“Why do the disciples of John and the disciples of the Pharisees fast,
but your disciples do not fast?”
We hear questions derived from similar motivations all of the time. And, if we aren't careful, we perpetuate the problem ourselves. We take something that is frequently genuinely good like fasting and then make a universal law out of it. We take things that are admirable and treat them as though they are required in all circumstances. We establish a rigid order of wonderful practices, but with no room for the Holy Spirit.
“Can the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them?
As long as they have the bridegroom with them they cannot fast.
That Jesus considered fasting to be a genuine good cannot be in doubt since he himself stated that his disciples too would practice it in the future. But he also considered feasting to be good, and, at times, so fitting as to be virtually required. Such was that particular moment when the bridegroom of Israel had at least come to his bride.
For as a young man marries a young woman, so shall your sons marry you, and as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you (see Isaiah 62:5)
The revelation brought by Jesus had to be understood on its own terms. The Old Covenant was meant to point toward the time when Jesus would come to fulfill both the law and the prophets. Now that he himself was in in fact in the process of doing so the ceremonies and rituals of the Old were meant to give way to the New Covenant he established. Eventually kosher laws, the Jewish liturgical calendar, the requirement of circumcision, all of these had to give way to make room for a Church begin enough for both Jews and Gentiles.
Good, we think. We've never been at risk of insisting on requiring the practices of the Old Testament. And yet we too stand at risk of trying to fit Jesus into our own preexisting paradigms. This happens when we make our own ideologies primary, and we try to make Jesus and Christianity fit in as best we can. We can see how those in the Liberation Theology movement made him out to be a Marxist. But, closer to home, we do tend to try to fit Jesus into the mold of one political party or another, rather than molding our political parties in line with his teaching. We even risk taking things that Jesus did teach and giving them disproportionate importance, as though he only talked about the social Gospel, or alternatively, as though he was only interested in abstract and spiritual matters. Any time we try to take the hierarchy of goods into our own hands we run this risk. We should instead always be prepared to subject our own apparently good ideas to the standard supplied by revelation.
I have brought back Agag, and I have destroyed Amalek under the ban.
But from the spoil the men took sheep and oxen,
the best of what had been banned,
to sacrifice to the LORD their God in Gilgal.
King Saul thought he had a better idea than God, one which he could plausible state was for the sake of the service of God. These things he was supposed to destroy he would instead offer as sacrifices to the Lord. What could be wrong with that? In this case, virtually everything. Partial obedience in this way was actually disobedience.
Does the LORD so delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices
as in obedience to the command of the LORD?
The point was not about the things themselves, things which Saul implicitly gave primacy. The point was putting the Lord first, which is precisely what Saul failed to do. He learned the hard way that he did not have a better idea than God about how God ought to be served. The Lord, for his part, then rejected Saul as ruler in order to find someone who more closely shared his heart. David was certainly an improvement. But it was not until Jesus that we would see someone live out perfect obedience to God. Only the priorities of Jesus were perfectly focused on the Father. Thus he is our only viable source if we want to get such things right ourselves.
I will correct you by drawing them up before your eyes.
He that offers praise as a sacrifice glorifies me;
and to him that goes the right way I will show the salvation of God.
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