, we expect an affirmative response and we would like for that response to be pregnant with the idea that Jesus has brought the Kingdom of God into the world and into our lives. The kingdom is so radical so as to ruin our presuppositions because it includes freedom. This freedom is not freedom into self-aggrandizement but freedom to die. This dying is what Peter objects to—how can the Kingdom of God be manifest if the disciples of Jesus are called to deny themselves and give themselves for others—for the world? It makes as much sense to us as it did to Peter and that is why the wineskin illustration is as much for us as it was for those first disciples. Our expectations will be ruined by the new wine offered by God if we too think that we should be benefiting in the way the world understands benefit. We are called to be new wineskins into and within which the new wine of the kingdom of God can grow.