"Why do we and the Pharisees fast much,
but your disciples do not fast?"
There was the sense among some that Jesus and his disciples were lax in their practice. Jesus himself had even somehow became known as a glutton and a drunkard (see Matthew 11:19), though no doubt these claims were exaggerated. But he did turn water into wine at Cana and countenance his disciples picking grain on the Sabbath. They did dine with sinners and tax collectors, even inviting such individuals to become disciples. For those who equated devotion and piety with rigorous moral effort such actions were anathema. But the disciples of John and the disciples of the Pharisees were missing the point. They fasted because they thought they should fast, because it was on the list of what religious people ought to do. But they seemed not to realize that fasting brought about hunger because it was meant to make room to receive some better. The fundamental point was to ensure that one would be hungry for the true feast. And with the arrival of Jesus the bridegroom so too had the first stage of the wedding banquet begun, which was the goal toward which all of the fasting was ordered.
Jesus answered them, "Can the wedding guests mourn
as long as the bridegroom is with them?
The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them,
and then they will fast.
Because it was not the final culmination of the wedding feast of the Lamb, which would only permanently arrive at the end of time, there would come days when it was appropriate for the disciples of Jesus to fast. But they would fast knowing what their hunger was preparing them to receive. They would forego good things of earth knowing that the bread of angels awaited them. Their practice was not that of doing what required maximum effort for its own sake. Their lives were not centered on their works, but on Jesus himself. Hence they did not always and only fast, even after the Ascension. Indeed, even in the age of the Spirit, before the the return of the Lord in glory, they would feast more than they fasted. Lent was a season of forty days, but Easter one of fifty. And this reflected the fact that, although Jesus was not visibly present to the Church, he was truly with her always. And although the final form of the wedding banquet had not yet arrived, it was nevertheless still present from the rising of the sun to its setting, wherever the mass was celebrated.
People do not put new wine into old wineskins.
Otherwise the skins burst, the wine spills out, and the skins are ruined.
Jesus brought with him a new paradigm. If one tried to squeeze him into the mold of a previous stage of divine revelation that stage would reveal itself to be inadequate to contain him. If people tried to make his teachings mere items on a list of other, older teachings, all would devolve into contradiction and collapse. He brought not merely new items, but a new framework, and a new interpretive key. This was true of the old wineskins of the Old Testament, but it is also true of any other earthly paradigm into which one might try to make Jesus fit. The results would only ever be distortion and failure. People have tried to make Jesus everything from a spiritual guru to a Marxist, interpreting him according to some predefined lens of their liking. But Jesus defies all such categorization. The results of all such attempts is to make Jesus out to be something less than he actually is. And when we do that we short change ourselves of the feast to which he invites us, which is nothing less than the marriage feast of God and man, heaven and earth.
For I know that the LORD is great;
our LORD is greater than all gods.
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