The gospel today follows a common pattern, Jesus heals the demoniacs, they go and tell, the crowd comes out to see him. Then they do something that seems to make no sense
when they saw him they begged him to leave their district.
Matthew give no explanation we are simply left hanging with the question why would they want him to leave? Why not bring him more sick people to heal?
There is no way to know the answer. We can only speculate. But several possibilities are worth reflection.
One is of course fear. They don't understand what they have just seen and so they fear it. How often is that our response to things and people we don't understand?
One day I was in the airport and there was a man with a turban. I saw people looking and the creating distance between themselves and him as he walked down the concourse. Two thoughts popped into my head. First, these people act like every Moslem in the world is a terrorist. Second, he's not a Moslem. He's a Sikh. But that didn't keep their ignorance from making them afraid.
A second possibility is that once they saw him, he didn't look like anything special. Jesus looked like and ordinary man of his time and place. And so the dismissed him.
Regardless of the reason, the sad truth is that the people missed out on a chance for that personal encounter with God because it somehow did not fit into their preconceived notion.
Today let us keep our eyes, hearts and minds open. We never know how God will manifest his presence in our life. And whatever we do, we should never dismiss him.
