Mark 2:18-22
February 8, 2000
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the American Baptist Seminary of the West, Berkeley, CA.
Generic Socks
I grew up buying socks and shoes from Filene’s Great Bargain Basement. This was not the chain stores that you see in modern malls particularly in the East Coast today. This was the real store on Washington Street in downtown Boston. It was also in the basement! Filene’s Basement would mark down the prices of an item week after week. And if you have an eye on a certain piece of clothing, you can literally watch it get cheaper and cheaper until you can afford to buy it.
On big tables almost like sandboxes, there were all kinds of shoes tied together in pairs for you to choose from. On other tables, there were all kinds of socks with elastic bands holding each pair together. There were no Florisheim’s or Foot Lockers or Dexter’s. They were just shoes. And socks didn’t have little embroideries like the Nike swoosh or Adidas leaves. They were just generic socks.
So growing up in Boston, I used to put cardboard in my shoes to cover up the holes on the bottoms. It wasn’t bad in the summer, but when it was raining or worst snowing, I would wrap plastic over the cardboard before putting them into my shoes. With my shoes, my socks usually got holes in them.
Maybe it was the fact that my father was a laundryman in Roxbury’s Grove Hall who would hand wash and iron shirts for executives who worked in offices on Route 128. Or maybe it was the fact that at B.F. Sportswear on Boyston Street where my mother was a seamstress who sewed pieces of cloths together on a very fast Singer for 2 or 3 cents a piece, but somehow, I learned how to darn my own socks.
I became for our family the one who darns everybody’s holey socks. Just this past December with our young adult kids home for Christmas, they both brought holey socks for me to darn, to sew up. You see. Holey socks have little use in our designer, brand name society today. They stay in our drawers, way in the back, out of the way of the good socks, waiting for the time to become whole again.
Penitent Fasting
In today’s Scripture Lesson, we find John the Baptist’s disciples and the Pharisees fasting. We don’t really know why they were abstaining from eating but we do know that something happened, requiring repentance. Perhaps they wanted to demonstrate a penitent heart in order to win God’s favor. Maybe they were mournful for the imminent judgment—John was well known for this message. Or perhaps the Pharisees were fasting to express how spiritual they were. Whatever it was, they were sad looking and pathetic like holey socks.
Here Jesus and his disciples came along and they were not fasting. They were eating their share and looking good and happy. No holey socks here.
Listen to what Jesus says,
“The wedding guests cannot fast while the bridegroom is with them,
can they? As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot
fast.”
Have you been to a traditional Chinese wedding banquet before? If you haven’t yet, you haven’t experienced eating. There are at least ten courses and sometimes 15! Last September I attended a wedding banquet that began by serving a lobster salad with the lobster’s eyes flashing with battery lights. After that it was what I call, “portion distortion!”
Jesus is saying that the celebration must continue as long as the bridegroom is present. This is not the time to lament but to celebrate God’s presence! In Jesus’ ministry, God is powerfully active! The party is going on right now.
Are you fasting while Jesus is here? Do you feel like a holey sock tucked deep in the back of your drawer afraid to come out?
Sometimes we see ourselves not good enough particularly when we begin comparing ourselves with others. We are getting Cs and maybe even Ds while we suspect that others are getting As and Bs. We begin to think that there are too many holes in our learning socks.
Sometimes we feel all alone out there in our field education assignments and everything we’ve tried seemed to not work. We feel that there are a lot of holes in our seminary socks.
Sometimes we are down and disillusioned and we begin to question our call to ministry. So we find ourselves crying out at night to God about the many holes in our faith.
Jesus is saying to us as he said to John’s disciples and the Pharisees to not lament over the holes in your life because he is the bridegroom and it’s time to celebrate. It’s time to patch up those holes in our socks, put on our dancing shoes and dance at the wedding!
New Cloth Patch
I realize that probably most people during Jesus’ time did not wear socks in the Middle East. It was too hot and too dusty. Socks would make it too difficult to wade into the river to rinse off. But if they did, Jesus might have used socks in one of his parables.
And for most of the time when I encountered this passage, I was quickly drawn to the second parable that Jesus taught of putting new wine in old wineskins. I was influenced by my more Western thinking professors and pastors to understand the incompatibility of the old and the new in the images of wine and wineskins not sewing unshrunk patches on old cloaks.
You see at Andover Newton, they taught me Western theologies. I knew about Mateus and Lancer and Mogen David and zinfandel and chardonnay and sangria, but I didn’t know about twill and gingham and chambray and chino and gabardine. They didn’t teach me about unskrunk cloths in seminary!
Today, as an Asian American pastor serving in SF Chinatown, I have rediscovered that the first parable is more relevant to me than the latter. I can identify with the problem of sewing an unshrunk cloth on an old cloak and see how that new patch will pull away because it hasn’t been washed before. For you see, my father was a laundryman, my mother a seamstress, and I know how to sew up socks.
The new cloth patch represents Jesus Christ in our lives. Of course, Jesus is unstrunk, he’s the new cloth patch! When we are like old holey socks tucked way in the back of our drawers, Jesus can make us whole again. Jesus calls us out in the open and recycles our holey socks into good socks again.
The parable said that when one sews a new piece of cloth onto an old sock, the patch will pull away from the old and a worse tear is made. Whenever Jesus is the new cloth that sews up the holes in our lives, we should expect to have some tearing to happen.
The tearing places are reminders that tell us that we still have much to learn from Christ.
The tearing places are the times when we have sinned and are in need of God’s forgiveness.
The tearing places are the tender and vulnerable areas of our lives that need the new cloth of Jesus to make us whole once again.
A Story.
A new Christian approached a pastor with a question. “How can the holy God forgive a sinner? Isn’t God repulsed with all of the hatred and jealousy that fills people?”
The pastor looked warmly at her young enthusiastic friend and said, “You are the third generation in a family of master furniture makers. Tell me, if a fine table that your grandfather made was scratched would you throw it away?
“Of course not,” the young man exclaimed. “A scratch can hardly alter the character of a fine piece of furniture.”
“And,” the pastor continued, “if you nicked a well-crafted oak rocker would you toss it away?”
“Throw it away?” the young man exclaimed. “Even with a few scratches quality furniture is sturdy and valuable.”
“You have spoken like a true craftsman,” the pastor replied. “You share that spirit with our creator God who continues to find human creation precious and valuable in spite of their obvious flaws.”
Our holey sock lives tucked deep in the back of our drawers are precious and still valuable in spite of their obvious flaws. When the new patch of Jesus is sewn on all those holes in our lives, we are made whole once again.
Time to Sew
Chinese New Year customs advise that we shouldn’t be sewing or cutting during this time of celebration because we might cut away our good fortunes. And that would be very bad. Besides, last Christmas you may have gotten some new socks and you thought, “Wow, it even has the little embroideries on them. I’m good now. I have new socks.”
But now after a few weeks, you discovered that there are holes in them. And whether it is the beginning of the new millennium or the beginning of year 4696, we get a second chance. It is time to sew. The good Lord comes time and time again, not just during New Years, but all the time to sew up the holes in our socks.
As the Philosopher in Ecclesiastes 3 said, “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven. A time to tear, and a time to sew.”
As Hobart Hall has undergone a time to break down and gutted out for retrofitting, it is now time to build up.
As faculty, staff, and students went on a retreat at Redwood Glen to understand how you have been refraining from embracing, it is now time to embrace.
As ABSW stands in the rich tradition of progressive and biblical teaching of the Good News of Jesus Christ and against the powerful pressures to keep silence, it is now time to speak out.
As our own lives are often like holey socks hidden and tucked far away in the back of our drawers, we believe that the tears in our lives are now patched with the newness of Jesus Christ. It is indeed a time to sew.
Let us pray.
Gracious Lord, we give thanks for the second and third and the countless number of times when our holey lives need to be mended and patched up by our Lord Jesus Christ. In Christ, we are renewed for the Kingdom of God. Amen.