"As he was getting into the boat, the man who had been possessed begged that he might be with him. But Jesus did not permit him."
These two verses stopped me this week, after years of reading right past them.
"Follow me" is the whole invitation of the Gospels. He says it to fishermen at their nets and a tax man at his booth. And to anybody standing still long enough to hear it.
So this one is strange. Here is a man who asks to follow, and Jesus tells him no.
The man nobody could hold
You have to remember who this man was an hour earlier.
He lived out in the tombs. The town had tried to chain him down, hand and foot, and every time he tore the chains apart. Day and night he was out among the graves and the hills, screaming, cutting himself on the rocks. Nobody could help him. Nobody could even get close.
Then Jesus steps off a boat, and it is over. The screaming stops. By the time the townspeople come out to look, the man is sitting there, dressed and in his right mind for the first time in years.
The one thing that made sense
So watch what he does when Jesus turns to go.
He begs to come along. As the boat pushes off, he asks to be in it with Jesus, to go wherever this man who gave him his mind back is headed. It’s the most reasonable request in the whole story. After a rescue like that, who wouldn't?
Nobody on that shore would’ve blinked if Jesus had reached down and pulled him aboard.
Why the “no” answer?
But Jesus will not let him in the boat.
Everywhere else, the word is come. Come and see. Come, follow me. Here, to the one man desperate to come, the word is go home. And home is the hard word. Home is back to the people who saw the chains and watched him bleed.
The boat would’ve carried him away from all of it. Going home walks him straight back in.
Sent back as the proof
And Jesus tells him why. "Go home to your friends, and tell them how much the Lord has done for you."
His new life only means something to the people who knew the old one. A stranger in a far-off town just sees a calm man on the road. His own town sees a dead man up walking around. The healing needs the ones who remember the tombs.
So he goes. And the whole region of ten cities hears what happened to him. The man who never got in the boat ends up carrying Jesus farther than the boat ever went, and he never left home to do it.
What if the place you keep asking Jesus to take you away from is the exact place he is sending you?