FRIDAY, February 26 Ember Day

Mark 2:13-22. No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old cloak; otherwise, the patch pulls away from it, the new from the old, and a worse tear is made.

With this simple sentence Jesus helps us confront the enigma of the old and the new. Jesus does not say the new is better, but that because it has not yet shrunk-- has not been broken in, as it were--it will not repair the rip but make the situation worse. Nor does Jesus say that the old is no longer worth using and must be discarded. So the solution is to make the new cloth compatible with the old before utilizing it.

Can we apply that to our lives and to our faith? Our Christian faith does not begin with Jesus. It begins with the faith he inherited. What we find new in Jesus' words was often not new in his own community; it is new to us only because we are ignorant of that faith. So let us learn how to treasure that older but still usable cloth--Judaism--and then see how our new cloth can be accommodated to it, so that the tear which tore apart the fabric of faith long ago may be mended. (1990)

PRAY for the Diocese of Bermuda (Bermuda)

Ps 95 & 40, 54 * 51; Genesis 40:1-23; 1 Corinthians 3:16-23; Mark 2:13-22

View the daily Lectionary Readings at Satucket.com.
Or view the Bible passages at Biblegateway.com.

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