A woman from the United States was living in Poland when she discovered a Taco Bell. Looking forward to experiencing a little bit of her homeland, she walked in and eagerly approached the counter. The employee cheerfully asked, “Can I help you, Senorita?”
When worlds collide, you always get interesting results. Here was a US franchise patterned after Mexican cuisine bravely presented by a smiling girl from Poland. Mexico inside the United States inside Poland. Or something like that. It was a genuine effort at authenticity, but this fusion of cultures was far from seamless.
Something similar happened among those who first followed Jesus. Even if the effort was sincere, it wasn’t always easy to make your ideas mesh with the ideas of Jesus. One of the best examples is Peter. There were more than a few times he was enthusiastic, authentic, and way off track. In one particular instance, Jesus even told him, “You are not setting your mind on God’s interests, but man’s” (Matthew 16:23). As long as Peter’s thinking was shaped by the world, he and Jesus wouldn’t be on the same page.
During the Transfiguration, Peter suggested building three tabernacles, “not realizing what he was saying” (Luke 9:33). Despite any sincerity on his part, his idea was out of place. Later, when the mob showed up in the garden to arrest Jesus, Peter drew a sword and initiated a plan—which Jesus immediately shut down. As Peter learned how to follow Jesus, he often had to rethink his thinking. Maybe this is why many of us find this apostle so relatable.
Of course, Peter wasn’t the only one who had trouble thinking like Jesus. When Jesus sat down to eat a meal with Matthew along with some other internal revenue ilk, a group of naysayers showed up to say nay. First, the Pharisees showed up to scold Jesus for eating with sinners (Matthew 9:11). As usual, Jesus quickly defused them with truth. But right after that, another group arrived.
These were followers of John. And even though these men would have scored higher on our likeability scale, they also had a problem with the way Jesus was doing things. “Then the disciples of John came to Him, asking, ‘Why do we and the Pharisees fast, but Your disciples do not fast?’” (Matthew 9:14).
John’s students had it all figured out. Belonging to God involved fasting and certainly not not-fasting with people who sin. What Jesus was doing didn’t match the standard religious policy. But their perception of Jesus was wrong. They were certainly sincere in their beliefs, but they’re thinking was out of whack, like a Taco Bell in Warsaw.
To help adjust their thinking, Jesus presented an analogy. “The attendants of the bridegroom cannot mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them, can they? But the days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast” (Matthew 9:15). If someone was invited to a wedding and asked with indignation, “Why are all of you smiling and eating cake?” everyone else would ask, “Why are you not?”
In this analogy, Jesus is the groom and the people following Him are the wedding guests. And here come John’s students, dressed for a funeral. Jesus wasn’t being inappropriate. They were.
From the start, Jesus announced that He had come to establish something new. During his lesson on the hillside, He emphasized a transition. It used to be like this, but now it’s like this (Matthew 5:21-48). The new would be replacing the old. The old covenant was the scaffold and it was time to live in the building.
You can’t have both. You can’t live under the old covenant and the new covenant. To help John’s students understand, Jesus presented another analogy. “But no one puts a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment; for the patch pulls away from the garment, and a worse tear results” (Matthew 9:16). You can’t take a little bit of the new and stick it onto the old. When your clothes are wearing out, sticking a patch on them isn’t your best option.
The same is also true with wineskins. “Nor do people put new wine into old wineskins; otherwise the wineskins burst, and the wine pours out and the wineskins are ruined; but they put new wine into fresh wineskins, and both are preserved” (Matthew 9:17). Jesus presented a very clear picture. If you try to maintain the new covenant within the parameters of the old covenant, you’re going to ruin everything.
In a way, Jesus was telling humanity, It’s time to change your clothes. When a person becomes a Christian, the same aspects apply. Your old life is like worn-out clothing. Becoming a Christian isn’t a matter of cutting out a little bit of the new covenant and using it as a patch. Christianity is a complete transformation. If you try to merely sew on bits and pieces of your new life as a Christian onto your old life, you’re going to lose both. You’ll ruin everything.
Christianity is not made of patches. You don’t look for holes in your life and then just slap a little bit of Christian over it.
Going to church and continuing to live like the world—praying sincerely but refusing to fight sin—reading the Bible and never allowing it to shape your choices—all of these are just patches.
And patches are like zip-ties and duct tape. They might hold things together for a little while, but not when it counts. When the storms come, only truly durable lives remain standing in the aftermath. “When the tempest passes the wicked is no more, but the righteous is established forever” (Proverbs 10:25). Anything made of patches is flimsy.
Jesus didn’t come to hand out patches. He presented a whole new wardrobe. “For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ” (Galatians 3:27). “Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come” (II Corinthians 5:17). We don’t act different. We are different.
There’s a big difference between telling the truth and being an honest person. There’s a big difference between forcing a smile with clenched fists and actually being a loving person. There’s a big difference between doing something godly and loving God.
Whenever a person gets an organ transplant, he has to take medicine to keep his old body from rejecting the new organ. Although he can move on with his life, he lives with a chronic conflict between the old and the new.
When someone is baptized and simply tries to do a selective transplant of Christian ideals, the same difficulty ensues. No wonder, that those who dabble in Christianity find it less than what they hoped for. They are baptized, but they never really set out to be transformed. As a result, they have a chronic affliction in which they have to keep the worldly self from rejecting the few “Christian” parts they’ve allowed to be transplanted.
How much easier it would be to get a whole brand-new body. To go all in.
It’s worth considering. Any spiritual discomfort you feel might very well be the patches. It might be the zip ties and duct tape holding you together.
There’s a better way to do this. That’s what Jesus was trying to explain. You’ve been invited to a wedding. It’s a place of smiles and joy. And at a wedding, you have to dress like you’re at a wedding. RSVP–and no patches, please.
