No hope
This week is on Mark 5:2-8:
The man with the evil spirit wasn't just having a bad week. He was severely afflicted, mentally and physically, by an evil spirit. This had gone on for quite some time. It had gone on enough that the people of his region, in the enlightened attitudes they had towards mental illness, created a "home for the criminally insane" for the guy, by chaining him up. He always got out, but he never got "free."
For all we know, this guy may have spent a significant portion of his life completely out of his mind. Think of it from his perspective: The guy is so angry, and so hurt, and so confused and tormented, that he spends all of his time hurting himself and crying out in agony. Not only can nobody help the guy, but they can't even seem to manage to keep his afflictions from affecting their own lives. I don't think any of the townspeople were glad to have a dangerous raving lunatic with superhuman strength prowling around their graveyard at all hours of the day and night. It's not the sort of thing where an urban planning commission sits down and thinks "We totally need one of *those* for our community!"
So, the guy spends his days being utterly miserable, and all of the people around him are miserable too, and blame him for it, and attack him for crying out and making their lives as inconvenient and tormented as they are. This goes on and on, and nobody can fix it. If you were a psychologist or a sociologist, and you were tasked with predicting the happiness of this community or the prognosis for this individual over the next year, without knowing Jesus would show up, how optimistic would you be?
One weak spot in human reasoning is that it cannot see the future. The best we can do is look at the present and at what we sort of remember from the past, and guess what might happen. With that giant blind spot, it's easy to get depressed, and hopeless, and give bad prognoses and predict doom, if that's all we're seeing at the moment, or all we've seen in the recent past. For the miserable guy who was afflicted by demonic spirits, there was no reason to believe his life would ever get better. Even when he saw Jesus, his only frame of reference was people punishing him and trying to tie him up. He figured "Maybe God will hate me for how I am, and will want to whip me and bind me up too, or worse." And part of our rational minds would probably agree with him. He's been bullying people for years. There must be some price to pay for that, right? And if he was going to get better, it would have happened by now, right? If God would just strike him down with lightning, wouldn't everyone be happier?
So this guy went from miserable day to miserable day, each blending into the next, with no sign that anything would ever be different. The people went each day, dreading the possibility of encountering this miserable man and having to endure his misery and his lashing out. How could anyone have predicted that things could ever be different than they were? Everyone had just given up and accepted that things would always be miserable and awkward, and that they were alone to suffer with it.
We're humans too. We suffer from the same natural blindness to hope that the afflicted man and his fellow villagers had. There are things in our lives, and in our friends' lives, and in our regional life which have always been wrong and bad, for as long as we can remember. We have relationships with hurting and hurtful people. We suffer illness and torment and see injustices everywhere. We're no more equipped to expect Jesus to show up and fix it all than the terrified afflicted man was. "I can't ask Jesus for help. He'll burn me with his cigarette and tell me to shut up." "Why would God intervene now? We've brought this on ourselves." "If there was a solution for that problem, we would have found it by now." Wrong.
As if the man's example wasn't clear enough, that chapter in the book of Mark also has a story about a woman with a decade-long "women's health" issue who finally found healing in reaching out to God. There's also an account of a dead little girl being brought back to life. If those aren't long-term hopeless situations, I don't know what is. Generally if you've suffered with something for ten years, you're keeping it. And people don't tend to get any less dead than they are. Still, Jesus fixed all three of these situations.
We spend our lives looking at the present and the past, and agonizing over this thing or that. We look to medical journals and news reports and gossip shows and form our view of the world based on their cynical godless cries. We miss out on the whole truth. Why not consider what Jesus did for the afflicted graveyard guy, or the leaky lady, or the the dead girl? There's no way to predict that stuff without hoping in God. Be willing to be surprised and delighted. Be ready to be healed and forgiven and set free, and for that to happen to people you wouldn't associate that with. God is a God not just of the past and present, but also of the future. And there's a lot more future waiting for us than our pasts and presents...
When Jesus got out of the boat, a man with an evil spirit came from the tombs to meet him. This man lived in the tombs, and no one could bind him any more, not even with a chain. For he had often been chained hand and foot, but he tore the chains apart and broke the irons on his feet. No one was strong enough to subdue him. Night and day among the tombs and in the hills he would cry out and cut himself with stones.
When he saw Jesus from a distance, he ran and fell on his knees in front of him. He shouted at the top of his voice, "What do you want with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? Swear to God that you won't torture me!" For Jesus had said to him, "Come out of this man, you evil spirit!"
The man with the evil spirit wasn't just having a bad week. He was severely afflicted, mentally and physically, by an evil spirit. This had gone on for quite some time. It had gone on enough that the people of his region, in the enlightened attitudes they had towards mental illness, created a "home for the criminally insane" for the guy, by chaining him up. He always got out, but he never got "free."
For all we know, this guy may have spent a significant portion of his life completely out of his mind. Think of it from his perspective: The guy is so angry, and so hurt, and so confused and tormented, that he spends all of his time hurting himself and crying out in agony. Not only can nobody help the guy, but they can't even seem to manage to keep his afflictions from affecting their own lives. I don't think any of the townspeople were glad to have a dangerous raving lunatic with superhuman strength prowling around their graveyard at all hours of the day and night. It's not the sort of thing where an urban planning commission sits down and thinks "We totally need one of *those* for our community!"
So, the guy spends his days being utterly miserable, and all of the people around him are miserable too, and blame him for it, and attack him for crying out and making their lives as inconvenient and tormented as they are. This goes on and on, and nobody can fix it. If you were a psychologist or a sociologist, and you were tasked with predicting the happiness of this community or the prognosis for this individual over the next year, without knowing Jesus would show up, how optimistic would you be?
One weak spot in human reasoning is that it cannot see the future. The best we can do is look at the present and at what we sort of remember from the past, and guess what might happen. With that giant blind spot, it's easy to get depressed, and hopeless, and give bad prognoses and predict doom, if that's all we're seeing at the moment, or all we've seen in the recent past. For the miserable guy who was afflicted by demonic spirits, there was no reason to believe his life would ever get better. Even when he saw Jesus, his only frame of reference was people punishing him and trying to tie him up. He figured "Maybe God will hate me for how I am, and will want to whip me and bind me up too, or worse." And part of our rational minds would probably agree with him. He's been bullying people for years. There must be some price to pay for that, right? And if he was going to get better, it would have happened by now, right? If God would just strike him down with lightning, wouldn't everyone be happier?
So this guy went from miserable day to miserable day, each blending into the next, with no sign that anything would ever be different. The people went each day, dreading the possibility of encountering this miserable man and having to endure his misery and his lashing out. How could anyone have predicted that things could ever be different than they were? Everyone had just given up and accepted that things would always be miserable and awkward, and that they were alone to suffer with it.
We're humans too. We suffer from the same natural blindness to hope that the afflicted man and his fellow villagers had. There are things in our lives, and in our friends' lives, and in our regional life which have always been wrong and bad, for as long as we can remember. We have relationships with hurting and hurtful people. We suffer illness and torment and see injustices everywhere. We're no more equipped to expect Jesus to show up and fix it all than the terrified afflicted man was. "I can't ask Jesus for help. He'll burn me with his cigarette and tell me to shut up." "Why would God intervene now? We've brought this on ourselves." "If there was a solution for that problem, we would have found it by now." Wrong.
As if the man's example wasn't clear enough, that chapter in the book of Mark also has a story about a woman with a decade-long "women's health" issue who finally found healing in reaching out to God. There's also an account of a dead little girl being brought back to life. If those aren't long-term hopeless situations, I don't know what is. Generally if you've suffered with something for ten years, you're keeping it. And people don't tend to get any less dead than they are. Still, Jesus fixed all three of these situations.
We spend our lives looking at the present and the past, and agonizing over this thing or that. We look to medical journals and news reports and gossip shows and form our view of the world based on their cynical godless cries. We miss out on the whole truth. Why not consider what Jesus did for the afflicted graveyard guy, or the leaky lady, or the the dead girl? There's no way to predict that stuff without hoping in God. Be willing to be surprised and delighted. Be ready to be healed and forgiven and set free, and for that to happen to people you wouldn't associate that with. God is a God not just of the past and present, but also of the future. And there's a lot more future waiting for us than our pasts and presents...
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