As we continue to consider what it means to be a revolutionary faith community inside the American Empire, we turn to Jesus’s practice of hanging out with those who Empire has claimed to be despised, rejected and demonized.
When religious leaders confront Jesus about this “unclean” practice, he challenges the religious to think about the new spirit that requires a new container. Churches—not ours of course—(wink wink) tend to fall into habits that are distrustful of new ways of being.
We have often heard it said: “This is not how we do things!”—old wine as it were. We are called to create spaces that can house new modes of being—new wine. That is what this reflection is about.