“The other side of the lake” 

    “"Let us go across to the other side of the lake.” Mk 4.35. Jesus leaves the security, popularity, and acceptance on this side and crosses the lake for the persecution, opposition, and rejection of the other side. On this side of the lake, crowds follow him, he is beginning to be understood and accepted. Just when everything looked favorable, he says,  “let us go to the other side.”

The decision looked rather poor discernment. The timing too seemed to go wrong. The journey across the lake was stormy. The waves and the winds nearly drowned him and his followers. On the other side, there are no crowds, only herds of swine. Just one man comes running to him from the midst of tombs, with marks of chains and fetters on his hands and scars of burns and bruises on his face. He comes not to welcome him but to scream and shout and demand that Jesus quit his territory and leave him alone.   

 Jesus does not oblige him. He knows the man is possessed, a captive, chained, and in shackles. Jesus knows it is the devil speaking through him. In the shouting and screaming Jesus hears the cry for freedom. So rather than obey the devil, he commands the devil to leave the man.

The Good Shepherd goes in search of the lost sheep. Jesus comes risking the waves and winds, rejection and opposition in search of this one man. Jesus does not always look for crowds. Freedom for even one individual is motivation enough for him to set out on a dangerous unwelcome journey.  

The situation of every mission land is like that of Gerasenes. The one who brings the Good News is often opposed,  rejected, and persecuted. People who are chained and oppressed often think the Good News is a torment and an oppression. So they come individually and in a delegation to demand that the missionary back off.

We so often are quick to obey them. We fear persecution and imprisonment. We are not prepared for the risk involved in the journey. We are surrounded by angry mobs and unfriendly authorities. We are not ready to sail far and risk our life for just one or two individuals. So often we argue why to go in search of one or two when on this side crowds are ready to follow.

Every person, and every land that rejects the Good News is a captive, bound in social, economic, ethnic, religious, and caste chains. They are captives of poisoned ideologies, corrupt political systems, poverty, sickness and hunger. Immoral leaders and vote-bank politicians exploit the crowds' ignorance, caste and superstition to make their way to the top.  The persecution they unleash and the oppressive laws they pass are ways to keep the people bound in chains.  

  Jesus refused to listen to the voice of the devil.  Can the evangelizer of the Good News restate their vision and mission once more and stand up for freedom and truth rather than bow down to the whims of dictators who pass oppressive laws to keep people in chains? Like Jesus can we hear in every screaming and shouting a cry for compassion and help?

Even at the cost of rejection and persecution, we are invited to set people free. They may kill you but the man whom you set free will continue your work.  You may succeed to free only just one individual but he in his turn will bring the ‘whole town’.

Lord, give us a sensitive ear to hear in the screams and shouts of those bound in chains, the cry for compassion and help.  Give us the courage to launch out from the familiar and the usual to new territories, to break new grounds, willing to sail, even if it is for just one lost sheep, “to the other side of the lake.”

-        Fr T.V. George sdb