Gospel for 25 February, 2007

Now John's disciples and the Pharisees were fasting; and people came and said to him, "Why do John's disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?" And Jesus said to them, "Can the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast. The days will come, when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast in that day. No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment; if he does, the patch tears away from it, the new from the old, and a worse tear is made. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; if he does, the wine will burst the skins, and the wine is lost, and so are the skins; but new wine is for fresh skins." (Mark 2:18-22 RSV)

Jesus and his disciples often did not follow the conventions of their society. They were often out of sync with the rest of their fellows. Today we see that they were feasting when others were fasting. And they got called on the carpet because of it. They got a tonguelashing from the established religion. Well, guess what? That's the way it's going to be from here on out. If we are really following Jesus, taking him seriously, it means that we are going to be doing things differently from the world and from those in power. It means that we are at odds with society and is often going to mean that we can expect to get into hot water for it. But then, as Jesus said, the slave is not greater than the master. We can't expect any better treatment than He got.

Being at odds with power is not something that we should be really all that concerned about. That's just going to be par for the course. When we need to be really concerned is when the world calls us "friend".