I have always loved this passage from Luke 8:
26Then they arrived at the country of the Gerasenes, which is opposite Galilee. 27As he stepped out on land, a man of the city who had demons met him. For a long time he had worn no clothes, and he did not live in a house but in the tombs. 28When he saw Jesus, he fell down before him and shouted at the top of his voice, “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg you, do not torment me”— 29for Jesus had commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man. (For many times it had seized him; he was kept under guard and bound with chains and shackles, but he would break the bonds and be driven by the demon into the wilds.) 30Jesus then asked him, “What is your name?” He said, “Legion”; for many demons had entered him. 31They begged him not to order them to go back into the abyss. 32Now there on the hillside a large herd of swine was feeding; and the demons begged Jesus to let them enter these. So he gave them permission. 33Then the demons came out of the man and entered the swine, and the herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and was drowned. 34
There is so much going on here! First of all, you have a guy who is so tormented that he is living naked in "the tombs," and then he thinks that Jesus is not there to help him, but to torment him. And then-- and I have thought about this a lot over the years-- he says that his name is "Legion," because so many demons were inside of him.
Ok, here is the twist: the demons, not wanting to go back to the "abyss," ask Jesus to send them into some nearby pigs-- and Jesus does it! Why is Jesus granting this grace to, you know, demons? And then the new hosts of the demons plunge to their deaths in the lake.
The Gerasenes, a mixed population of Jews and Gentiles, were the real losers in all of this as their herd was destroyed. They are one of several bystanders who end up the loser in the Bible (most prominently, I remember the multitudes who followed Moses through the Red Sea but were swallowed up).
I'd like to think that Jesus then somehow made the Gerasenes whole, but it could be that there is an inherent judgment of them in all this, as they had not taken care of the man with the demons.
Whenever I read a story about Jesus, I think about which character I am. Too often, we make ourselves Jesus-- but that just is not who we are, right? So in this story I think we are Gerasenes (or Gaderenes in some other Gospels)-- the people who did not take the man out of the tombs, clothe him, and tend to his needs.
That is the reading that is consistent with the rest of what Jesus taught, where over and over we are told to care for those in need....
# posted by Mark Osler @ 1:00 AM
