Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

¹⁴ Then John’s disciples came to him with a question.

“How come,” they asked, “we and the Pharisees fast frequently, but your disciples don’t fast at all?”

¹⁵ “Wedding guests can’t fast, can they,” replied Jesus, “as long as the bridegroom is with them? But sooner or later the bridegroom will be taken away from them. They’ll fast then all right.

¹⁶ “No one,” he went on, “sews a patch of unshrunk cloth onto an old coat. The patch will simply pull away from the coat, and you’ll have a worse hole than you started with. ¹⁷ People don’t put new wine into old wineskins; otherwise the skins will split, the wine will be lost, and the skins will be ruined. They put new wine into new skins, and then both are fine.”