Lenten Meditation: March 2, 2024
Daily Scripture Passage: Mark 5:1-20
What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I adjure you by God, do not torment me. — Mark 5:7b
Of all the things the possessed man—the Gerasene Demoniac—could have asked Jesus, this seems the most unlikely. Mark tells us that the man was already so tormented that he howled day and night and intentionally injured himself. Mark says that the man was possessed by demons. We often colloquially speak of our “demons,” the voices in our heads that compel us in directions we would prefer not to go. While Mark would have understood “demon” in another sense, Mark recognized that something in the man was pushing him toward self-destruction.
“The devil you know is better than the devil you don’t,” we say. The Gerasene Demoniac believed that. He wanted to hold on to the devil he knew rather than take a chance on what Jesus wanted to give him. He could not imagine that Jesus was offering him, not another devil, not another tormenting demon, but freedom. The man was so trapped that he could not imagine that his life could be anything other than what it was. If anything, it could only be worse.
Jesus saw what the possessed man could not see: that torment was not the only option. Jesus could see what was possible for the man, and he wanted him to have it.
“Go home to your friends, and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and what mercy he has shown you,” Jesus told the man after he had been liberated from him demons. Because if Jesus can do it for such a tormented self-destructive soul, Jesus can do it for anyone. He could do it for man’s friends. He can do it even for us. That is the “Good News,” and it is for everyone.