New Wineskins for New Wine - Historical Service

"No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old cloak, for the patch pulls away from the cloak, and a worse tear is made. Neither is new wine put into old wineskins; otherwise, the skins burst, and the wine is spilled, and the skins are destroyed; but new wine is put into fresh wineskins, and so both are preserved." -Matthew 9: 16-17

Jesus’ warning about putting new wine into old wineskins reminds us, metaphorically, that new content almost always requires new forms. In this passage, Jesus was arguing that his new teaching about the Kingdom of God required new ways of thinking, acting, and being. Out with the old, in with the new, you might say. It is never a popular stand. People don’t like change, and they are generally not shy about saying so.

Jesus, however, knew that change was both inevitable and necessary if people were truly to be transformed. Like the ancient Psalmist whose work he would have known well, Jesus was singing a "new song."

This did not mean that there would not be losses along the way. In fact, Jesus recognized that if one was to become a follower of his new "way," he or she would have to sacrifice much. To the rich young man who wished to follow him, Jesus gave the most difficult instruction imaginable: "Sell all you have." To others among his would-be disciples, he offered the paradoxical and cryptic advice that they must "hate" their mothers and fathers if they were to follow him. (I wonder why those boosters of the Ten Commandments in public places never mention that.)

Today we are attempting to re-experience a worship service from 1925, specifically the service which was held to celebrate this church’s 200th anniversary. Of course, it is very difficult for us to really do so: it is like putting new wine into old wineskins, if you will. We can make some observations, however: Unitarians in 1925 were more biblical then we are; the forms of worship they used were more traditional, though not so very different from what we do today. They regularly recited the Lord’s Prayer, which we no longer do. They were more liturgical than we are. The music was a bit different. The hymns weren’t degenderized. And probably most of the congregation would not have questioned the existence of God, albeit a most Unitarian one, and for some a most impersonal one.

But it is very difficult indeed for us to actually try to walk in the shoes of those who worshipped in this church 82 years ago. We cannot know what these forms really meant to them. Much has happened in the world since 1925 to shake the foundations of what was then known and accepted and assumed.

What we can do this morning is to honor the past. We can, I hope, learn a little something about our religious tradition, where it has come from, how it has altered or stayed the same over time. We can come to know our history a little better, and how we came to where we stand today. But we will also, I trust, recognize more fully the inevitability of change.

It is not surprising that in his sermon on that anniversary occasion in 1925, our then minister Laurence Hayward (whose portrait hangs in the back of this sanctuary) also preached about change: "To every backward look the great fact that at once starts up is the impression of change. . . . Looking back from today," he said, "we have a deep impression of a difference between now and any other point in 200 years, a difference in the learning of the people toward the world of religion."

Understandably, Hayward found that some of the change was good, but some perhaps not. He especially lamented what we today might call the loss of religious passion or zeal. "The difference between us and those who earlier worshipped God in this parish is that we at least tend to see God with more breadth but with less intensity." Our Puritan ancestors, he said, had "the vivid sense of the reality of God, the terribly real sense that God’s eyes were constantly on every person."

On the other hand, he could celebrate with his contemporaries what he called "the quicker putting away of the Puritan superfine habits: the bringing of music and flowers into the church and the growth of thought that gradually made this a Unitarian church." "But," Hayward continued,

. . .now today the tides of life have borne many, have borne the community as a whole, far from that implicit faith in God’s concern for us. We are sometimes confused by many factors, by the greatness of the universe science has revealed. We have far less sense that God’s watch over us is personal or sureness in knowing what he desires of us. The field is so large, the considerations governing morals so many, we realize how hard it is to prove anything and on how many things time has altered our judgment that we often ask ourselves why sacrifice and effort should be put into conclusions about right and wrong, that have only some degree of probability in their favor.

The result of the application of those principles and others like them had led, Hayward concluded, to "a deeper realization of the countless factors in life, making for human breadth and tolerance on the one hand and for spiritual weakness and relaxation on the other."

One can understand his ambivalence. From our perspective, we can see that the changes which he observed in 1925 have only been amplified in the 80 plus years since he spoke. On the one hand Hayward was glad for the developments that had taken place here over the past two hundred years, on the other hand he could not avoid a strong sense of nostalgia for the past: particularly for the power and intensity of his religious ancestors’ faith:

Let us now who have been a part and a not uninfluential part of the stream of change recognize both its good and its bad results. It had to be, Hayward said. It was necessary that men [and women] should grow in knowledge, think God’s thoughts after him, become more his comrades in understanding, and doing so has brought not only an immense material enrichment to the existence of every one of us; but it has had beautiful spiritual consequences, doing away with horrible superstitions, making [people] less selfish, more bent on serving one another.

But on the other hand, as we look back and see the weakening of religious faith, every mind and heart knows its sense of loss too. It was not destined that our community or other communities should remain in the grip of comparative darkness, even though it was a darkness that the rays of conscience burned with a peculiar intense and vivid light.

Our task, he concluded, was "to hand over the old Puritan iron for new needs," to somehow find a way to carry our religious ancestors’ religious intensity and earnestness into a new time, with its new demands on our minds and spirits; but also into a time which possesses the same religious yearnings, the same religious hopes and dreams, that motivated our forebears in days long past. Old wine in new wineskins, to further develop our theme.

Perhaps you are surprised to hear such a clearly articulated Unitarian Universalist message being preached way back in 1925. Or perhaps not! What is clear is that we stand directly in the liberal religious tradition that Hayward embodies so well. It is clearly the tradition of Ralph Waldo Emerson, who instructed us to "acquaint ourselves at first hand with Deity," who reminded us that "God speaks, not spake," who demanded new forms of worship and new ways of preaching, and who insisted that Jesus was a model to be emulated but not a god to be worshipped. But it is also the tradition of William Ellery Channing, who sought to maintain a strong sense of continuity with the past in spite of our changing human understandings, and who ever insisted that Unitarians had as much right to the designation of "Christian" as anyone.

Change is never easy. When the ancient author of the Book of Ecclesiastes claims that "For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven," we are not necessarily reassured. We would prefer that things would stay the same. Over the years I am sure that there have been many members of this congregation who have been appalled by the changes they saw happening here. But change is inevitable. What is not inevitable is the form and direction that change will take. We do have some control over that; we can make choices today that will determine the course of events in times still to come.

Howard Thurman, the great 20th century Black preacher, Dean of Marsh Chapel at Boston University, and mentor to Martin Luther King, Jr., once wrote, echoing the Psalmist,

I will sing a new song.
I must learn the new song for the new needs.
I must fashion new words born of all the new growth
       of my life--of my mind--of my spirit.

I must prepare for new melodies that have never been
       mine before.
That all that is within me may lift my voice unto God.
Therefore, I shall rejoice with each new day
And delight my spirit in each fresh unfolding.
I will sing, this day, a new song unto God.

The poet Carl Sandburg wrote, in an autumn poem appropriate to this day and season,

I cried over beautiful things, knowing no
       no beautiful thing lasts.

The field of cornflower yellow is a scarf
       at the neck of the copper sunburned woman,
       the mother of the year, the taker of the seeds.

The northwest wind comes and the yellow is torn full
       of holes,
       new beautiful things come in the first spit
       of snow on the northwest wind,
       and the old things go, not one lasts.

The Rev. Harold E. Babcock