Dear Edgeboro Family & Friends,

We all have good weeks and bad weeks at work, school, on the field, or at home. The same goes for preachers like me as well! A good week is when perspective, inspiration, research, the church calendar, and the Holy Spirit all work together in just the right way. This past week was one of those weeks for me and I thought I’d walk you through some of the puzzle pieces that assembled themselves in my head (thanks in large part to help from my colleagues) with the hopes that they are relevant and insightful for us all.

The assigned gospel reading for that week was from the gospel of Luke. If you really want to get the gist of what I’ll be talking about from here on out, go read Luke 8:22-39 right now and come back to this.

Go on, I’ll wait…

Back? Good. Let’s start by noticing how much Jesus went through to get to the man known as the Gerasene Demoniac. To do that, you must have an idea of what the terms “clean” and “unclean” mean in a Jewish context.

In the Hebrew Bible (notably Leviticus), there are laws given by God which state what is clean and unclean – people, places, food, animal, objects, etc. Without going into too much detail, here’s my crude explanation: Jews believed there are things in life that bring them closer to God (clean) and things in life that do not or do the opposite (unclean). Thus, pursuing clean things led to pursuing God. It was a unique way of life for Jewish people. So if someone like a rabbi, like Jesus, were to pursue unclean things or interact with unclean people, their Jewish friends and colleagues would let them know about it by correcting, questioning, ridiculing, or even punishing them, putting their reputation at stake.

Knowing all that, let’s look to the gospel story. Jesus went to Gerasene, a gentile (non-Jewish) land full of unclean things since the people living there didn’t observe the same laws. As soon as Jesus stepped off the boat he came in on, he was at the tombs – the place of the dead, a place considered unclean. Then he interacted with a man possessed by an unclean spirit. Though the spirit acted like a single spirit, it could have been way more than that! The spirit said his name was Legion, which was also the term used for a group of Roman soldiers that numbered 5,000. All of this is to say, Jesus was in a situation surrounded by uncleanliness, which made it a situation that a rabbi should have never gotten into in the first place.

Let’s pair all this uncleanliness with two more details:

(1) Notice that instead of waiting, Jesus sailed on a boat through a really dangerous storm just to get there, meaning it was really important to Jesus to get to his destination as soon as possible.

(2) Notice that when Jesus healed the Gerasene Demoniac, the local people who heard about this were not thrilled at all. They actually asked Jesus to leave. From other gospel stories, we know that Jesus can be a bit of an escape artist when confronted with crowds that confront him. So it wouldn’t be beyond Jesus to just slip by the crowd and stay in the town anyway even if the crowd wants him to leave. But he doesn’t do that. He just leaves. Which means that the only thing he accomplishes in Gerasene is the healing of that man – and he seems to be alright with that. In other words, there’s a good chance that the only reason Jesus went to Gerasene was that man (no longer a demoniac).

So to what lengths did Jesus go to get to that man? Let’s put these puzzle pieces together here.

Jesus went out of his way by sailing through a dangerous storm to an unclean place in an unclean land to meet a man who was beyond unclean with a spirit that behaved like thousands for the sole purpose of healing and restoring him.

Now that sounds like the incredible love of Jesus. And the good news is he’d do the same for you, too. Amen, and thanks be to Christ!

So what do we do with that love? How could we ever keep that to ourselves? Well, this gospel story’s not done yet!

Often times in the gospels, when someone comes to love Jesus for what he has done, his invitation to them is “Come, follow me.” The newly healed man wanted to, but Jesus invites him to do something else:

“The man from whom the demons had gone out begged to go with him, but Jesus sent him away, saying, ‘Return home and tell how much God has done for you.’” (Luke 8:38-39)

That’s our invitation, too. Wherever you call home, tell how much God has done for you. Tell how much you are loved. This is evangelism. This is spreading good news. This is the underlying purpose for worship, Vacation Bible School, the Ice Cream Festival, camp, the Salvation Army lunches, and more. This is the underlying purpose of every ministry at Edgeboro and every ministry of the Body of Christ. As we engage in all of the ministries listed in this newsletter and beyond, may we keep Christ’s incredible love in our hearts and keep his invitation to share the good news in our minds. Thanks for sticking with me throughout this awesome gospel story!

Beloved and invited, just like you,
Pastor Dan