Fifth Sunday after Pentecost. The Placing of the Precious Robe of Our Most Holy Lady and the Mother of God in the Church at Blachernae in Constantinople; Our Lady of Perpetual Help; Verkhratska Weeping Icon of the Mother of God (1688)
Polyeleos Feast.
Romans 10:1-10; Hebrew 9:1-7; Matthew 8:28-9:1; Luke 10:38-42, 11:27-28.
Read Matthew 8:28-9:1
Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!
Our relationship with time is one of the defining characteristics of our human experience. There are moments we wish would last forever. There are others we wish would end.
In today’s gospel reading, we see Jesus calmly in control regarding time. The demons are well aware of who Jesus is and they know that their time of judgement is coming. But that time was not then. Neither was it all the times up to now. Jesus allowed the continuance of the fallen world.
But Jesus granting the demons’ request to be sent into the herd of pigs is a kind of foreshadowing judgement. Gadara was on the east shore of the Sea of Galilee and pigs were a ritually unclean animal in Israel. The fallen world would not continue indefinitely.
But the people of that time and place preferred that things continue as they had been. One would think that the gospels would emphasize the financial loss of 2000 pigs as the reason they wanted Jesus to leave. However, it was “the demoniac sitting there, clothed and in his right mind” that made them afraid (Mark 5). They preferred the devil they knew, even at great cost to the people possessed.
But one of the demoniacs was glad that his time of deliverance had come and he wanted more time with Jesus. But Jesus told him that time had not yet come but to, “Go home to your friends, and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you.”
We live in an in-between time – in Jesus, the kingdom of God has already come but also not yet fully. The kind of time we experience, even when it results in our deliverance, still involves waiting. But Jesus is Lord of time.