Mark 2:18-22, A Question About Fasting

18 Now John's disciples and the Pharisees were fasting. And people came and said to him, “Why do John's disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?” [Apparently John and his disciples kept to strict orthodox Jewish practices that the Pharisees begrudgingly admired, even though John had a sharp tongue towards them.] 19 And Jesus said to them, “Can the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast. [Fasting, in the Bible, is a sign of impending disaster or penitence or mourning. When Jesus was with his disciples on earth, it was an interim period of the kingdom of God and not normative for the post-resurrection and Pentecost church. Note how Jesus points his ministry to holy matrimony, the rite of God joining two people together.] 20 The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast in that day. [Jesus points to his coming passion.] 21 No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. If he does, the patch tears away from it, the new from the old, and a worse tear is made. 22 And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the wine will burst the skins—and the wine is destroyed, and so are the skins. But new wine is for fresh wineskins.” [A new spirit must find new ways of expression, or as one writer entitled his book: Sacred Cows Make Gourmet Hamburgers! Christianity was not a breach with Judaism but its fulfillment. Judaism, as we see in Acts, could not hold Christianity. There had to be a break. Something new emerged because the new people of God could not be controlled by the old Judaism.]