because they were overcome with fear

My daughter is afraid of spiders.  I almost laughed as I wrote that sentence because, really, how afraid can you be of something which you outweigh by 300%?  But there you have it; she's afraid. Although this fear managed to cost us $500 in doctor's bills once, she really doesn't believe her life is in danger when encountering a wandering arachnid.

Fear has something to do with power.  In fact I think there is a direct correlation:  the greater the power the greater the potential for fear.  Or perhaps one could say that great fear is related to the potential for disaster - or what we at that moment would consider disaster. Walking carefully on an icy sidewalk might make us anxious; careening down an icy highway sideways at 65 mph is occasion for fear for disaster looms.

And disaster is that moment when the world turns and 'what has been' is replaced with an unwelcome 'what is coming.'  Great power is capable of bringing great changes, disasters even: ergo, great fear.

The people who lived in Gerasene (a place with alternate spellings and locations according to the various gospels) were overcome with fear, and so they asked Jesus to leave town.  I can't quite figure out what it was that scared them silly, but it clearly has something to do with the power that Jesus' revealed when healing the man possessed by demons.  Perhaps this healing was not trusted as benign; perhaps they expected someone as powerful as Jesus to use that power to make their lives different then they were.  I would guess that they were fairly certain that tomorrow was going to be vastly different than today.

They were right, of course.  Jesus had the power to make their tomorrows vastly different from today.  Jesus had the power to change their lives, right down to the very core.  Jesus wasn't benign; he wasn't some generic itinerant preacher.  He was the Son of God.  Right there!  In their face!

Following this Jesus is much more than adding Christian to your resume.  A relationship with Jesus is a relationship with the Divine (notice the capital letter), the Cosmic Force, the Creator of All.  You are tapping into great power - and once you do, your tomorrows are different from your todays.  Perhaps this is why the psalmist wrote 'the fear of God is the beginning of knowledge.'  Just saying.




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