This is one of
those stories that always aggravated me growing up! It might be a minor point in
the story, but for me the part about pigs rushing over a cliff to their deaths always
reminded me of growing up as a boy down in Meade County. Every time I heard this story, I identified
with certain characters in particular. No, it wasn’t the main character, the
possessed man in the cemetery, but the men who were tending the pigs that plunged
over a cliff to their deaths.
I used to take
care of pigs on one of my father’s farms and I can only imagine what hell would
break lose if I came home one day and told my Dad that the pigs I was caring
for had all just stampeded over a cliff and died because a crazy man had come
out of the cemetery next to our pig lot and was screaming at the top of his
lungs! Instead of believing me, he
probably would have had me committed to Our Lady of Peace….or worse, one of his major tongue-lashings when I got home!
However, let’s not let my issue cloud the main character and the point of the story. First, Mark's Gospel paints a very scary picture here. We know from the chapters before that Jesus and his disciples had set sail “late in the evening” so it was dark on the lake. On the way across the lake, they had experienced a storm and had just landed in an area with many caves in the limestone rocks along the shore. Many of these caves were used to bury the dead. At the best of times, this place would have been an eerie place especially in the dark. They landed at a perilous place, at a perilous hour and then found themselves in a perilous situation - a dangerous man, a “possessed” man, who "could not be restrained even with a chain."
Growing up, the man would have believed
what many Jews at that time believed – that no man would survive if he realized
the number of demons with which he was surrounded. Probably mentally ill, he
had convinced his wandering mind that a mass of those demons had taken up
residence inside him! He was so convinced that Jesus had to make more than one
attempt to heal him. (1) First, Jesus used
his usual method – an authoritative order to the demon to come out. (2) When that didn’t work, Jesus demanded to
know what the demon’s name was. It was believed that if a demon could be named,
that would give the healer a certain power over the demon. (3) When that didn’t
work, Jesus understood that the only way to cure this man was to give him a
dramatic demonstration of deliverance - a convincing sign that his demons were indeed gone.
It doesn’t matter whether we believe in demon possession, the poor man believed in it. This is where the pigs come in! The poor man had been screaming and shrieking so much that he caused a herd of local pigs to stampede over a sea-side cliff and drown in the sea. It was the proof that the poor man needed that his demons had gone out of him and into the pigs.
Later, those tending the pigs came to Jesus and
saw the poor "mad man" that they feared so much, fully clothed and in his right mind. They were so freaked about the whole event that they asked Jesus to
leave their area!
There is a part of
all of us that is haunted by our own “demons” - our negative assumptions, our
irrational fears and our bad memories. Many of us need external signs to be
able to let go of them. There is also a part of us, like the swine herders, that
even when good things happen to others, we cannot celebrate because we do not
want our status quo upset. We would rather things will be left the way they were!
We all need deliverance, whether it be from literal demon possession or an all-powerful delusion. Whatever it is, Jesus is willing to help us let go of whatever is holding us back from a life to the fullest! This must be true because I was thankfully "delivered" from a life of pig farming!
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