We begin this chapter 5 in Luke with Jesus calling the first disciples
---first Peter and Andrew then John and James. They had been fishing
unsuccessfully all day long and Jesus told them to let their nets
down, (here is where I prefer the KJV version of what was said):
"Launch out into the deep" ( Luke 5:4)
and they caught a whole mess of fish and Peter whose boat began to
sink under the weight of the catch fell to his knees and said he was
unworthy and called Jesus "Lord"
Jesus said from now on you will be fishers of men. and they followed
Him.
Then they travel on and encounter a leprous man and heal him...but
Jesus cautions
14: "Don't tell anyone, but go, show yourself to the priest and offer
the sacrifices that Moses commanded for your cleansing, as a testimony
to them."
15Yet the news about him spread all the more, so that crowds of people
came to hear him and to be healed of their sicknesses.
16But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.
Then the followng passages are very nearly the same as those of Mark,
and we arrive at the wineskin parable again except notice the
difference:
36He told them this parable: "No one tears a patch from a new garment
and sews it on an old one. If he does, he will have torn the new
garment, and the patch from the new will not match the old.
37And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the new
wine will burst the skins, the wine will run out and the wineskins
will be ruined.
38No, new wine must be poured into new wineskins.
39And no one after drinking old wine wants the new, for he says, 'The
old is better.' "
/end of chapter
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This chapter sets the pace with the gathering of disciples by the use
of miracles.and He tells Peter they will be fishers of men.
There is the worry of contesting traditions as when He tells the
leprous man not to speak of his healing but to pay tribute to the
priests.
....and Jesus despite all of His followers, or maybe because of them,
having to withdraw to lonely places to pray.
Finally , in the last verse Jesus says, no one after drinking the old
wants the new, which seems to highlight what Jesus said earlier, He
did not come to call the righteous, and the phsyician does not heal
the healthy but the sick.
=====================================================
When I first read this passage after having just come into Christ, I
read it the following way:
I was a little worried that my testimony of healing would be something
not right for its time and in a way would have Jesus withdrawing to
lonely places.
Secondly, in one way I felt like Christianity was the old wine, very
good and after having tasted it one would not ever consider the new
age, rather superficial belief systems...
so Luke ( to my mind ) somehow knew I would be reading it 2000 years
later, he was speaking to the future.
yet in another way, it did not matter that Christianity was 2000 years
old, I felt like it was the newest wildest thing, and that the former
"new age" schools were old. So different in fact that one could not
stay and hang on to any of the old to be in Christ.
As I read it today I notice that Luke's rendition tends to
de-emphasise the hollowness of the Pharisitical traditions and that
there is a kind of wistful yet practical knowing that the two will
never meet. Not a rejection of Moses at all, just knowing how the
intention had turned into ceremony and that would never fit with His
ministry.
In Christ
Christine
.
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