When Jesus and the
disciples arrive on the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee after their
traumatic crossing due to the storm, they are met by a naked man who suffers
from demon possession. This man,
inhabited by not just one demon but many, falls at Jesus’ feet where the demons
beg Jesus not to send them into the Abyss.
Rather than focus on the idea of demons possession, or the topic of
spiritual warfare, notice instead the reaction of the locals to Jesus’
miraculous healing of one of their own.
When they arrive on the scene, the locals are overcome with fear; not of
the formerly demon possessed man, even though he had terrorized their town, but
of the Jewish miracle worker and teacher who had healed him. In a stunning twist, the locals ask Jesus to
leave them alone and go away, and he does exactly that.
At this point, this story is one of opportunity lost, of
God offering to help humanity only to be told to take a hike. Jesus doesn’t leave it at that, when the now
healed man asks to follow Jesus he is told that he must stay behind. Why?
So that he can, “tell how much God has done for you” to the same people
who have just rejected Jesus. God doesn’t
give up on us just because we don’t want his help. God’s love for humanity prompts him to try a
2nd or a 3rd time to reach us and save us from ourselves.
There are a lot of people who wouldn’t come to church if
you asked them to, they’ve got too much bitterness or anger toward God or the
Church to do that. They wouldn’t listen
to a preacher or read a Bible either.
But what if they met God in an unexpected way? What if they interacted with someone whose
life had been transformed by the saving power of Jesus, someone who demonstrated
the love of God to them in person? The
laity will always be crucial to God’s efforts to save humanity, especially with
those hard cases committed in their own minds to rejecting God. Jesus didn’t give up, even when they told him
to leave, we can do no less.
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