GREAT THINGS ENTERPRISE
CLAUDE BLACK
Mark 2:21
Old Patches
For almost a decade, I worked as a maintenance welder in a steel mill. The work was interesting and often challenging. I never knew what the job might be. The foreman made work assignments at the beginning of each shift. There was one issue that frequently came up—a hole would be burned in the work uniform. Most welders never wore pants with cuffs, as that is a good place for a spark to collect and burn a hole. I always purchased work uniforms from the same store and wore the same color. If a uniform got a burn, and it wasn’t too bad, Alice would cut a piece from an old uniform to sew onto the burned uniform. The old uniform was the same color, but it had been laundered many times, and the color had faded—not exactly a match.
Jesus presented his audience with a parable: “No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. If he does, the patch tears away from it, the new from the old, and the tear becomes worse.” (Mark 2:21) This is not an exact match for the repair in the work uniform because the cloth to which Jesus referred came from the weaver. It was not fullered, processed, or treated. Jesus told his critics—the old cloth—that they could not stitch his message—the new cloth—into their tradition. This was not an easy thing for the guardians of orthodoxy to hear—newness cuts across the grain of tradition. Traditions are valuable until they become ends in themselves. The important message in Jesus’ parable is not to become so bound by tradition that his message cannot reach the heart.
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