Today, as we continued on in the book of Mark, I was given a new thought/image about the demon-possessed man living among the tombs–the man whom Jesus healed. The pastor said that Jesus traded places with the demoniac. Wow. Though it seems obvious now, it had never occurred to me this way before today. Yes, Jesus did heal the man whom everyone else down here seemed to believe was beyond healing altogether, but Jesus didn’t stop there. He didn’t just exorcise the many demons that had plagued this man for far too long, demons that had resulted in this man being chained, isolated/exiled, prone to self-harm via cutting, and the list could go on. Jesus didn’t just restore this man to life, fully clothed and clearly thinking–Jesus gave him a radically new life, both here and beyond.
And Jesus did so, as the pastor pointed out, by trading places with him. Jesus chose to become the one unclothed and bleeding, alienated and hated, and then put away in a dark tomb from which virtually no one expected him to ever emerge. And Jesus chose all of this, not because the devil was having his way with him, though the devil certainly was, but because Jesus loved and trusted his Father enough to go to hell and back for every single one of us. Yes, Jesus’ torture and tomb really should have been ours.
It occurred to me just now that the very stories in Scripture many learned people have said make it difficult for them to fully embrace Jesus as the Son of God, the Messiah, are also the stories that tend to give us (me at least) the most hope for both this life and the eternal one beyond. If certain extreme “cases” or phenomena were indeed beyond the reach of God, then what would that say about who God really is? And what would that say about who/how we must be? Jesus really did die for those whom we tend to consider the worst of us; and he really was put to death by those whom we tend to consider the best of us. And both of these realities should humble all of us beyond words. Yes, the tomb was indeed all ours, until our triumphant Triune God took our place in what was the greatest trade of all history.
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