¶ The Town Begged Jesus to Leave
Welcome to Slaking Thirst, a podcast that's all about bringing the thirst deep within our hearts for love and communion to the heart of Christ, a divine heart, who is seeking our love and communion in return. The hope is that the two thirsts would meet and both thirsts would be slaked. I think intuitively we would have thought the gospel would have ended differently.
Jesus comes, frees two people possessed by demons so the town can have peace. People can travel in and out of the town with greater ease, which could mean greater commerce, greater stability, seeing family and friends without risking your life. You think the gospel would end seeing Jesus, they begged him to stay. Some places that was the case. But in this town, seeing Jesus, they begged him to leave their district.
¶ Jesus Disturbs Our Comfort Zones
Jesus often creates a disturbance in our lives. This is really important that we understand this because oftentimes we will call things bad. which may very well be his activity in our lives. He disrupts and disturbs the status quo. Always. Constantly. Because he knows... how much love and how beautiful of a life you're meant for. And we tend to have a capability to say, okay, this is good enough. It's safe. Let's not...
Rock any boats, we'll just keep it as it is. And when we do that, we step out of dependency on the life and power of Jesus and begin to create our own worldview that are within our human capacities alone. They don't involve the very life and power of Jesus anymore. So this town had learned to find quote-unquote peace.
All right. Okay. Yeah. We've got two demon guys outside of town. All right. It's not great for us. Travel wise is dangerous, but you know what? We at least got them out of town. They're on the outskirts. All right. And so. basically everything else can operate just fine. Well, think about this. Like, two demons, right? Jesus comes and casts them out. He reveals his power is a restorative power. He came to renew all things, to restore all of creation. He has the power and the love to do this.
And he does this, which means the whole town now is freed from this kind of tick for tack kind of operating system where it's like, all right, well, yeah, this isn't great, but they're over there. And as long as they're outside of town, we have some semblance of peace. He gets rid of that, and now there's new hope, new capabilities, new possibilities. Things change. And what we discovered is the town said, we don't like this. We knew.
We knew how to operate when there was two demons. We got used to that. We knew what to predict. There was a sense of control. All right, I know this. I say this. You say that. I do this. Okay, we kind of get how that works. but now just freely given is the freedom, power, and love of Jesus. Freely breaking in is the kingdom of the Father, just entering into their lives. And it's a huge disruption.
To their quote-unquote peace. Because Jesus can do more than we could ask for or imagine. This past week I was talking to someone and...
¶ Welcoming God's Restorative Power
We were just talking about how Jesus can heal our family and heal even family wounds if your mom and dad are dead or whatever it may be. Even when you go back and you realize, yeah, mom and dad, they weren't the worst people in the world. man, I didn't really always feel the love and attention I would have loved as a child. And as you begin to do story work and things, you begin to realize these are places that really matter because the heart needs love and attention. So if you don't get it...
in the ways you're meant to from mom and dad you'll try to find it other places and in other ways usually very destructive as time goes on and i was selling this and the guy goes well you know if your mom and dad didn't try to do anything bad
Like, I just don't get upset. Like, what's the big deal? Like, yeah, it wasn't perfect, but they were trying to do their best. What if dad was working a lot of hours, this and that? I said, no doubt about it. He was trying to provide. I said, but it doesn't mean that on your end of it.
You didn't have these places where you really wanted love and really wanted dad to play with you, but he came home at 10 o'clock and was too tired and he had to wake up at five for work again or whatever. And this guy would not go to that place in his heart at all. Why? Well, because he doesn't know the power of Jesus yet. To go there feels like to simply go into a place of hopelessness. That was in the past. My needs didn't met. It hurt back then. Why would I go there now?
Oh, because Jesus is alive and he's real and he can restore all things. He can fill in all the places that are deprivations in our lives. All the places that lack the life and love, attention, goodness, safety, kindness, forgiveness, joy, and hope that we lack, he came to restore and bring. But you have to be willing for things to be disturbed.
You have to be willing for things to be thrown off balance and then begin to say, everything has to come to me through Jesus. He is the one God sent to heal me and all people of all times, of all places. He is the one who saves. And do you know what people do? They go, please don't stay in our district. Go away. We all do this to a degree.
Maybe there's a relationship. You're like, I don't want to be too Jesus-y in that relationship. And there may be reasons why to protect yourself, but the disturbance is coming. He will not stop. Because he knows the life you're meant for. He knows how glorious you can be. And so he never lets us settle. Whether it's a parish with the last name of the Great.
We should have arrived by now with the great at the end of our name, or a diocese, or a church, or a ministry, or a family, or a company, or a hobby, or a group. Always disturbing, because none of it is God. None of it is the fullness yet. And so oftentimes, in order to grow, we have to disassemble what's there so that he can put it together in a new way to keep growing and growing.
It's true of organizations. It's true of the church. It's true of our souls. And so maybe something very scary today can be a prayer. Lord, would you show us how we resist? Your transforming power. To listen to more homilies, talks, and reflections from Father Ryan and Father Patrick, please check out slakingthirst.com and consider becoming a subscriber to the Slaking Thirst YouTube channel.