As an animal lover, with a soft spot for pigs (though also a soft spot for bacon and pork chops, which results in more soft spots…), I have to admit I dislike the next part of our story:
Now 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. Then 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. When the swineherds saw what had happened, they ran off and told it in the city and in the country.
I guess as a Jew, Jesus would have had little use for the value of swine. But why did the demons have to go into anything? Couldn’t he command them into the lake without the pigs? Couldn’t he command them back to hell and bind them? All I do know is that the news spread quickly. (And once again here comes an echo of another iconic bible story – Jesus’ birth, and sheep herders running off and telling the wondrous things they’d seen to everyone they met...)
When the news spread, the townspeople came running to see. They were both amazed and frightened – but not so much at the destruction of the herd. What scared them to the core was the transformation in the man who had been possessed by the legion of demons.
Then people came out to see what had happened, and when they came to Jesus, they found the man from whom the demons had gone sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind. And they were afraid.
It was not the economic loss or property damage that frightened them – it was the damage to their sense of reality, this glimpse into the raw power of God as conducted by Jesus. It was having their convictions about what is possible overturned right before their very eyes that frightened the daylights out of them. It was having their conceptions about this man and his place in their community completely shattered. Hell, he was even wearing clothes!
The next thing we know, they’re asking Jesus to leave, “for they were seized with great fear.” And don’t we often want to separate ourselves from what we don’t understand, what frightens us? That is the root of so much prejudice and hatred, division and conflict.
Have you seen someone transformed by healing? People who know addicts sometimes get to see this kind of contrast – though not the course of a single day. Those who work with wounded veterans and the mentally ill sometimes see such transformation. If we saw it right away, it would scare us too.
When we find ourselves afraid of God’s power, that is an invitation to prayer. We can talk to God about it. We can ask the Spirit to gently lead us into a greater awareness of what God can do and has done. If only those townspeople had taken this miracle as an invitation to expand their ideas of this God they did not know, instead of sending Jesus away, so much more healing and transformation might have taken place. Let’s not make their mistake.
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