New Wine

Mark 2:22 (NIV)—

‘And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins.’

Have you ever been to the New Wine festival? We’ve been several times over the years when it was held at the Bath and West showground: times of fellowship, laughter, great preaching and singing – and sometimes just too much mud!

The image of ‘new wine’ was ancient even when Jesus talked about it. In the Old Testament, new wine is frequently mentioned along with grain and olive oil. To have grain, oil and new wine was to celebrate a successful harvest, and to have all the basics to see your family through the coming winter, a sure sign of God’s favour.

Even to this day, new wine is attractive. People rush to France on the third Thursday of November to bring back bottles of ‘Beaujolais Nouveau’, light fruity wine made from grapes harvested just six weeks earlier. When I worked in Portsmouth, our staff common room would advertise its arrival (it’s not far from France to Portsmouth!) and I may have tried it once or twice…

In today’s verse Jesus wasn’t talking about wine-tasting – though good wine was at the heart of his first miracle. His focus here was on the newest wine – still developing, still alive, still active. Wine was kept in leather bottles. Old leather is hard, inflexible and the new wine will burst it; new leather is flexible, will go with the flow. And the Holy Spirit is like that new wine, alive, active, blowing where he wills, he wants his people to follow his lead in his new directions.

When the people of God have minds that are hard, inflexible, unable to respond, the result is stagnation or worse. Which is why, when many Anglican and other churches were opening their minds and souls to the active presence of the Spirit, what better name to give their festival than… New Wine?

Prayer - Lord please help me to keep an open, flexible mind to respond to your leading wherever it may take me – and open ears to hear the directions!