Sheets on Skin
Ξ April 13th, 2006 | → 1 Comments | ∇ Theology, That's Life |
That’s Dutch Sheets and wine skin. 
As member of an Anglican church I often think about the importance of tradition in our forms of worship. I can see richness in this tradition which I think is good. Sometimes though I think I see more of an inability to be flexible and up with the times. I see people gripping “the ways it’s been” so hard that they become convinced that they are gripping God himself when they are clearly not.
Dutch Sheets has this to say about wineskins…
“‘…The wineskin is made of sheep’s skin. When it is originally prepared for use to contain wine, it is very flexible, pliable and elastic. … Once the wine has been curing and aging for several years, the wineskin gets rigid. It becomes inflexible and stiff…’1
All of us, as wineskins, harden into set ways of doing things - forms, rituals, liturgies, tradition. If God then brings something to our church service which violates our traditional sense of orthodoxy, we usually reject it. Our definition of orthodoxy defines what we will let Him do, instead of allowing what He does to define our orthodoxy. When this has happened, we have become “old wineskins” which cannot hold “new wine.” We cannot flex and are therefore incapable of receiving the new.”2
I think of the fact that people get upset when our pastor mentions that he might not wear an alb one Sunday (the white robes you see Anglican and Catholic priests sometimes where), or the trouble that arises if we miss having communion one week. Neither of these things are even all that Biblical. I mean the eucharist is VERY biblical, but to do it weekly versus monthly or even yearly has no real biblical presedent. Not that there is anything wrong with choosing to wear an alb and have communion every…whatever, but there is no commandment that says we must have communion on a weekly basis or else! These things do have significance and they can add some real richness to how we worship, but to miss them here and there is not bad in my opinion. In fact the freshness it would add would be welcome - at least by me.
I guess I’m just saddened by all those folks that make a thing out of any kind of change and end up robbing other people from a chance to experience the new wine. Why is it that we don’t crave new wine more? I wish we did. I wish we would grow tired of the old wine and set out for something new.
1. Ralph Mahoney, Is a New Wave of Revival Coming? (Burbank, World Missionary Assistance Plan, 1982), pp 71, 72.
2. Dutch Sheets, The River of God (Regal Books, 1998), p 165