The Jesus Perspective

I found an article I wrote for the newspaper some time back and thought I would post it on here.

This past week I was reading Mark 5:1-20, an account of Jesus meeting a demon possessed man on the shores of Gadara. He delivers this man and sends the demons into a nearby heard of pigs. Take five minutes to read it yourself. As I read through this I considered the people of the region, Mark calls them the Gerasenes.

Jesus meets this demon possessed man, a human being and delivers him from bondage. Hallelujah, it is time to celebrate! But instead, the men that were tending the pigs, ran off to tell others about this tragedy. But, if they missed the miracle of the moment when Christ took those demons out of the man, they will get another chance to rejoice.

Up to this point many of the people of this region only knew him as ‘the possessed guy,’ ‘the crazy guy,’ ‘the screamer’ or ‘the cutter.’ Now, they get the chance to see him whole again, “dressed and inhis right mind.” Now they can show pity on him and be glad that he has been delivered. But it reads “they wereafraid.” To be clear, minutes ago he was hanging out in the tombs, he was cutting himself and screaming out in pain day and night and he was breaking chains with superhuman strength and now they are afraid?

The people begin to tell others the whole account. They share what has happened with the man who was possessed for such a long time, of thousands of demons came out of him and into the pigs that ran off the cliff and of Jesus, His power and control.

Jesus’ supremacy can no longer be doubted. Scripture reads that the people pleaded with Jesus to leave their region. They wanted Him out of there. The truth is that they would have rather had the pigs then Jesus.

Later, as the man begins to give a first-hand account of his deliverance in the ten-city region, we read people were amazed. Translated, it meant that the people marveled, they admired Jesus, His power and of the miracle.

People were always one step behind, afraid after the man had been delivered and marveled after Jesus left town.

It is my prayer that we do not emulate the Gerasenes, that we are not one step behind, running away when we should rejoice, fearing what we should embrace and dismissing the One we should welcome.

Maybe you feel a bit like the man at the beginning of the passage, you are facing the pressures of life, the loneliness of culture and the shame of the past. You are one step away from being free. And just as the man in the passage did, you need to run and fall on your knees in front of Jesus. Maybe you feel like the Gerasenes or you know someone who is struggling, you see someone hurting and know that something needs to be done.

Are you going to pass on by or stop and see what Jesus sees? It is all about the perspective that we take, the moment we pause and consider what a person is going through and how some of the simplest actions we take can change a person’s life forever.