Reading Luke Together #26 – Our Name is Legion
Up a steep hill on the Golan Heights above the Sea of Galilee are the stone ruins of a Byzantine church and monastery, a bit overgrown with weeds as not many tourists find their way there. As it’s not touristy, you get a little bit of a feel you’re stepping back in time. The idea of standing in a not-well-tended cemetery seems plausible.
The old stone structures marked the spot where Jesus dashed off one of his most amazing and significant healings. Luke 8:26-39 narrates a story to make you shudder, and then maybe chuckle by the end. Jesus arrives by boat, steps onto the shore, and straightaway encounters a terrifying, terrified man, wearing what was left of long-tattered clothing, the victim of seizures, so severe that the citizens of Gadara had chained him in the cemetery – where he lived, not in a house! Was he chained because he howled all night long? Or did he howl all night long because he was chained?
And while quite a few of those Jesus healed were regarded as possessed of an unclean spirit, this guy was so bad he had to have been bedevilled by a host. Jesus speaks not to the man but to the demonic hosts, his enemies within. Pádraig Ó Tuama wisely points out that “When we are toward the end of ourselves, we begin to believe that we are only what we struggle with.” So Jesus speaks to those occupiers and asks for his/their name. “Legion.” Ah, the Romans had their legions of armed soldiers who oppressed all the people. Is this one man the result of their years of brutality? Is he symbolic of all the people whose land and freedoms were possessed by this alien power?
Knowing they were done for, the demons beg Jesus to let them enter a herd of swine nearby – a sure clue that Gadara was a Gentile town! Jesus lets them go with the pigs, who hurtle down the steep hill into the lake and drown – sort of a comic, absurd ending. The wildness, the chaos of that scene must have revealed what people suspected but only now understood for sure: much intense chaos and destruction had been dwelling inside this man. Jesus, again, liberating a terribly damaged person, freeing him for hopefully a renewed life.
Luke then shares with us the rest of the story. Citizens gathered around. Were they more shocked by the pig rampage? Or that the man “was clothed and in his right mind”? Their response to such an amazing healing of one of their own? “All the people asked Jesus to depart from them” (verse 37). And why?
The implied reason is that the local pig industry had been devastated. Religion, even miraculous healing: that’s one thing. But it’s the economy, stupid. You can’t have Jesus curing people but in the process putting a big dent in profits! They seem very American, don’t they?
This won’t be the last time profits trump in over the well-being of damaged people. In Acts 16, Jesus cures and sets free a slave woman who’d been quite profitable to her owners, touching off a riot in Philippi, Paul and Silas winding up in jail. Luke is keenly interested in the economic impact of Jesus – who evidently didn’t come to pad the bottom line, but to rescue those crushed by the spirits of such a world, no matter the cost.
And Jesus will do more work in cemeteries, raising Lazarus from his tomb, and finally rising from his own tomb. Touchingly, Jesus tells this man, returned to his right mind, to go home. I wonder how hard that was for him. Tuama suggests that “Jesus was asking the man to live with courage, to treat those who had treated him as an animal with a dignity of humanity. It must have taken generosity, imagination, and bravery.”