Event 11 – A Question of Fasting

Mark 9:10-17; Mark 2:15-22; Luke 5:29-39

^L Then Levi held a great banquet for Jesus at his house, and a large crowd of ^K tax collectors and “sinners” were eating with him and his disciples, for there were many who followed him. When ^L the Pharisees and the teachers of the law who belonged to their sect ^K saw him eating with the “sinners” and tax collectors, they ^L complained to ^K his disciples: ^M “Why does your teacher ^K eat with tax collectors and “sinners?”

On hearing this, Jesus said to them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.” ^M “But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice. For” ^K “I have not come ^L to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”

^K Now John’s disciples and the Pharisees were fasting, ^M then John’s disciples came up and ^K ask Jesus ^M “How is it that we and ^K the disciples of the Pharisees ^L often fast and pray, ^M but your disciples do not fast?”

Jesus answered, “How can the guests of the bridegroom mourn while he is with them? ^K They cannot, so long as they have him with them. But the time will come when the bridegroom ^L will be taken from them; in those days they will fast.”

He told them this parable: “No one tears a patch ^K of unshrunk cloth ^L from a new garment and sews it on an old one. If he does, he will have torn the new garment, and ^K the new piece will pull away from the old, make the tear worse. And ^L the patch from the new will not match the old. And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the new wine will burst the skins, the wine will run out and ^K both the wine and the wineskins will be ruined. No, he pours ^M new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved.”