Controversy with the disciples of John and with the Pharisees on fasting (Mark 2:18; Luke 5:33). Matthew's feast probably took place on a Monday or a Thursday, days which were observed by the Pharisees and John's disciples as fasts: see Mk, 'The disciples of John and the Pharisees were fasting.' The jealousy of the disciples of John had showed itself even before John had been cast into prison (John 3:26). Now that John was in prison, they readily became the tools of the Pharisees, who instigated them to come forward and say, 'Why do we and the Pharisees fast oft, but thy disciples fast not?' The question had two purposes. (1) It was intended to hold up to public odium the laxity of the religious practices of Jesus as compared with the strictness of those of the Pharisees and of John. (2) It was intended to produce a breach between John and Jesus. The reputation of Jesus had been established very largely by the witness which John had borne to His Messiahship. If Jesus could be induced to condemn John (and it seemed impossible that He could defend His own disciples without doing so), John would perhaps disown Jesus, whose reputation would thereby be seriously diminished.
Jesus disappointed them by an answer at least as diplomatic as the famous one about the tribute-money. Addressing the disciples of John, He reminded them that their own master had called Him the Bridegroom, and added that at a wedding not even the Pharisees would desire the guests to fast. When the weddingfeast was over, or rather when the bridegroom was taken from them by a violent death, they would mourn and fast. Then in three parables (the last of which is in St. Luke only) He showed that the disciples of John were as right from their point of view as His own disciples were from theirs. In the first parable He compared the religious practices of John to an old garment, and His own to a new garment. John, He said, was not so foolish as to tear a piece of cloth from the new garment of Christianity in order to patch with it his own Jewish garment. He could not, for instance, consistently borrow from Christ the dispensation from fasting, and teach it to his disciples, without making a complete breach in his system. Let the disciples of John continue to fast until they came to Jesus, when they would adopt different practices altogether.
Having defended John, Jesus, in a second parable, defended Himself. John's wine was old, and was contained in bottles which suited it. His own was new, and required new bottles. In other words, the two different types of piety required different outward methods of expression. John's preparatory ministry of repentance was rightly accompanied by fasting and mourning, but now the fulness of joy was come, the time of feasting and rejoicing had begun.
In a third parable, given only by St. Luke, Jesus again defends the disciples of John. 'No one,' He says, 'having drunk old wine, desires new, for he says, The old is good enough.' In other words, the disciples of John, having tasted John's wine and found it to be good, are not to be blamed if they are not over anxious to taste new wine, i.e. to adopt the new and to them untried practices of Christ's disciples (Luke 5:39).