“The friends of the Bridegroom cannot mourn as long as He is with them” Friday of Misericordias 2026

22. April 2026
Friday of Misericordias Domini (observed)
Matthew 9:14-17

Jesus said to them, “Can the friends of the bridegroom mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them?” (Mt 9:15).

This is the Word of the Lord that came to me, so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing, you may have life in His + Name. AMEN.

John's disciples had a legitimate question. They and the Pharisees fasted, and they fasted often. It was what serious religious people did. The Day of Atonement required it, and tradition had multiplied the requirement into a twice-weekly discipline. You showed up, you denied yourself, you performed your devotion before God. Then you looked around and saw the disciples of Jesus eating with tax collectors and sinners at Matthew's table, and the question formed itself: why don't they fast?

They brought it to Jesus. The question carries the full weight of the law — you are not serious enough; your people are not disciplined enough; real religion looks like what we are doing.

You know that voice. You have heard it in your own chest, pointed outward at others who seem too comfortable, too free, too unbothered by the demands of a holy God. Or you have heard it pointed inward, telling you that you have not done enough, denied yourself enough, mourned your sin enough. The law's demand for religious performance is ancient, and it is relentless. It knows how to dress itself in piety.

Jesus answers the question with a question of His own. “Can the friends of the bridegroom mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them?” (Matt. 9:15). The Greek expects the answer every listener already knew: of course not. You cannot grieve at a wedding. The logic is not merely that it would be inappropriate. It would be a category error, as absurd as weeping at a feast. The bridegroom's attendants cannot fast when the feast is at its height.

Jesus is claiming to be that Bridegroom. This is the first time in Matthew that He hints at what is coming. The word He uses for “taken away” carries violence in it. He is predicting His arrest, His condemnation, His death. “The days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them, and then they will fast” (Matt. 9:15). The disciples will mourn. They will have reason to mourn. They will stand at a tomb on the third day and find it empty before they understand.

That fast ended.

The Father raised Him. The tomb could not hold the Son. The disciples who scattered in fear heard His voice again, ate with Him, and touched Him. The mourning that began in Gethsemane and reached its depth at Golgotha came to its end on the first day of the week, and it has not returned. You stand today on the far side of that resurrection. The Bridegroom who was taken away has returned. The fast is over.

This is the Word the church needs to hear in a world that does not know how to do anything but mourn. The Law presses in from every direction. Your conscience knows its accusations by heart: you have not been good enough, given enough, believed well enough, lived consistently enough. The world outside confirms the diagnosis daily. There is enough genuine grief to fill a lifetime. Into all of that, John's disciples arrive with their question, and you find yourself answering it the same way they did, building your standing before God out of how seriously you take your obligations.

Jesus will not let you stay there. The Bridegroom has returned. The earth is full of His goodness. The Word by which the LORD made the heavens goes out from Him now, announcing the feast. Your mourning was real, your sin was real, the cross was real — and the resurrection is also real, and it is the final Word.

Now the parables. Jesus is not finished, and the parables are diagnoses, not simple illustrations. “No one puts a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, for the patch pulls away from the garment, and the tear is made worse” (Matt. 9:16). The old garment is not the Law of Moses. Jesus came to fulfill the Law, not abolish it. The old garment is the religion you construct out of your own performance — the moral achievement, the accumulated fasting and discipline, and comparative righteousness you stitch together to cover yourself before God. You cannot sew Christ onto that. A patch of His righteousness sewn onto that fabric tears it worse than before. The Gospel of grace cannot be adjusted to fit a framework of self-earned standing.

The wineskins go further. “They put new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved” (Matt. 9:17). In the garment analogy, only the old fabric suffers. In the wineskins, both are destroyed. The new wine of His forgiveness, His righteousness, His resurrection life poured into the old structure of works-righteousness destroys them both. You lose the Gospel itself. This is why Paul says what he says to the Romans: he glories in Christ Jesus alone, not in what he has contributed, not in the tradition he has maintained, but in what Christ has accomplished as the minister of God's grace to every sinner He claims as His own. Mixing the two is not a careful compromise. It is absolute ruin.

The Bridegroom gives you new wineskins. He gave them to you at the font, where He drowned the old garment and clothed you in His own. The robe you wear before God is His obedience, His death, His resurrection. He does not repair what you bring. He replaces it. This is the grace that cannot be patched onto anything — it must be received whole, given whole, or it is lost.

And He feeds you. The Shepherd who laid down His life for His sheep does not abandon you in the time between His ascension and His return. He prepares a table before you. He gives you His body and blood as a pledge — the feast begun, the Bridegroom present in bread and wine, the full feast still coming when He appears. The still waters He leads you to, the table set in the presence of your enemies, the goodness and mercy that follow you: these are His gifts to you now, foretastes of what He will give you fully when He comes again.

This is the question John's disciples asked: why do your disciples not fast the way we do? And Jesus answered them with a wedding. The Bridegroom has returned from the dead. The friends of the Bridegroom cannot mourn as long as He is with them, and He is with you. The earth is full of His goodness. The fast is over. Come to the feast.

This is the Word of the Lord that came to me, so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing, you may have life in His + Name. AMEN.

Rev. Christopher R. Gillespie
St. John Ev. Lutheran Church & School - Sherman Center
Random Lake, Wisconsin