They came to the other side of the sea, to the country of the Gerasenes. 2And when he had stepped out of the boat, immediately a man out of the tombs with an unclean spirit met him. 3He lived among the tombs; and no one could restrain him any more, even with a chain; 4for he had often been restrained with shackles and chains, but the chains he wrenched apart, and the shackles he broke in pieces; and no one had the strength to subdue him. 5Night and day among the tombs and on the mountains he was always howling and bruising himself with stones. 6When he saw Jesus from a distance, he ran and bowed down before him; 7and he shouted at the top of his voice, “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I adjure you by God, do not torment me.” 8For he had said to him, “Come out of the man, you unclean spirit!” 9Then Jesus asked him, “What is your name?” He replied, “My name is Legion; for we are many.” 10He begged him earnestly not to send them out of the country. 11Now there on the hillside a great herd of swine was feeding; 12and the unclean spirits begged him, “Send us into the swine; let us enter them.” 13So he gave them permission. And the unclean spirits came out and entered the swine; and the herd, numbering about two thousand, rushed down the steep bank into the sea, and were drowned in the sea.
This story has so much going on! Demons, healing, scary tombs and spirits. And pigs, poor things. Jesus and his guys have just gotten off the boat, which they seem to do a lot. Jesus has stilled the storm, reminiscent of the Psalms where people praise God for stilling the storm for them. He rebukes it (or bukes it, as the old Gospel songs say), and the same word is used for the way he responds to the demons inside this man. Rebuke. Sure, it's easy to dismiss as propaganda. This seems to be about establishing Jesus as superhero, master of storms, demons and all manner of frights.
But it's also clearly a story about fear. William Barclay tells us how frightening this story would have been in ancient times. It has to happen at night, given the events before it, and going out at night is always a dangerous idea. They land where there are limestone burial caves, a place that would have been considered unclean for its association with the dead. They are also where demons were most likely to be. The ancient Jewish world believed that there were thousands of 'hurtful spirits' all around us, ready to strike. The air here would have hummed, buzzed, and swam with them. Then out comes this naked guy, right up to the boat! He seems to know Jesus. He comes to meet him - and then tells him to leave him alone. His mind is gone. Sometimes he speaks of himself in the plural, sometimes in the singular. He is full of cuts and gashes. A broken shackle trails from each wrist. Containing him has not worked. Nothing separates him from us.
If I were one of the disciples on that boat, I would have been lobbying for a different landing, or perhaps even thinking about a graceful exit. Jesus makes several attempts to heal this man, assuming that it is healing that he needs. Simply telling the demon to come out doesn't work. Getting the name of a supernatural being is supposed to give you an advantage, and this doesn't work, either. What if nothing works?
He tells Jesus his name - sort of - Legion, for there are so many of us. "Legion" is actually the term used for a Roman military unit, 6,000 men. Now the "ghost story" has some real world dangers in it. If Mark's audience wasn't scared of demons, they were certainly afraid of the Romans that swept through their land, raping and murdering. Some have suggested that the demon-possessed man named his affliction after them because of the horrors he had witnessed at their hands. Today he may have said 'Al-Qaeda'. The story works well on a purely political level. Jesus was a prophet, as well as a healer, and the early Christians as well as the Jews suffered mightily under the Romans. The image of pigs hurtling into the water would echo Pharoah's army drowning in the Red Sea; it would have carried a nice sense of "once and for all".
But suppose the man simply meant to convey the sheer force of these demons, so many he can't count them? I think of mental institutions and prisons where violent souls are locked away from us. They were horrific places until very recently; some still are. I think about what police and those working in prisons have said, that they 'deal with them' in our names, they allow the rest of us to have our good impression of humanity intact.
I don't know how much, if anything, in this story really happened. I believe that Jesus showed remarkable courage and healed all sorts of losers. Wasn't afraid to be around them, to suffer with them. I'm not stupid, though. I think people need protection. I don't think "a little love" will transform violent criminals. I'm just trying to stay in the boat, to still believe that it's right to try to heal - everyone - no exceptions, even and especially in the midst of fear.
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