A sermon based on Mark 5:1-20

I feel like almost all of us have a thing that we love that we feel a little bit shameful about. Maybe it’s reality television or romance novels or a particular sports team that everyone else hates. Now, when it comes to pop culture, I’m a fan of love what you love! Don’t be ashamed of it! And yet, it’s sometimes hard. I, personally, am obsessed with what I call “Religious Thrillers”. Basically if you pick up a mass market paperback book and the back says something like “an archeologist discovers a secret text with massive religious implications” I am buying that book. And in case you think that’s just one book, it’s actually an entire genre and I have read most of them. I’m also a fan of books and movies featuring exorcists; the more ridiculous the better. It’s not even about horror, per se, I’m generally NOT a fan of horror movies, but there is something about the religious thrill element that I love. Many of the newer exorcism books and movies will add some kind of tagline like “based on a true story.” Now if you know anything about how that tag works, you know that each of the words in that sentence has a WIDE variety of meanings, but it does raise the question: what is the truth when it comes to things like this?  

Our Gospel story today is about a demon possessed man. About an exorcism. About a herd of pigs who end up on the losing end of the whole deal. 

What do we do with stories that seem to go against what we know to be true? What do we do when we encounter things that challenge our view of the world? What do we do with stories that feel so disconnected from the world as we understand it today? And, perhaps the most important question for many of us as we read this story, WHY DID IT HAVE TO BE THE PIGS??

For those of us who have scientific minds, who have a working understanding of psychology or mental illness, who are grounded in the intellect, hearing a story like the one in our Gospel reading today brings up a LOT of things. It can be easy to chalk it up to a less educated mindset, an earlier time where they didn’t understand all of the things that we do now. But what if there is more going on in this story?

The Gospel of Mark is all about discipleship. And not in a believe the right things, go to church, do your devotions kind of discipleship, but a consistent invitation to join the movement of Jesus. A movement which demands a change not only of heart but also of life and action. A movement that was about more than theological and religious belief, it was also a movement with political, economic, and social invitations and implications.  Over and over in the Gospel of Mark we see this invitation being made: will you join? Will you change your life? And this Gospel becomes, in many ways, an instruction manual for those who have said Yes. We’re in. Now that we’re in, what does that look like? What does it mean? 

And so, we come to this story in Mark chapter 5. This is one of those stories where there is A LOT happening that, because of our context, we miss, but that people hearing this story in Jesus’s time would have NOT missed. So we’re going to move through this passage to uncover the things they would have heard. 

In this story Jesus and his disciples come to a place where a man, said to be possessed by evil spirits, comes out of the tombs.

Listeners to this story would have known that tombs were places that were considered unclean. So this is a man who has basically been banished from society. He’s separated. Living apart and unclean. And he’s incredibly powerful. Chains haven’t been able to hold him. No one has been able to control or subdue him. This is important and we’re going to come back to it. 

Jesus asks the man his name and the man says, “Legion. For we are many.” And we think, right. Legion means many. Makes sense. This isn’t some kind of spooky horror movie moment. This isn’t the name of some fallen angel or whatever other trope those scripts trot out. But in Jesus’s time, the word Legion would have been instantly recognizable. And it really only had one meaning in that language. It DIDN’T have the casual connotation of “many” as it does today. Remember, the Jewish people are living in an occupied land. The Roman army is everywhere. And how is the Roman army organized? In legions. Battalions of soldiers are called Legions. So when this man says his name is Legion, anyone hearing this story perks up and goes… “OH! I know that word! We’re talking about Rome.” So we have a man who is said to be possessed who calls himself by the name of the occupying Roman Army.

We’re told that “He had been secured many times with leg irons and chains, but he broke the chains and smashed the leg irons. No one was tough enough to control him.” Now, imagine for a moment that you’re part of the oppressed community. Your nation and land is overrun by an occupying army. It certainly would seem, as people with out power, that no chains could hold it and no power could subdue it. So already we’re getting a powerful allegory in this story. 

Next we’re told: “They [the unclean spirits] pleaded with Jesus not to send them out of that region.” Again, we have this really clear sense that this isn’t about something supernatural: this is an allegory for these people: The Roman army pleads to keep their territory. 

Then we come to the pigs: “A large herd of pigs was feeding on the hillside. “Send us into the pigs!” they begged. “Let us go into the pigs!” Jesus gave them permission, so the unclean spirits left the man and went into the pigs. Then the herd of about two thousand pigs rushed down the cliff into the lake and drowned.” Now I know, this brings up a lot of questions. Why couldn’t Jesus just cast the spirits out? Why did they have to go into the pigs?? But again, there’s a piece we’re missing that Jesus’s listeners wouldn’t have missed. 

Ched Myers is a Bible Scholar who has written an incredible book on the Gospel of Mark. About the portion of this passage he tells us a couple of important things:

1: In the original language of this text, The term used for “herd” is inappropriate for pigs, who do not travel in herds but that term was often was used to refer to a band of military recruits. Another scholar also points out that the phrase “he dismissed them” [In the version we read today ‘Jesus gave them permission’] connotes a military command, and the pigs’ charge into the lake suggests troops rushing into battle.

And 2: The 10th legion, which was stationed near this place,  used the Boar as a symbol on their standard. I can imagine Jesus’s listeners immediately getting the reference and maybe even chuckling at it a bit. 

Okay, so now things are getting really interesting. Now we’re moving quickly from a story about a demon possessed man to a much larger conversation about an oppressed people who are being over run by the military might of another country. 

And Jesus, comes into the midst of all of that, and takes power over the oppressing forces. He commands them, takes leadership over them, and casts them not only out of the man, but out of the world. 

Jesus’s listeners would have immediately recognized what this story was actually about. How dangerous it was, but also how powerful. And it’s also why Jesus is speaking in this coded language, why we have to do some work to understand it. 

Okay, but why imagine the oppression of the military as demonic possession? What does that mean? Myers goes on to quote some other folks and I think it’s a helpful starting place. He says, “Hollenbach has done interesting work on the Gerasene demoniac, drawing upon the studies of Frantz Fanon and others in the social psychology of mental illness in situations of political repression. He notes that demon possession in traditional societies is often a reflection of “class antagonisms rooted in economic exploitation” or “a socially acceptable form of oblique protest against, or escape from, oppression”. He concludes that the Gerasene demoniac typifies the cathartic response of the subjugated:The tension between his hatred for his oppressors and the necessity to repress this hatred in order to avoid dire recrimination drove him  Mad.  He retreated to an inner world where he could symbolically resist Roman domination. Jesus’ disruption of the prevailing accommodation brought the man’s and the neighborhood’s hatred of the Romans out into the open, where the result could be disaster for the community. Although not denying that oppression can generate mental illness, a socio-literary interpretation reads the exorcism more broadly as public symbolic action. The demoniac represents collective anxiety over Roman imperialism.

What Fanon called the “colonization of the mind,” in which the community’s anguish over its subjugation is repressed and then turned in on itself, is perhaps implied by Mark’s report that the man inflicts violence on himself (5:5).” End quote. I know that’s a lot. But I think it’s important for a couple of readings. 

1: Oppression has real consequences for those who are oppressed. Physical consequences but also mental and spiritual ones. And, as in Jesus’s day, oppression still exists today. Whenever those with power wield their power over others in order to harm them, oppression exists. And the tension for oppressed people of how to deal with that oppression while also trying to stay alive and whole is a real struggle. 

2: The healing of the oppressed person’s ill comes about by overturning the oppression. Jesus didn’t tell the man to pray harder or go to church. He didn’t tell the man to just be nice and go along. He didn’t tell the man to deal with it. He cast out the oppressors. 

So it’s no wonder that, when people heard about what had happened they asked Jesus to leave their region. They were afraid. The were choosing their fear and their safety over getting free. An important warning for us. 

Remembering that Jesus’s call in Mark is a call to discipleship, the question for us is clear: Will we, too, cast out oppression where it is found in our midst?

The final part of the story says: “While Jesus was climbing into the boat, the one who had been demon-possessed pleaded with Jesus to let him come along as one of his disciples. But Jesus wouldn’t allow it. “Go home to your own people,” Jesus said, “and tell them what the Lord has done for you and how he has shown you mercy.” The man went away and began to proclaim in the Ten Cities all that Jesus had done for him, and everyone was amazed.”

This man, now freed, now restored to himself, wants to leave with Jesus and become one of his disciples, but instead Jesus tells him to stay where he is. Go to your own people. And the man does. 

Now what do we do with a story like this? How does this still speak to us today? 

If we think about this man’s possession, about the forces that occupied his mind, about the things that worked on him that kept him separated and in chains: Some of us also have those things in our minds. Some of us are still clinging to ideas that we are separate from the people around us. We are clinging to ideas of power and privilege in hopes that it will protect us. Our minds are filled with fears of other people, our hearts are still harboring hatred or distrust or disgust. For us the message is about casting out those things. Casting out the demons that are infecting our spirits. Exorcising our minds. That is hard work. It often means going against the things we were taught, unlearning falsehoods, being willing to stand up to untruths, and being willing to continue to be open to learning and growing and changing. But that is our work to do. 

For others of us, we have worked hard to get free. We have done at least the initial work (knowing the work is never actually fully done). And our temptation might be to go to other places. To talk to who it’s easiest to talk to. To hunker down. But Jesus’s message is clear: Stay with your people. Tell them how the Lord has freed you. (By the way, Lord? Also a political term in Jesus’s day.) For some of us this means having hard conversations in our families, with our neighbors, even right here in this congregation. It means being willing to do the hard and messy work of justice, right here, right in our community. It means standing up to oppression and to forces that would try to injure others. It will require great courage. Maybe more courage than we’ve ever had to have before. 

The call of Jesus, the call to discipleship, is a disruptive call. It will upend our lives of comfort and privilege. It asks us to stand, continually, in solidarity with the most marginalized. But it promises that that is how we get free. We get free by being in community, by looking out for one another, by making sure everyone has what they need. We get free by being rooted in love and justice. We get free together, or none of us are free. 

Jesus’s call today is the same as it was over 2000 years ago. A radical invitation into community. And not the shallow community where we smile at each other while some have too much and others have not enough, where we keep silent about injustice and oppression, where we excuse violence (including violent language that dehumanizes and demeans), but instead a community where we show up, fully, and where we work for justice. 

Each of us are being asked to examine our hearts and minds and lives and to exorcise the places that are keeping us separate, that are keeping us colluding with Empire, that are keeping us from following Jesus. 

And once we are on our journey of freedom, we are called to share that message of freedom with the people closest to us. The ones with whom it might be hardest to have those conversations. That is our work to do. 

But if we do it: if we answer this call, we can get free. We can create real communities of justice and care. We can live in a community and a city and a world where everyone has enough. Where we all have dignity. We can be on the forefront of bringing Jesus’s mission into lived reality. And what a beautiful world that could be. So Jesus’s call remains: Will you follow?