Grace and Space

Lk 5:33-39
Fasting for discipleship: The question Luke is answering is, “Do Christians fast?”
When Jesus was with the community, he was as a bridegroom. Wedding guests do not fast with the bridegroom; they feast with him. But once the bridegroom ascends to heaven, then Christian behavior includes the discipline  of fasting. This type of fasting, however, is not the same type of fasting in which the disciples of John and the disciples of the Pharisees engaged.

Gentile Christians, Luke’s audience, represent a new reality; they are not tied to the Jewish past. They are not a piece of cloth taken from a new cloak and sewed onto an old cloak. They are not new wine poured into old wineskins.

Luke’s community represents a dissatisfaction with the old and the emergence of the new. If one is satisfied with the old, as one who drinks old wine does not want new, then such a person cannot risk the challenge of discipleship, which does involve fasting.