The new is better!

At the beginning of His ministry, Jesus called Levi, the tax collector, and he followed Him. Matthew held a banquet at his house and invited tax collectors and sinners. While everyone was eating and celebrating, the religious people watched from the sidelines, bothered by all that joy. So they asked: John's disciples and the Pharisees' disciples fast and pray, so why are yours always eating and drinking?

Jesus' answer is in Luke 5:33-39, and it goes far beyond fasting. It exposes the religiosity that lives inside each one of us.

1. An answer to a shallow question

Jesus uses the image of a wedding, which in those days lasted for days. While the bridegroom is with them, the guests don't fast: it's time to celebrate. When the bridegroom is taken from them, speaking of His death, resurrection, and ascension, then they will fast.

Jesus doesn't condemn fasting. He simply answers a shallow question. But because He knew their hearts, He decides to go deeper.

2. The Pharisee who lives in us

Don't think that because you're modern, don't wear a suit, or don't follow a strict dress code, you're free from religiosity. Nor is it true that only people who have been in church for many years are religious. Inside each of us there is a Pharisee who wants to give opinions, impose a ritual, and look at others with judgment.

2.1 Religiosity on the inside: morality

Before eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, Adam was not a moral being. After he ate, he hid, was afraid, and felt guilt. That's where religiosity is born: trying to look morally acceptable before God and people.

That's why, when we repeat a sin, we're ashamed even to pray. But Jesus died precisely because we have no moral standing to present ourselves to God. He paid for our guilt and opened the way.

2.2 Religiosity on the outside: practices and rituals

On the outside, the religious person needs practices to look good: going to church just to check a box, giving only to feel accepted. And since no one can be a perfect religious person, every failure produces guilt.

Religiosity treats God as a boss, not as a Father. To a boss, we'll always owe something. Jesus taught us to pray by saying "Our Father."

2.3 The stereotypes of religiosity

In 2023, at an event in São Paulo, I went with some friends to the home of a prophet. I grew up thinking a prophet was the poorest believer in the church. This one lived in a mansion, was an architect, cooked like a chef, and talked like a normal person. My stereotypes fell one by one. After dinner, in the living room, the presence of God came, with tongues and prophetic words, including for me.

Jesus was showing me that poverty or wealth doesn't define spirituality. Religiosity creates stereotypes about what it means to be spiritual, successful, or to have a good family, and we need to be confronted and stripped of them.

3. The new garment: our outward practices

In those days, no one would cut up a whole new garment to patch an old one. The new cloth would shrink in the first wash and the tear would get worse.

The gospel of grace is that complete new garment. You can't tear off a piece of grace to fix your religiosity. You don't need a few small repairs: you need new clothes.

3.1 Principles, not methods

We like rituals because they're predictable: "Just give me the steps and I'll do it." But spirituality isn't a gym routine or a miracle diet. Jesus gives us principles: pray, read the Word. How should you do it? Try, learn, change.

I used to pray and then read the Bible. One day I learned from another brother to read first, so I could hear God before speaking to Him, and I changed. If your reading plan got stuck in Numbers, don't condemn yourself: keep reading, in a different way if you need to. The Pharisees never understood God's principles (Matt 22:29).

4. The new wine: the expansion of the heart

Wine ferments and stretches the leather wineskin. Once stretched, the wineskin dries out and hardens, and it's no longer good for new wine, because it would burst.

The gospel is new and expanding wine. God pours it into you, you stretch as far as you can, and then a new wineskin has to be made. And that doesn't happen just once: the wine of Jesus, the true vine (John 15:1), is limitless.

4.1 The new wine of Cana

In John 2, at a wedding, the wine ran out. Jesus had the stone jars used for the ceremonial washing of the religious filled with water, and He turned the water into wine. That wine had no time to ferment: it was new. And the master of the banquet said the best had been saved for last.

Jesus used the very foundation of religious practice to reveal something new.

5. "The old is better"

Jesus ends by saying that no one after drinking old wine wants the new, for they say, "The old is better." We're like children who refuse a dish just because it has something green in it, without even tasting it.

Religiosity says: "I already know, I've already lived it, I'm not changing." And so we miss out on God's best for our spirituality, marriage, work, and relationships. God works in many ways, with manifold wisdom (Eph 3:10), and He doesn't fit in our containers. That's why the cup overflows (Ps 23:5), and Jesus promised to drink the new wine with us in the Kingdom (Matt 26:29).

Conclusion

Jesus has no problem turning water into wine. Our difficulty is accepting to become a new wineskin and letting go of the old garment that practically puts itself on. Taste what God is doing: the new is better.

What practice, stereotype, or religious certainty is keeping you from receiving the new wine Jesus wants to pour out today?