This Sunday, the Gospel reading tells the story of the healing of a man suffering from insanity. Unable to lead a normal life, he lives naked with his many delusions amongst the graves in the cemetery. Until he meets Jesus who heals him by sending away the demons that had plagued him. The people of the town find him once again sane, his humanity restored, ‘sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind’. He had become a new man!
I think the apostle Paul would see this story as a great personal testimony of what it means to be a Christian. In a way, he had gone through a similar thing. He was once consumed with keeping the Jewish law and doing the right thing. He even persecuted those who gave up keeping the law to become Christians. Then he met Jesus on the Damascus Road and his life was changed. He had become a new man.
Paul realised that he been living under the illusion that he could please God by keeping the law and that his obedience could somehow make him right with God. But once he met Jesus, he saw this was complete hubris. The truth was that he could never keep the law perfectly nor ever be good enough to gain God’s approval. Faith in what Jesus had done for him was the only thing that could make him right with God.
Paul spent the rest of his life travelling around the Roman world, telling people about the grace of God. Many found his message liberating and were baptized, becoming ‘new creatures in Christ’. They were no longer people who followed one religion or another, people from one racial group or another, but people who belonged to Jesus. They sat together at his feet to learn, united by their faith in him. As we read in Galations today, ‘As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus”.
Galatians is pretty clear that a Christian is someone who can testify to having become ‘a new person’ through faith in Jesus. It may have been through baptism and confirmation, it may have been through a dramatic conversion experience, but all who are Christians have become new creatures. They have died to themselves, admitted that they can’t run their own lives and have risen with Christ by asking for his forgiveness and help day by day.
Perhaps you are not a Christian and like Paul, feel imprisoned by having to do the right thing all the time in order to please God and the people around you. Or maybe you identify with the man in the cemetery and you can’t seem to lead a normal life because you are plagued by illusions and failures. Don’t hesitate to ask Jesus to make you a new creature.
As we worship today, I pray that whoever we are, wherever we come from, we will all sit together at the feet of Jesus to learn, clothed by him through his grace with his peace filling our minds.
Rev’d Beth Spence