Today we enter into a long period of ‘Ordinary Time’, a time when all the big festivals are over, and we can settle into some simple quiet time, if spending time with Jesus could ever be called ‘quiet time’. Jesus has a habit of stirring us up, and unsettling our nice settled, ordered ways. Throughout this season, in all of life’s ordinariness and ‘dailiness’, we’ll be encouraged to grow and mature in our faith, to deepen our prayer life, and to become the extraordinary messengers of the Gospel that we were commissioned to be at our baptism. During this season we will reflect on and celebrate our call to follow Jesus day by day, and to reflect on his life, miracles and teachings in the light of the Resurrection.
Today we also meet the Gerasene demoniac, a wild madman living away from his community in the cemetery. This is a man no-one wanted to go near, and who everyone in the village was afraid of. Jesus not only approaches the man and speaks with him, but heals him and restores him to community and relationship. This is the Jesus we will meet over and over again as we explore Luke’s Gospel week by week through this Ordinary time, the one who offers to restore and transform each of us, and to draw us into relationship with God and with each other.
Shalom, Lynda
Gospel Reading: Luke 8:26-39