Then the people began to plead with Jesus to leave their region.
As Jesus was getting into the boat, the man who had been demon-possessed begged to go with him.
Mark 5:17-18 (NIV)
Wendy and I have a recurring conversation about life. There is no doubt in either of our minds that we were supposed to walk this journey together. It’s a story that I should write someday. Our relationship has been such a good thing that we often wonder: “What if we had experienced our younger adult years together?”
While the hypothetical question is a natural one, we both agree in this recurring conversation that the younger versions of ourselves (me the religious rule keeper and good little preacher boy, she the rebellious wild-child) would likely not have hitten it off. My personal journey, walking through my “Prodigal” years, the failure of my first marriage, becoming a father to Taylor and Madison, were all part of what prepared me for the waypoint in which our story could begin.
Yesterday I wrote about the fact that every follower of Jesus has a unique story. Some follow in one season of life, while it takes others until a later season and waypoint further down the road before they are at the right place to follow. Some don’t reach that waypoint until their final moments on this earth. There is a mystery to the flow of it.
As I read today’s chapter, I found a connected truth. Mark’s version of the Jesus Story continues. While Mark has previously alluded to the miracles Jesus is performing, in today’s chapter he gives three major illustrations: a man possessed by a legion of demons, a woman who is miraculously healed by Jesus without His conscious decision to do so, and a twelve-year-old girl raised from the dead. I feel like Mark is telling me “Look, Jesus wasn’t just healing people from a runny nose or a tummy ache. We’re talking dead people being raised back to life kind of stuff!”
In the midst of these three episodes is a curious event. The people in the towns where Jesus cast the demons out of the man begged him to leave their region. The very next sentence has Jesus getting into the boat to shove off. I am reminded that when Jesus sends out His disciples to do their own internship practicum (coming up in the next chapter) He tells them if they are not welcomed by the people in a town to “shake the dust off your feet” and leave. In today’s chapter, Jesus exemplifies what He will command His followers to do in the next chapter.
In the quiet this morning I find myself mulling over the notion that Jesus does not force His way in. Tell Him to stay away and He is perfectly willing to move along. To the point of yesterday’s post, it may not have been the right season for the people of that region. Curious that the demon-delivered man asks to follow Jesus and Jesus tells him to stay and tell everyone in the region his story. In doing so, Jesus scatters “the seed” through this man’s story and witness which may take root and bear fruit in a future season.
Through many years of my journey, I observed the institutional church often trying to force itself in where it was not welcome and to manufacture converts via what I would liken to a process of systemic spiritual cloning. As I read through the Jesus story, I find Jesus’ actual example to be far more natural, more organic, more authentic, and more trusting of what God’s Spirit is doing in the Great Story and in the story of individuals within it.
Which brings me back to the journey of Tom and Wendy that began when two very different lives found themselves in the right season and at the right waypoint on life’s road to become one.
Wayfarer 