NEW WINEskins for a new season?

New Wineskins for a New Season?
 
“And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins.” (Mark 2:22)
 
Perhaps nothing in recent memory has challenged the way we do international student ministry more than the Coronavirus/COVID-19 pandemic and the devastating impact it has had in the U.S. and worldwide. Enforced isolation from lockdowns and quarantines has compelled us to rethink tried-and-tested ways of conducting campus ministry. Indeed, with the number of students coming to the U.S. likely to drop and higher education taking on a more online feel, college campuses – and, as a consequence, campus ministry as a whole – could look very different this fall. Furthermore, the ensuing economic downturn and the likelihood of a protracted recovery raise questions about the sustainability of financial giving to ministries as donors face the prospect of job insecurity.
 
At times like this, we cannot help but ask: Lord, are You calling for new wineskins that better fit the new season that’s upon us? What do they look like? Are You getting us ready as ministries into which You will pour Your new wine, perhaps a fresh vision and anointing for the work ahead, which we would miss out on, if we stubbornly hold on to our established ways of seeing and doing things? We need godly wisdom and discernment to know what to retain, what to revamp, what to replace, and what to reject and toss away.
 
New Season, New Ways?
 
Transitions are never easy, because they typically involve a sense of alienation, of loss, and of grieving. There is a place to mourn what has been lost, including established ministry cultures and practices that have worked well for us and which are so comfortable. Lament certainly has its rightful place because what is normal, familiar, and comfortable to us is now no more. But beyond lament, we have to be like the people of Issachar, who understood the times and knew what Israel should do (1 Chronicles 12:32).
 
New seasons often bring with them new things, new perspectives, new ways. It is highly unlikely we will return to the status quo ante (or as things were before) after COVID-19 is gone. When the Israelites entered the Promised Land, the manna which God had provided for 40 years during their time in the wilderness stopped and they began to eat the produce of Canaan (Joshua 5:12). That was a major change for the Israelites!
 
Thankfully, there is no need for us to figure things out by ourselves. God doesn’t intend for us to do it on our own! He is committed to showing us the way to go; He will personally instruct us exactly in what we need to do! The Lord promises in Isaiah 42:16, “I will lead the blind by ways they have not known, along unfamiliar paths I will guide them; I will turn the darkness into light before them and make the rough places smooth. These are the things I will do; I will not forsake them.”
 
A chapter later, in Isaiah 43:16-19, He speaks of new ways never before imagined, let alone adopted: “This is what the Lord says – he who made a way through the sea, a path through the mighty waters, who drew out the chariots and horses, the army and reinforcements together, and they lay there, never to rise again, extinguished, snuffed out like a wick: ‘Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past.  See, I am doing a new thing!  Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.’”
 
Don’t Box God In!
 
For the Israelites, their liberation from Egypt was such a pivotal moment in their national history – with the dramatic crossing of the Red Sea (in Exodus 14) as the high point of that experience. While it’s absolutely appropriate for them to commemorate that experience as a reminder of God’s mighty deliverance, they nonetheless ran the risk of monumentalizing it to the point that they thought that was the only way God can, will, and must work. Likewise, the same could be said of our own “burning bush” encounters and “Red Sea crossing” experiences.
 
But God refuses to be boxed in, delimited, and domesticated! He isn’t wedded to any specific solution or to a particular formula. One time at Rephidim in the Desert of Sin when the Israelites needed water, Moses was instructed to strike a rock with his staff and water would flow from it (Exodus 17:6). Another time at the Desert of Zin near Kadesh Barnea when the Israelites suffered again from lack of water, Moses was told to speak to the rock (Numbers 20:8). (Tragically, Moses and Aaron would disobey the Lord’s directive and resort to past formula by striking the rock, twice just to be sure [Numbers 20:11-12]. The Israelites got their water, but both those great leaders paid dearly for their disobedience.)
 
Trust and Obey – Even When It Doesn’t Make Sense
 
“‘For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,’ declares the Lord. ‘As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.’” (Isaiah 55:8-9)
 
Oftentimes, God’s ways don’t make much sense to us. In fact, they may even seem downright silly. In Joshua 6, the Israelites came to the city of Jericho with its imposing walls – likely one of the fortified cities that so freaked out ten of the twelve scouts sent by Moses to reconnoiter Canaan four decades previously (Numbers 13:28). Rather than take the city by force or build siege ramps, God’s directive was an interesting one: March around the city once every day for six days. But on the seventh day, march around the city seven times, and when the priests sound a long blast on their trumpets, the army is to give a loud shout, and the walls of Jericho, the Lord promised, will come crashing down.
 
To seasoned military campaigners, this strategy neither makes strategic nor tactical sense. Indeed, I can imagine the enemy troops atop the city ramparts laughing their heads off at those crazy Israelites playing merry-go-round. But Joshua has been around God’s block enough times to know that common sense doesn’t necessarily play a part where God’s ways are concerned! We aren’t called to analyze or assess His directives, but simply to obey them!
 
It’s significant that before the Israelites took Jericho, Joshua had a divine appointment with the “commander of the Lord’s army” (Joshua 5:15). Joshua’s readiness to worship God and to receive His commands is instructive of Joshua’s willingness to obey, no matter how weird they might have sounded to his professional sensibilities. It was like when Jesus told Peter to go deep and catch some fish (in Luke 5). Despite not having caught anything the night before – and possibly wondering what the heck does this carpenter know about fishing – Peter nonetheless responded with 5 life-changing words, “But because you say so” (Luke 5:5b).
 
And that’s where we need to be as well: to know God’s good, pleasing, and perfect will, and to obey it. Jesus’s food was “to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work” (John 4:34). And so too ours.

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