“No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old cloak; otherwise, the patch pulls away from it, the new from the old, and a worse tear is made. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and the wine is lost, and so are the skins; but one puts new wine into fresh wineskins.”
Jesus continues to address his questioners about the kingdom of God. The basic meaning of what he is saying here is clear: there is a contrast between the new and the old. Further, now the new has arrived, the old ways – such as the traditions and beliefs of the zealous Pharisees – have become inappropriate.
Nevertheless, there are some technical points to concern ourselves with, not least the characteristics of cloth and the fermentation of wine!
The cloth illustration can at first seem absurd. Why speak of the kingdom of God as a patch when a patch functions as nothing more than a fix for an old garment? This would suggest that Jesus was nothing more than a reformer: a patch is less than the thing patched, and reform is less than the thing reformed. Was Jesus just another figure in the familiar line of reforming rabbis? To see past this absurdity is to understand the dynamism of the new cloth. If sewn onto old cloth, new cloth, when washed, shrinks, and makes the original tear in the old cloth even worse. Thus, ironically, it is the new patch that must be kept, and the old garment thrown away!
The illustration of the wine simply confirms the point. New wine is wine not fully fermented. If it goes into old wineskins, which have already been stretched by the fermentation of its previous contents, then the wineskin will stretch beyond its tolerance and burst. New wine should be poured into a new wineskin, not an old and inadequate vessel.
The newness of the kingdom of God is therefore vividly depicted. New cloth and new wine are effective symbols: they represent not only the newness of the present situation with the coming of Jesus, but also the dynamic effect that God’s kingdom (initiated in Jesus) has on the established religious structures.