Scripture: Mark 5: 1-20

March 14, 2004

Rev. Marietta T. Smith

Jesus’ reputation both preceded Him and followed Him. Wherever He went, crowds gathered around Him Wherever he traveled, crowds followed Him. People had heard of this man who seemed to have powers they didn’t understand. The Gospels are filled with stories of His power over sickness and nature, power over the forces of evil and even over death.

In our gospel lesson for today, we see Jesus’ power over demonic forces. Jesus and His disciples had come ashore in the region of the Gadarenes. One of the other gospels calls it the region of the Geresenes, but what is called is beside the point, the point being that Jesus came just at the right time in this man’s life. Jesus ALWAYS comes at the right time.

Here was this man, this town character, that frightened everyone with his screaming and crying. Every effort to restrain him failed. He lived among the tombs in the mountains, screaming and crying and cutting himself with small stones.

When he saw Jesus, he came and fell at His feet and cried out to Him. Then Jesus ordered the demons to come out of him. When Jesus came into his life, the man had a new purpose for living.

When folks from his village came out to see what was going on, they found the man fully clothed, in his right mind. For Jesus had come and set the captive free.

In the verses preceding this story, we find Jesus and His disciples in a boat on the Sea of Galilee. There is a terrific storm has come up and the boat is being tossed to and fro in the wind. Jesus is asleep in the stern of the boat. We might wonder at Jesus, being divine, and needing asleep. Surely he wouldn’t need to rest but He did. He lived in a human body and He needed rest and sleep just like you and I do.

The disciples were afraid and were afraid they were going to drown. and went and woke Him up and said, “Master, do something. Save us.”

Jesus got up and came up on the deck of the boat and rebuked the winds and the waves and said, “Peace, be still.”

And they were all amazed and wondered , “Who is this that the winds and the waves will obey Him?”

In the verses after this story, Jesus is on His way to the home of Jairus, who was a leader of the synagogue, who had asked Jesus to come and lay His hands on Jairus’ daughter, who was very ill, and heal her. On the way, once again crowds thronged around Him. They were so pressing in on him that people were touching Him and He asked the question: Who touched me? The disciples seemed annoyed with His question and replied that, with all the crowds around Him, of course, in the press of this crowd, someone touched Him; maybe several some ones.

But Jesus knew that someone had touched Him in need. Jesus always recognizes the touch of faith no matter how halting may be. The most timid reach will always receive a response. The feeblest of prayers will always be heard.

One of the sources I read said:

Jesus knew that someone had reached out to Him in faith and He called out, “Who touched me?” to bring that person out.

The woman hesitantly came forward to fall at Jesus’ feet in thanksgiving for the gift of healing. She had only touched the hem of His garment. Someone I heard or read of said that the woman probably touched the fringes of His prayer shawl. All rabbis wore the prayer shawls and there was a fringe at the bottom of it that was tied a certain way and they used those fringes when they said their prayers.

This woman had made an open confession of Christ, and He spoke words of assurance to her soul. We make an open confession of Christ every time someone is baptized, every time someone joins our church as we are asked to renew our commitment to Christ. Our Confirmands are preparing to make an open confession of Christ as they assume responsibility for developing their faith. Without open confession of Christ by the way we live our lives, there not going to be much growth in our faith or our commitment.

Jesus came into this woman's life and gave her a new answer to the question: “What in the world am I here for?”

At another time, in another place, Jesus had been preaching and teaching and the people had followed Him and the disciples out to where they had gone to rest. He had compassion on them for they seemed like sheep without a shepherd, so He began to teach them. The afternoon shadows began to lengthen; the hour was getting later and later, and the people had nothing to eat, and Jesus said to His disciples, “You give them something to eat.”

One of them responded, “Well, Master, it would take two hundred denari to buy food enough for this crowd.”

But for a small meal of five small loaves and two fish, several thousand people would have gone hungry. But Jesus came and they went away well fed.

There were ten lepers who encountered Jesus on the way along the border between Samaria and Galilee. They were the outcasts of society, victims of a disease that in those days was highly contagious. Lepers had to keep their distance. They had their own little places to live in and no one could come to visit them, and if they were out somewhere and happened to see some people coming, they had to cry out, ‘Unclean, unclean.”

They stood at a distance and cried out to Jesus and He told them to go show themselves to the priests, as was the custom. They were to show themselves to the priests in the temple, that they were indeed cleaned. And the story goes that on the way they were cleansed. They were made whole. Jesus came into their lives and gave them a new life, a whole like, a cleansed life.

In yet another story, a woman was thrown at Jesus’ feet and her accusers began to recount how she had been caught in the very act of adultery. These men were attempting to devise a way to catch Jesus in the very act of what they thought to be blasphemy. What happened was that they themselves were indeed “caught in the very act” of their own deception.

You know how that story goes: That as Jesus knelt and began to write in the sand, and then He said, “Whoever is without sin may cast the first stone.”

And one by one the accusers dropped their stones and fled the scene leaving Jesus and the woman alone. Jesus took her by the hand and raised her up and asked her, ‘Where are your accusers? Has no one condemned you?”

She answered, “No one, Lord.”

Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you. Go in peace and sin no more.”

In essence what Jesus was saying was, go in peace and realize, perhaps for the first time in your life that you are a person of worth because God loves you. You are His creation, created for His pleasure, made in His image to reflect His glory in worship and praise in commitment and service. Jesus came into that woman’s life and gave her hope.

The woman at the well was in a similar kind of situation. She had had five husbands and the man that she was living with at that time was not her husband. She was the talk of the village so that she came to the well at an odd time day in order to get water for her needs. This way she avoided the “knowing’ glances of the town gossips. That Jesus would even speak to her was cause for great surprise, her being a woman, a Samaritan woman, and a woman of no good reputation, at that.

But Jesus came into her life and gave her water that would quench her thirst forever, her spiritual thirst. Living water, bubbling water up from the springs of life. Clear, clean, cool, refreshing, spiritual water. And bread that would always be in great supply — manna for her soul, water for her spiritual thirst from a well that would never run dry. Jesus filled her cup full and overflowing.

Zacchaeus was a wee little man and a wee little man was he. He also was a very much despised tax collector, for he could set the tax rate at any amount he wanted it to be, pay the Roman government what they required, and pocket the rest. He probably made a pretty good sum of money doing that. But he wanted to see Jesus and he was vertically challenged and he couldn’t see over the heads of the crowds that lined the walkway where Jesus was going to appear. So he climbed up the sycamore tree so he could see over into the pathway and get a good view of Jesus. You know the story of how as Jesus passed by, he just happened to look up and see Zacchaeus. And He said, “Come down, Zacchaeus. I must stay at your house today,” indicating some kind of divine design in the fact that Jesus just happened to look up and see Zacchaeus who just happened to be in that sycamore tree Jesus saw and sensed that Zacchaeus had a need.

It makes me think that this is similar to all these other stories that I have related to you today, that Jesus just happens to be at the right place, at the right time to enter a person’s life with His grace and love and His forgiveness.

He doesn’t grab them by the arm and tell them that they are bleary eyed, liquor soaked devils that are going straight to hell if they don’t change their ways. He comes into their lives where they are at their point of need and gently leads them to where they need to be.

When Jesus came into the lives of these people their lives were changed for the better forever. They were “ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven,” as the words of the hymn say.

Look at the disciples. They were with Jesus for three years. They had witnessed miracle after miracle. They had listened to His teaching and His preaching. They had watched how He associated with the downtrodden and dispossessed, the outcast and the undesirable people that the religious leaders of the day wouldn’t even speak to, much less touch or associate with.

In fact, the people in the Zacchaeus story were miffed because Jesus went to be the “guest of a sinner.”

In spite of this that the disciples had witnessed, regardless of how many miracles they had seen, no matter how much Jesus had taught them, they were disillusioned and discouraged when He died on the cross, for He had not fulfilled their “conquering Hero” image of what they thought Messiah ought to be.

But when He rose from the dead, when He came out of the tomb, they began to be excited about the fact that He really is Messiah. He really did have the temple destroyed. They realized that the temple He spoke of was His body. “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up,” he had said. They finally realized that He really could be trusted, that everything that He said was true, that following Him just might be the most exciting adventure of a lifetime.

And when Pentecost gave birth to the church, the Holy Spirit came, and the disciples were empowered as never before to go out and take the gospel to the world.

Now, what is the point of all this? It is simply that Jesus can change lives. He has the power to ease the storms around us. When Jesus comes, He takes the broken pieces of our lives and puts them back together, stronger than they ever were before.

When Jesus comes, He can transform any life, no matter what the situation. God so loved the whole world that whosoever believes in Him, regardless of whatsoever they have done, may have fellowship with Him that lasts eternally. That’s everlasting life.

Zacchaeus, the woman taken in adultery, the woman at the well, those hungry people all needed a new purpose in life. When Jesus came, they finally understood that God was the source of their lives, that they could find their identity and purpose through a relationship with God through Christ.

When Jesus comes and gives us this new life in Him, we come to realize that we are indeed made for God’s pleasure, to worship and adore Him; that we have a new sense of belonging somewhere; that we are created to be like Christ; that we are transformed by the truth of His WORD; that we are shaped for serving God; that we are made for mission.

The Gadarene demoniac wanted to go with Jesus but Jesus told him to go home to his friends and tell them the great things the Lord had done for him.

No doubt when the people saw him coming they reacted in fear, remembering what he was like the last time they saw him. But then they realized that he wasn’t screaming and crying. They saw that he was walking normally. He wasn’t running around in circles and cutting himself. And he was fully clothed, walking along, probably with a great big smile on his face because Jesus had come into his life and given him a reason to smile.

Do you have something to go home and tell your family and friends about today? What great things has God done for you? Do you have a reason to smile today?