Mark 5:6 When he saw Jesus from a distance, he ran and fell on his knees in front of him.
When I was growing up, posture was important. Sit up straight, lift up your head, and don’t slouch! In my family, posture said something about who we were, a statement about our self-assessment of value. If we were an Arnold, then Arnold’s have good posture.
At dinnertime we weren’t allowed to put our elbows on the table. “Stanley, Stanley, strong and able, keep your elbows off the table.” These words would be spoken by an older sibling or by my parents. It was usually with a smile on my parent’s face, and a scowl on my brother’s faces. These small rules helped mold me into an Arnold!
In our chapter of Mark’s gospel we read three times about posture. Three times people approach Jesus and fall before Him. They are each in desperate need and they express their need with their posture.
Too often today, people express their attitude toward others with a raised fist and a raised voice. But these three people who approached Jesus, approached with humility and desperation. They knew they didn’t deserve to have their request answered, and so they approached in humility. And all three of them received what they needed.
Our text tells of a man in a desperate state, possessed by many demons. It wasn’t enough to be possessed, he had multiple demons living in him. Demons don’t have bodies and need one in order to function in this world. So they need willing volunteers. These people don’t necessarily know what they are getting themselves into when they open themselves up to Satan’s leadership in their lives, but Satan doesn’t care about false advertising.
But the good news is that Jesus isn’t intimidated by a legion of demons. All the forces of Hell are nothing to Him. He just speaks and they obey. And so Jesus speaks, the unclean demons enter into the unclean pigs on their journey to punishment, and exile apart from God’s presence.
And this man is transformed. But it doesn’t stop there. He wants to keep hanging out with Jesus. He wants to join Jesus in His journey in this world, but Jesus won’t let him. Instead, Jesus sends this man, no theological education, only a few minutes into his faith journey, to start the first missions trip. He is sent back to his hometown to share what has happened.
His theology is that Jesus changed his life. That is it! That is all he can share. That is all he knows. And that is what he is to share.
You see, our testimony of Jesus’ intervention in our lives, again and again, points people to Jesus. It isn’t about us. Our posture needs to be humility. All we have to offer is Jesus. Politics aren’t the solution. Money redistribution isn’t the answer. Some kind of earthly ‘justice’ won’t accomplish anything of real importance. Only Jesus!
And when we are changed by our encounters with Jesus, then we share Jesus, and people are amazed. The change they see in us, our humility in sharing, that it isn’t because of something we did that brought the change, is what speaks to a longing heart.
Jesus first, Jesus last, Jesus only! May our testimony must always be Jesus. He is the center, the core, the meat, the essential and only element of our relationship with God. He is what matters. Let us fall before Him and acknowledge this fact and this joy. He will be exalted. Let’s join in allowing Him to shine. Let’s get out of the way and let people see Jesus.
The Arnold Journey 