Today, I am reading and commenting on  Luke 4-5.

When Jesus called Levi the tax collector to be one of His followers, Levi threw a lavish party which Jesus and His disciples attended.  The Pharisees asked Jesus’ disciples why they would associate with tax collectors and sinners.  I want to note that, in the context of the Gospels, tax collectors were those enriched themselves by collaborating with the enemy to the detriment of their countrymen.  To which Jesus replied, even though He had not been asked directly, that He had not come to call the righteous, but rather sinners, to repentance.  The Pharisees then asked Jesus why His disciples did not fast, contrasting their failure to fast with the fasting by the disciples of the various Pharisee teachers and even John the Baptist’s disciples.  Jesus replied with an interesting metaphor.  First, He says that no one puts new wine in old wineskins, because the new wine would burst the old wineskins.  That would seem fairly straightforward: Jesus’ ministry is a new thing and cannot be contained by the traditions and customs of the old thing which the Pharisees and even John the Baptist represent.  There is only one problem with that, Jesus follows up the comment about the wineskins by saying that once someone has drunk old wine they do not want to drink new wine.  So, there is a connection between Jesus’ answer about calling sinners, not the righteous and His answer about wine and wineskins, but I am not quite sure what it is.  There is also a connection between His comment about the friends of the bridegroom not fasting while he is with them, but that they will fast later, and His comment about not wanting to drink new wine after tasting old wine.  Again, I am not quite sure what that connection is.  I think part of what Jesus was saying was that His movement was a new and joyous thing, but it would get better as it aged.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.