Sermon excerpt:
Up to this point, the people had been able to deal with the evil spirits—they were familiar with the man and his problem, and spent considerable time and effort trying to control the situation. They had learned to live with the evil, managing it as best they could. It wasn’t a perfect solution, they knew—it was far from perfect especially for the man!—but everyone else seemed OK with the situation. They figured out how to live with it and maybe even kind of forgot about it. They forgot about the evil in their midst.
Then along comes Jesus who disturbs their peace.
He disturbs their way of life, turning everything upside down. “Even when it is for good, power that can neither be calculated nor managed is frightening.”[1]They had no idea what powerful and mysterious and, in their minds, potentially harmful thing Jesus might do next.
Again, they counted the cost of the miracle and decided it was too steep a price to pay to see what might happen next. So they send Jesus away.
[1]Craddock, page 118.
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