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The Question About Fasting. 14 (A)Then the disciples of John approached him and said, “Why do we and the Pharisees fast [much], but your disciples do not fast?” 15 Jesus answered them, “Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast.[a] 16 No one patches an old cloak with a piece of unshrunken cloth,[b] for its fullness pulls away from the cloak and the tear gets worse.

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Footnotes

  1. 9:15 Fasting is a sign of mourning and would be as inappropriate at this time of joy, when Jesus is proclaiming the kingdom, as it would be at a marriage feast. Yet the saying looks forward to the time when Jesus will no longer be with the disciples visibly, the time of Matthew’s church. Then they will fast: see Didache 8:1.
  2. 9:16–17 Each of these parables speaks of the unsuitability of attempting to combine the old and the new. Jesus’ teaching is not a patching up of Judaism, nor can the gospel be contained within the limits of Mosaic law.