But Don't Party

"And who would patch an old garment with unshrunk cloth? For the new patch shrinks and pulls away from the old cloth, leaving an even bigger hole than before. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. The wine would burst the wineskins, spilling the wine and ruining the skins. New wine needs new wineskins." (Mark 2:21-22)

Jesus must have seen the need to remind us of something we'd rather keep in the background. That’s why he provided a couple of illustrations showing that his Kingdom doesn’t fit the thought patterns we’ve grown up with. It's not a tame Kingdom, and its priorities are nothing like our own.
No one, he said, takes a new piece of cloth, never shrunken in the wash, and makes it into a patch for an old garment. If you want to take the new and tack it onto the old, you'll have a struggle on your hands. The new cloth will shrink and suddenly be too small for the hole it's trying to fill. A few torn stitches later, and your patch will be off
Nor, he went on, do you pour new wine into an old leather wineskin. The very character of new wine is to put great stress on the container that holds it. That old wineskin will burst like a child's balloon, and both skin and wine will be lost. New wine belongs in a new wineskin.
The faith Jesus brought with him isn’t an add-on, isn’t something to be funneled into the container of life we already have. Why not? Simply because the Kingdom contradicts all our notions, all our beliefs, all our personal idols. The Kingdom is bold and new and aggressive and determined to turn our world on its head.
Cravings for money and power and the fulfillment of every desire are the instincts we live by, but the Kingdom sees them all as the rubbish of pitiful rebels living in failure. Our world tells us that nothing is more important than our selves, but the Kingdom reminds us that focusing on our selves is what got us into this trouble in the first place. Society tells us that all human beings have to be free, but Jesus announces that if we want to be his friends we must do what he says. In following his orders lies our true freedom.
So rejoice. Dance and sing, because the Master who was taken from them has come back to us.
But don't party.