True Wholeness

The man is living among tombs, outside the city, outside community, and outside himself. He cannot be contained. Chains and shackles have not worked. He may be the most fragmentedperson in the gospels, broken in every direction at once. Jesus crosses the water specifically to reach him. The whole trip was for this one person. Jesus restores more than just the man’s spiritual condition. 

The text offers some of what wholeness looks like: sitting, clothed, in his right mind. Body. Mind. Spirit. Even the community is restored when Jesus sends him back. 

Religion has often tended only to the spiritual dimension while ignoring or policing everything else. It has told people that if they just believed correctly, the rest would sort itself out. The way of Jesus refuses this fragmentation. Jesus attends to the whole person in the most fragmented place he could find. 

True Wholeness is the way of Jesus attending to all of who we are. Immanuel is committed to helping become whole.