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Religious: New wine and old wineskins
Joseph Lee L'Heureux
for South Peace News
Happy Pentecost! Receiving the Holy Spirit, the new wine for our time!
The parable Jesus told about not pouring new wine into old wineskins is still as alive today as it was 2,000 years ago.( Mark 2:22)
I remember back 27 years ago when my neighbour informed me, “You can know Jesus personally. Jesus is alive and still with us you know.”
“I know about Jesus, I was raised a Catholic and an altar boy,” I said.
He said: “No! No! Not know about Jesus but know Jesus personally.”
“Uh! What’s that mean,” I said.
“If that’s the case I’ll go talk to him in my closet.” (Matthew 6:6)
That night I sat on the side of my bed like an ostrich, head not buried in the sand but between my shoulders, feeling sheepish. Life was not great. I was a realtor in the real estate crash of the early 1980s. Looking up toward heaven I said. “If you’re there I want to know?” and went to bed.
When I awoke the next morning His presence was so obvious. A great weight was lifted off my shoulders and an overwhelming peace had come over me. I knew I had connected with someone. I immediately went looking for a Bible. I knew I had one somewhere.
For the next year there would be many Bible studies, prayer meetings, Sunday services, both Catholic and Protestant, but always something was missing. I did not seem to get the same understandings from scripture every one else did. Why?
Then one day this parable kept haunting me. “One does not pour new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the wineskins will be ruined. No, he pours new wine into new wineskins.” (Mark 2:22)
Was I really an old wineskin? Puzzled, I asked for an explanation and again went to bed.
That night I had a dream or an out of body experience. I’m not sure which, it was so vivid and real. I was standing beside my bed looking down at my body, which was still in bed, and heard a voice say. “What a flipping mess!”
Must have been my spirit prompted by the Holy Spirit, God would not speak this way. Anyway this puzzled and scared me for a few days.
Finally another Scripture kept going through my head. “Confess your sins to one another and pray for each other so that your sins may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.” (James 5:16)
Now I had confessed my sins by giving testimony of my sins and shortcomings to God and others. If Jesus or God was so personal I should have experienced forgiveness. How come I still felt guilty?
Then someone quoted me the scripture, “Know that the Son of Man has authority on Earth to forgive sins.” (Mark 2:10)
Suggesting: “Maybe you should see a priest.”
I went to see a priest, ready to argue one can confess his sins directly to God. The priest explained the sacrament of absolution (confession) and the invisible grace it brings to the penitent. So I went to confession. Just like a fifth step in the AA program. He also explained the importance of lining myself up with the authority of the Church; i.e. annulments from previous marriages, my wife entering the Church through baptism and getting us remarried in the Church.
I was into daily reading of the Scriptures and prayer before, but now the Scriptures came alive. Where before Scriptures were just words in a book, now the words jumped off the page, they were penetrating my very flesh, and a new understanding was entering my soul. I was being washed by the words and blood of the lamb.
Then a beautiful anointing from on high occurred, “My head was anointed with a heavenly oil, spreading over my head and ears.” (Psalms 25:3 and 133:2)
My wineskin (soul and body) was cleansed and I received the baptism of the Holy Spirit.
John the Baptist had said of Jesus, “I baptize you with water. But one more powerful than I will come after me. . .He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.” (Luke 3:16)
Jesus has said, “You are already clean because of the words I have spoken to you.”
The priest had spoken forgiveness on behalf of Jesus, God. (John 15:3).
St Paul says, “Your inmost being must be renewed and you must put on the new man.” (Ephesians 4:23-24)
I had experienced that renewal or regeneration. Receiving the baptism of the Holy Spirit had to be the “new wine in the new wineskins.”
What a blessing! Now I had the Holy Spirit to help me understand the Scriptures. Everything was much clearer.
The feast of Pentecost occurs 50 days after Easter in the Church, for the individual, it can happen anytime one seeks it with all his/her heart, mind, strength and Love. Mine occurred on July 2, 1984, three years after Mary began appearing daily in Medjugorje, inviting us all to pray and come home.
“Seek and you shall find, knock and the door will open, ask and you shall receive.”
A loving father “will not give you a stone when you ask for bread, nor will He give you a snake, if you ask for a fish.” (Matthew 7:7, 9-10)
How much more will He give you if you ask for the Holy Spirit.
God Bless and a Blessed Pentecost.
Next week: Pastor Eric Kregel of Bethel Baptist Church.
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