One of the keys to getting along well with people is learning the art of the appropriate.  Some of the worst mistakes I’ve ever made in my life were mistakes of the inappropriate.  It wasn’t that what I did was necessarily bad.  It was that I chose the wrong time.  During high school I worked on a farm in the summers for a local farmer.  One particularly hot day the tractor I was driving broke down so I walked to the nearest farmhouse to look for help.  The farmer’s wife invited me in to use the telephone and, while I was waiting for help to arrive, she asked me if I wanted a cold drink and I said yes.  So, she opened the refrigerator and handed me an ice-cold jug of water.  As was my custom, I just took the lid off and put it to my mouth and began drinking.  It was then that I saw a rather disgusted look on her face.  So, I set the jug down and she said, “I was going to get you a glass.”  Drinking water out of a jug is not a bad thing in its time and place.  But, knowing when and where is everything.  It’s been a lesson hard learned that there is a right thing to do and a right time to do it.  The right thing at the wrong time often becomes the wrong thing.   

Humor, for example, has its place.  But, it also has its proper time.  Some of you have vivid memories of Dr. Bassett calling you down for talking and laughing during the sermon.  He knew there was a time to visit and laugh with friends.  He was trying to say that, when the sermon begins, the visiting should end.  I’ve even noticed that, at funerals, people tend to appreciate the opportunity of remembering something humorous about a loved one who has passed away.  In its place and time, even at funerals, humor can greatly encourage healing.  But, I’ve never gone to the hospital or to a home when word has just come of some-one’s death and felt impressed that anyone was in the mood for a joke.  When the Routier boys were murdered in 1996, one of the things that led authorities to suspect their mother was the ghoulish way she sprayed silly string on their graves just one week after the funeral.  Silly string has its place, I suppose.  But, never on the graves of your freshly buried sons. 

Ecclesiastes 3:1 says, “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.”  That has profound spiritual meaning.  But, it’s also common sense.  Something some people thought Jesus lacked.  One of the things that kept getting Jesus in trouble with his own Jewish community was that, to them, He had not learned the art of the appropriate.  He was always healing people on the Sabbath or doing things in the Temple that seemed out of place or saying the wrong thing at the wrong time.  Even in the text we have read this morning Jesus is believed to be inappropriate because He had not led His disciples to fast when everyone else was.  People who thought God was something to be miserable about just couldn’t understand Jesus’ way of celebrating when they thought He should be suffering.  Jesus was eventually crucified, in part, because He looked and acted so out of place.

Jesus’ response to this particular criticism was to use two analogies that seem to capture the sentiment of my personal struggle these days with how we are sup-posed to go about doing this thing called church.  What to do when and so on.  Jesus’ inappropriate behavior that day has far reaching appropriateness for what we face right now.  Before I go any further let me remind you that, with this scripture just as with almost every text of scripture, there can be an individual as well as a corporate meaning.  For reasons that I hope will become obvious, I want us to listen to Jesus’ words this morning as they apply to us as a gathered community of faith.  Again, two analogies.  New cloth on old.  New wine in old wineskins. 

“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.”  Very few of us these days bother mending old clothes.  Something wears out and we throw it away or give to the clothes closet.  But, as foreign as this concept is to our throwaway culture, it’s not difficult to get the literal meaning.  It’s the spiritual application that’s easy to miss.  I once thought this was Jesus’ way of saying that He had not come to simply patch up the old Jewish system.  At another time, however, Jesus said that He had not come to replace the law but to fulfill it.  (Matthew 5:17)  So, when you listen more closely, Jesus is actually expressing concern for the old as well as the new.  Jesus was saying that there is a time and a place to respect what is old.  He was referring to the very religious heritage that was His own. 

Back during the days when I was wandering in my ministerial wilderness a good friend of mine, who is the Dean of St. John’s Episcopal Cathedral in Albuquerque, invited me to preach for him a couple of times.  This was not some small informal country church.  As with most Episcopal Cathedrals, their worship was high liturgy.  Very foreign to my West Texas Baptist upbringing and very formal and structured.  I felt as out of place as any Bubba would at an English high tea.  Needless to say, my friend was concerned about that, too.  So, on the Saturday before I preached, he took me into the sanctuary to walk me through so that I would not only understand the order of service but so that I might also under-stand the history, traditions and even the architecture of their faith.  He had to explain, for example, that in their worship service no one just gets up and walks around the platform.  Everything has its time and place.  So, a person called a verger actually goes to each participant and escorts them to their proper place at the proper time.  He said, “when it’s time for you to preach, the verger will come and verge you.”  He must have had cold chills when I asked, “will it hurt?”  Any-way, he knew that, without proper respect for their traditions over a century old, my presence would have a tearing affect instead of a healing one.

Some of what is going on in the world of church life these days can have that same affect on churches of older traditions.  One of the most disrespectful things a new pastor can do when coming to a church is try to force the latest fad in worship or programming on a church with traditions older than he is.  When I first came to Cliff Temple I knew I was coming to this church at a time when things were in a state of flux not just in this church but in this world and in this denomination of which we have been a part for so long.  And, I also knew, as you did, that some of our methods would have to change in order for us to find our way.  It is true that if we never change a thing from the days when Wallace Bassett called some of you who are now Senior adults down for talking and laughing there won’t be much to celebrate for anyone after very long.  But, I also knew that, before we talked about what could be new, it was important to show proper respect for what was old.  So, I need to say again that I didn’t fall in love with this church for what it could someday be.  I fell in love with this church for what it was the first day I first walked through these doors and you called me as your pastor on Mother’s Day, 1998. 

Can you imagine what would happen if I was to go home to Nancy and say to her, “Honey, I love you for the wife I know you will someday be.”  I suppose I could say that but not without tearing apart something that is very sacred now and that is held in place because of the love there is right now for what is right now.  Christ, indeed, has a loving purpose for each of us and for His church.  But, that purpose includes loving us as we are right now.  We are the church for whom Christ died as much as He died for the church He will ultimately redeem.  New cloth on old doesn’t work, Jesus was saying, because it is disrespectful of what is old and still of value.  But, there is more. 

Just as we should show respect for what is old, so it is that we should respect for what can happen only when we are open to the new thing God wants to do.  “One puts new wine into fresh wineskins,” Jesus said.  Just as it is true that new cloth on old won’t work for what is ultimately good, whatever is ultimately good is always of greater significance than any system of faith or worship we build to house or express it.  The gospel, like new wine, is still coming to life.  It must have room to grow and expand.   

Speaking of wineskins, I have an interesting theory I would like to pose to you today.  Some, when driving by this almost seven decade old architecture, might be tempted to think that this is an old wineskin that could never contain the new gospel wine.  The longer I am here the more I believe that it may be the other way around.  Because of the gospel this church believes and practices, Cliff Temple is more about the new wine than some old denominational wineskins may be able to contain.

There is affirmation for us in knowing that about ourselves.  There is also challenge.  We’ve made a good start in our first hundred years and in many ways gone further than most Baptists ever will.  But, how far we go as measured by the Baptist wineskin will never be as significant as how far we must go as measured by the call of Christ.  The gospel, like fermenting wine, is still coming to life among us.  We must be willing to make room for that life.  That life is far more important than any building or program or system.  We can never be more committed to the wine-skin than to the wine or we may lose both, as Jesus said.  We must be committed to making known what we believe loud and clear and far and wide.  We have good wine in our cellar.  We’ve just kept it to ourselves far too long.

As painful as this is to say and to accept there isn’t much of a place for us in the old denomination that birthed us anymore, in part, because we ordain women as deacons and ministers and because we believe in doing missions through any organization that expresses our convictions whether that organization’s by-laws meet with anyone else’s approval other than our own or not.  I’ve even heard the term “liberal” used to describe this church.  I find that rather amusing, honestly, not only because it convolutes the difference in meaning between liberal as opposed to socially progressive but also because every Sunday in this place the Word of God is read and believed and preached and studied as the Word of God.  Men and women alike are called to answer the call of Christ on their lives as Lord and as they come to faith they are baptized by immersion as an expression of it.  We actually take seriously the word of God that says, “for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith in Christ Jesus.  As many of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.  There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”  (Galatians 3:26-28) 

We actually believe that, the closer we get to Christ, that which distinguishes us from each other should have less meaning to us than the Lordship of Christ which redeems and bonds us as one and gifts us for His work in this world.  We actually believe in and practice feeding the hungry and clothing the naked and visiting the sick.  And, even as in the person you have called to be your pastor, we actually live out of the conviction that where a person has been in life is not as significant as their willingness to come to Christ just as they are and receive His grace, His healing, His forgiveness and His transforming power in their lives in the person of His Holy Spirit.  And, we believe that what defines a person’s worth is not their age or the sex or their race or their social status or anything but the creative and recreative work of God in their lives in and through the person of His Son, Jesus. 

And, we also believe that each person is privileged to and responsible for reading the Bible for herself or himself and, in prayer and meditation, interpreting the meaning of it for their own lives.  That no man or group of men or institution or Board or governing body other than this local church guided by the Holy Spirit of God in our hearts can tell us what to believe or practice as we gather as a community of faith to interpret His word, to worship Him and to do His work in this world as we understand it. 

Some may call that liberal.  I call it genuinely Baptist at least and, even more, I call it genuinely Christian.  I call what we believe the gospel of Jesus Christ.  And, what we are is the church of Jesus Christ on this corner.  We shouldn’t be surprised, however, if some think we haven’t learned the art of the appropriate.  But, that’s ok.  Baptists and wine never did get along too well together anyway.  And, may-be that’s what we really are and are called to be.  Nothing more and nothing less.  Think about it, would you?  Baptist wine.  Baptist skin with good gospel wine in it.  Good gospel wine in Baptist skin.  Baptist wine. 

We drank some this morning.  The cup isn’t empty.  There’s more, yet, for any who are thirsty.  Won’t you come and drink?  It’s not really our cup, anyway.  It’s Christ’s cup.  And, His blood.  It’s his wine.  And, His cup never runs dry. 

If you are thirsty, won’t you come?