The Healing of the Gerasene Demoniac.
They came to the other side of the sea, to the territory of the Gerasenes. When he got out of the boat, at once a man from the tombs who had an unclean spirit met him. The man had been dwelling among the tombs, and no one could restrain him any longer, even with a chain. In fact, he had frequently been bound with shackles and chains, but the chains had been pulled apart by him and the shackles smashed, and no one was strong enough to subdue him. Night and day among the tombs and on the hillsides he was always crying out and bruising himself with stones. Catching sight of Jesus from a distance, he ran up and prostrated himself before him, crying out in a loud voice, “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I adjure you by God, do not torment me!” (He had been saying to him, “Unclean spirit, come out of the man!”) He asked him, “What is your name?” He replied, “Legion is my name. There are many of us.” And he pleaded earnestly with him not to drive them away from that territory. Now a large herd of swine was feeding there on the hillside. And they pleaded with him, “Send us into the swine. Let us enter them.” And he let them, and the unclean spirits came out and entered the swine. The herd of about two thousand rushed down a steep bank into the sea, where they were drowned. The swineherds ran away and reported the incident in the town and throughout the countryside. And people came out to see what had happened. As they approached Jesus, they caught sight of the man who had been possessed by Legion, sitting there clothed and in his right mind. And they were seized with fear.Those who witnessed the
incident explained to them what had happened to the possessed man and to the swine. Then they began to beg him to leave their district. As he was getting into the boat, the man who had been possessed pleaded to remain with him. But he would not permit him but told him instead, “Go home to your family and announce to them all that the Lord in his pity has done for you.”Then the man went off and began to proclaim in the Decapolis what Jesus had done for him; and all were amazed.
I have always found this passage to be unsettling because there are seemingly multiple factors found within it that are not perfectly lined up with the rest of the Gospel.
First, at the conclusion of Mark 4, Jesus left the area of capernam where he had been teaching. The last passage of chapter is when the disciples were terrified by a storm at sea and were accused by Jesus of lacking faith. At the beginning of chapter 5, they landed in on the east side of the Sea of Galilee in what amounted to being in a foreign country. This curious because up to this point Jesus had been preaching to his own people, quite literally, in Galilee. Now, however, he was entering into an area where his message would be completely out of context.
Next is the matter of the demoniac. This guy is the baddest dude in the New Testament and not only is there one demon, there are many and even stranger, they recognized Jesus as being the son of God. How did they know?
When Jesus cast out the demons, they did not immediately return to Hell or wherever evicted demons are sent, but were placed into a herd of pigs that then stampeded into the sea and drowned. To ancient Jews, sending the demons over the cliff inside pigs made perfect sense. Pigs, after all, were unclean. To locals, however, there would be a loss of context. A whole load of ham and bacon went to waste for no fathomable reason.
I could use a lot of fancy words and concepts to break down this passage because this passage like all other gospel stories, makes sense and it holds together theologically but a hundreds of words can shed any more light than a very simple explanation.
Mark was the gospel meant for gentiles. The trip to the east side of the lake served a message that was not meant just for the Jews of Palestine. It was meant for everyone everywhere. It has to have been uncomfortable to leave a largely homogenous society to go to strange places like Samaria or the Decapolis but it was part of the mission of evangelization. I am called to reach out those who don’t look like me, think like me, eat like or belief like me. I get it. Jesus wants us to get to it and, by the way, be happy about it.
Still, I can’t let go of all of the wasted pork. I think I just heard a sigh from my smoke house, the BBQ grill and the Traeger.
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