Given By Rev. Madison Shockley July 9, 2017
Today’s reading gives us our theme, we must finish our work. The Pharisees warned Jesus to leave Jerusalem or he would be killed by Herod. Jesus replied that he still had work to do and would not leave until he was finished. Nothing was going to stop him. His casting out of demons and healing the sick was his job. Casting our demons meant that he was restoring people deemed crazy by the status quo. Jesus was restoring them back to their community. Our job is the same, cast out demons and heal through healthcare. We cannot stop until the job is done. In past sermons, we had spoken about casting out demons. To help place this in perspective, when Jesus asked a young man possessed by a demon, the man replied that the demons’s name was Legion. To an audience back then, the Roman Legion was everywhere around them. This had a larger meaning to the Jewish people than just a simple cure. Today, we can see the symbolism. We still have work to do. While we are not risking death by resisting, we do risk friendships, family relationships, or even arrest. We are even called “crazy”. We must finish our work so the world might be delivered.