{"id":7093,"date":"2015-11-08T00:05:51","date_gmt":"2015-11-08T08:05:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/?p=7093"},"modified":"2015-11-07T16:05:33","modified_gmt":"2015-11-08T00:05:33","slug":"the-good-old-days-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/2015\/11\/08\/the-good-old-days-2\/","title":{"rendered":"The Good Old Days"},"content":{"rendered":"

They said to him, \u201cJohn\u2019s disciples often fast and pray, and so do the disciples of the Pharisees, but yours go on eating and drinking.\u201d <\/p>\n

\tJesus answered, \u201cCan you make the guests of the bridegroom fast while he is with them? But the time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them; in those days they will fast.\u201d <\/p>\n

\tHe told them this parable: \u201cNo one tears a patch from a new garment and sews it on an old one. If he does, he will have torn the new garment, and the patch from the new will not match the old. And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the new wine will burst the skins, the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, new wine must be poured into new wineskins. And no one after drinking old wine wants the new, for he says, \u2018The old is better.\u2019 \u201d (Luke 5:33-39)<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\tH. L. Menken wrote of Puritans that they were the sort of people that had \u201cthe haunting fear that someone, somewhere, might be happy.\u201d The Pharisees were the Puritans of Jesus\u2019 day, wondering why the disciples were so happy.<\/p>\n

\tThe Pharisees usually set aside a day each week for fasting. And they made certain that everyone could tell. They didn\u2019t comb their hair, they didn\u2019t bathe, and they kept a pained expression on their faces so that everyone could see just how devoted they were to God. <\/p>\n

\tSince the Pharisees never saw the disciples acting so miserable, they believed that they\u2014and Jesus\u2014must not be properly devoted to God. There was a lot behind the Pharisees\u2019 simple question about fasting. They were attacking Jesus credibility and his commitment to religion.<\/p>\n

\tThe Pharisees failed to recognize the reality of their situation. Fasting and praying, of the sort that the Pharisees had in mind, was what people did when things were going badly, when someone was seriously ill, or when a war was on the horizon. It was proper to fast during Yom Kippur, the day of atonement. It wasn\u2019t proper to fast during Purim or First Fruits, times for rejoicing. Jesus\u2019 disciples had no reason to feel glum: the Messiah was here and they were with him. When you\u2019re at a wedding and you\u2019re part of the wedding party, is that the time to fast? Don\u2019t be ridiculous. <\/p>\n

\tThere are, indeed, times to mourn, but there are also times to rejoice!<\/p>\n

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They said to him, \u201cJohn\u2019s disciples often fast and pray, and so do the disciples of the Pharisees, but yours go on eating and drinking.\u201d Jesus answered, \u201cCan you make the guests of the bridegroom fast while he is with … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_s2mail":"yes"},"categories":[18,17,16],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7093"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7093"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7093\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7095,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7093\/revisions\/7095"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}