Go Home to Your Friends

I have always thought the saddest sentence in the Gospel of Mark is one that gets read as a happy ending.

A man has just been set free. Everybody knows the story: the tombs, the chains he kept breaking, the whole region frightened of him for years. And then it is over, and he is sitting down, dressed, in his right mind, and the crowd is more disturbed by that than they ever were by the screaming.

And then Jesus gets into the boat to leave, and the man asks to come.

Of course he does. Where else would he go? Everyone on that shore has watched him at his worst. There is not one house in that district where he could sit down without somebody remembering the chains. The boat is the only place in the world where he is only what he is now.

And Jesus says no.

I want to sit in that no for a minute before I say anything comforting about it, because I think we rush past it, and the person reading this has been standing in it for about a year.

He was not refused, he was sent

Here is what Jesus actually said, and every word of it matters.

Howbeit Jesus suffered him not, but saith unto him, Go home to thy friends, and tell them how great things the Lord hath done for thee, and hath had compassion on thee. (Mark 5:19, King James Version)

Go home. To thy friends.

Not go and preach. Not go and stand in the market and confront the district. Go home, to the people who knew you, and tell them what happened to you.

And notice what he is not asked to do. He is not asked to explain the theology of it. He is not asked to win an argument with anybody. He is not sent to the people who begged Jesus to leave. He is sent to his own friends with one thing to say, and the one thing is his own story.

You are being sent with what happened to you and nothing more than that, and no one is asking you to argue. Mark 5:19 says tell them how great things the Lord hath done for thee, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes a person's own account enough to carry into a hard room.

Why the boat was the wrong answer for him

I want to be careful here, because there is a version of this that turns into pressure, and pressure is not what I am here to add.

Jesus was not refusing him closeness. He was refusing him the exit.

Because if that man gets in the boat, here is what happens to that district: the only person in it who has a first-hand account of the mercy of God sails away, and the region goes on knowing exactly one thing about Jesus, which is that He cost them a herd of pigs and they asked Him to leave.

The man was not being kept out of the boat. He was being kept in the only place where his account was worth anything.

And there is something in that for the person who has been set apart and is standing on the shore. The reason you are being sent back into that room is not that God is indifferent to how hard the room is. It is that you are the only person in it holding this.

You are the one holding something that room has no other copy of, and you were never being pushed away from Him. The word says go home to thy friends and tell them, and the Spirit of God is the one who makes a sending feel like being trusted rather than being turned out.

What it does not mean

Now let me say plainly what this does not mean, because a message like this has done harm before and I am not willing to add to it.

It does not mean go back into a room where you are in danger. If there is somebody in that house who hurts you, this is not that message, and I am not sending you anywhere. Get help, and get it from a person who can actually see the situation, and do not let anything on this page be used to keep you somewhere you should not be.

It does not mean go back to what you came out of. He is not sent back to the tombs. He is sent to his friends. Those are two different addresses and this whole thing collapses if we blur them. Mark 5:19 says to thy friends, and the Holy Spirit has never once sent anybody back to the tombs.

And it does not mean you have to be received well. Nobody promised him that. He is told what to say. He is not told how it will go.

You are sent, and you were never made responsible for the reception. Mark 5:19 gives the man his errand without giving him a result, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets a person go somewhere without carrying what happens when they get there.