“CRAZY WITNESS”
Landfall
After the storm, the boat pulls into the eastern shore of the lake. There is a stretch of about three miles of bluffs which rise up not far from the shore. Along these bluffs, in the cliff face, caves have been carved out over the centuries. This is Gentile territory, and in these caves is where they send their demon-possessed people to live.
The Disciples are all water-logged after the big storm. It’s morning and the lake is dead calm. They are grateful to be back on dry land for a bit—if only to catch their bearings—but of all the places to stop, none would have wanted this area, which amounted to an ancient asylum for the criminally insane. Plus, there were pigs there—they could probably smell them from offshore.
Mark 5: 1-20 Esv
1 They came to the other side of the sea, to the country of the Gerasenes. 2 And when Jesus had stepped out of the boat, immediately there met him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit. 3 He lived among the tombs. And no one could bind him anymore, not even with a chain, 4 for he had often been bound with shackles and chains, but he wrenched the chains apart, and he broke the shackles in pieces. No one had the strength to subdue him. 5 Night and day among the tombs and on the mountains he was always crying out and cutting himself with stones. 6 And when he saw Jesus from afar, he ran and fell down before him. 7 And crying out with a loud voice, he said, "What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I adjure you by God, do not torment me." 8 For he was saying to him, "Come out of the man, you unclean spirit!" 9 And Jesus asked him, "What is your name?" He replied, "My name is Legion, for we are many." 10 And he begged him earnestly not to send them out of the country. 11 Now a great herd of pigs was feeding there on the hillside, 12 and they begged him, saying, "Send us to the pigs; let us enter them." 13 So he gave them permission. And the unclean spirits came out, and entered the pigs, and the herd, numbering about two thousand, rushed down the steep bank into the sea and were drowned in the sea. 14 The herdsmen fled and told it in the city and in the country. And people came to see what it was that had happened. 15 And they came to Jesus and saw the demon-possessed man, the one who had had the legion, sitting there, clothed and in his right mind, and they were afraid. 16 And those who had seen it described to them what had happened to the demon-possessed man and to the pigs. 17 And they began to beg Jesus to depart from their region. 18 As he was getting into the boat, the man who had been possessed with demons begged him that he might be with him. 19 And he did not permit him but said to him, "Go home to your friends and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you." 20 And he went away and began to proclaim in the Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him, and everyone marveled.".†
From Obscurity to Sussita
I’m a huge fan of Mark and this is one of my favorite episodes. It’s full of the things that make Mark unique. There’s irony galore, and the Disciples would have been caught in that deep kind of awkward that present-day comedies love to celebrate.
For centuries, scholars have debated where this location might be—Gergesa, Gadara, Gerasene, and other places. The last time I preached from the text, the exact location was a big question mark, but God’s providence has some lovely ways of surprising us in this life.
When I went to Israel in 2006, I looked for Gerasene—I really wanted to find it—but according to my tour guides, it was no luck. I liked to say that the only way to see the Holy Land is with a Bible scholar and and archaeologist.
This year, when our pilgrimage went over, I expressed my dismay to our tour organizer—how fond I was of the story and how frustrating it felt to have no clue as to the exact location. Wouldn’t you know—she spent two years on the recently-discovered site of the very location!
Our tour guide was among the first people on the dig, and she was only too happy to point out the exact location where an ancient Roman city was recently uncovered. The town, called Hippo or Sussita, is likely the very town of our story. She worked on the graveyard excavations, where our demon-possessed man would have been living. She pointed out the slope of the hill where pigs would have been run into the lake and drowned. I was amazed.
I noticed that the cliffs she indicated ran down into dry land and not the lake. She explained that lake level changes, but more particularly, it can change a lot after a big rainstorm. And what does our text show us? A big storm right before the pigs run.
MAN AND YET NOT A MAN
The first significant detail is the attitude of this crazy, demon-possessed man. We should look at the words of the text with care. Look at the words used in our translation: “crying out,” “cutting himself,” and “shouting with a loud voice.” It’s easy to picture a monster-man who is violent and wants to be feared—and perhaps he was—but there is another possibility. The “crying out” doesn’t suggest aggression so much as torment—pain and perhaps great grief. The literal rendering of the word for “cutting” or “bruising” himself (with stones), is “mourning”!
Rather than the local strong man and tough guy, we may do better to see him as tormented soul—one with extreme grief and mourning that can neither be quenched nor calmed.
The text says he sees Jesus from a long way off, and apparently made a bee-line down the bluffs for the shore.
Just as Jesus and the Disciples are getting out of the boat, he comes running at them (some of the Disciples probably hopped back in to the boat about then). But nothing that comes from the man’s mouth is crazy; in fact, it is all perfectly sane and perfectly respectful! The demon, working the man like a puppet, bows down before Jesus (by the way, he is the first to bow before Jesus as if in worship[which is the literal rendering of the word]).
Jesus is already calling the unclean spirit out of the man. Jesus doesn’t even talk to the man; he talks only to the demon within the man. Jesus treats the man as someone to be rescued and redeemed, the demon as a spiritual nuisance to be removed like soul-splinter.
When the spirit within the man talks, it is not with inarticulate grunts and growls, but clear, articulate sentences:
"What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I adjure you by God, do not torment me."
Who is Jesus? The Son of the Most High God. This is a proclamation that none of Jesus’ own people have yet advanced. Who speaks the truth about who Jesus is? Not the righteous, not the holy, but the demons. They know who he is and they respect him! “I adjure you,” is legal language, and it means something like, “I legally bind you” to not torment me.
The demon is frightened and appeals to its own sense of justice to avoid punishment.
Jesus asks the demon its name. He says
“My name is Legion, for we are many.”
Roman legions of that time were about 3000 men. The nearby town was one of the ten towns that make up the Decapolis—the town of Hippo. Soldiers were known to be superstitious and pagan. They travelled with priests who offered sacrifices before and after every battle.
Pathos with a capital P
So the Disciples pile back in the boat. Some were no doubt relieved to be leaving this Gentile Hell—a place of Gentiles, demons, graves and now dead pigs floating in the water—and sailing on to better beaches. They climb back into their familiar seats and Jesus steps up into the boat with them, only there is something everyone has forgotten. As the townsfolk go back to their town together, and Jesus and the Disciples head out to sea, there is a lonesome figure standing in the middle with no place to go. The healed man. He wouldn’t be going back to the tombs and he wouldn’t belong with the townsfolk, so where is he to go? He does what any of us would do: he follows Jesus. The text says he
begged him that he might be with him.
Wouldn’t you and I? Please, please Jesus, let me come with you. I just want to be where you are. Can you see him there beside the boat, an imploring look on his face? Out of a world of reluctant followers, here is one who knows who Jesus is, knows his power, and loves him as Lord. In fact, this is the first. You might say that this man is the first Gentile Christian—maybe the first Christian altogether. Years before any of the Disciples would be made empowered Apostles, this man was commissioned—ordained by Jesus himself—to be a preacher of the good news. This ex-possessed man is the first voice in the Gentile world to proclaim the name of the Lord Jesus among the roman cities.
He went home and saw his family, all who must have been amazed at the change in him. He visited old friends from younger years who had broken off with him one he went crazy under possession. Now in his right mind, everyone wanted to know what happened, what made the difference, and by what power he was made whole again. And this man, whose name we do not even know, would have said, “I want to tell you about the greatest man I ever met. He is more than a man; he is the son of the Most High God. I was a wreck, living in the tombs, yelling at all hours of the night, broken, moaning, wailing, hurting myself over and over; and with a word from his lips I was restored. I sat with him and talked with him—he is really the most wonderful person!—and without him I’d still be living in the tombs. I had hit bottom. My soul barely had any human being left. I was more animal—or devil—than man. And this Jesus didn’t even care. He loved me. Me! He saw my true self hidden down under all that pain and corruption. And though the world had turned against me, he was for me. He loved me when I was most unloveable. He let me know that God’s love can reach anyone. What he did for me he can do for you. Remember! Remember Jesus—remember his name because he is my light and my salvation.
LOVE STORY FOR UNLOVABLES
This is essentially a love story—a love story of God’s love for what in this world appears unlovable.
G.K. Chesterton, the great British thinker, loved fairy tales. He especially loved Beauty and The Beast because it teaches that the "unlovely must be deeply loved before they become lovable." He said that, ‘the noble lesson behind the fable of the Beauty and the Beast is that one must be loved in order to become lovable... Someone treated like an animal will become an animal, someone treated with worth, dignity and beauty as a human being will become a human being.
We see this love in our story today. Jesus is determined to love the unlovable. That is exactly the kind of love that the gospel not only demonstrates but also calls each one of us to live out.
Loving the unlovable—loving the beast—is what Christian love is all about; and let’s be honest: there’s a little bit of a beast in everyone of us.
There was a young couple who went to see their pastor to try and get him to approve their divorce, because, as they put it, “there’s no feeling left.” The pastor told the husband to love his wife as Christ loved the church. The husband said, “I can’t do that.” The pastor asked him to love her as he would love himself. Again, the said that ‘I can’t do that’. So the pastor said, “The Bible says to love your enemies. Try starting there.”
It’s easy to love those who love us, but what about those we find it difficult to love? What about those who don’t like us? How do we still love and respect them as God’s people? We all know people who are difficult and the last thing we want to do or feel like doing is being a friend to obnoxious people. After all you have good reason to despise them. They have hurt you. They have betrayed you. They have exploited you. They have spread malicious gossip about you, they have ignored you, they have turned their back on you, they’ve excluded you from their social group – or for whatever reason – you just don’t like them.
St Francis and the Leper
An old story of Saint Francis has him riding in a horse cart, which suddenly pulls back by a violent jerk at the reins. The young Francis looked up and recoiled in horror. A leper stood in the middle of the road a short distance away, unmoving and looking at him. He was no different from the others: the usual wan specter with stained face, shaved head, dressed in gray sackcloth. He did not speak and showed no sign of moving or of getting out of the way. He looked at the horseman fixedly, strangely, with an acute and penetrating gaze.
An instant that seemed eternity passed. Slowly Francis dismounted, went to the man, and took his hand. It was a poor emaciated hand, bloodstained, twisted, inert, and cold like that of a corpse. He put a mite of charity in it, pressed it, carried it to his lips. And suddenly, as he kissed the lacerated flesh of the creature who was the most abject, the most hated, the most scorned, of all human beings, he was flooded with a wave of emotion, one that shut out everything around him, one that he would remember even on his death bed.
Beautiful MindS & hearts
In one scene of A Beautiful Mind, one of John Nash's colleagues is talking to his wife Alicia:
"So, Alicia, how are you holding up?"
Alicia responds feebly, "Well, the delusions have passed. They say with medications—"
The colleague clarifies, "No, I mean you."
Alicia pauses and explains, "I think often what I feel is obligation, or guilt, over wanting to leave, rage against John, against God. But then I look at him, and I force myself to see the man that I married, and he becomes that man. He's transformed into someone that I love, and I'm transformed into someone that loves him. It's not all the time, but it's enough."
We begin with loving. we love first.
In his book Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis wrote,
"Do not waste your time bothering whether you 'love' your neighbor—act as if you did. As soon as we do this, we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him. If you injure someone you dislike, you will find yourself disliking him more. If you do him a good turn, you will find yourself disliking him less.
Norma Jean Mortenson
Years ago Father John Powell told the story of Norma Jean Mortenson: "Norma Jean Mortenson. Remember that name? Norma Jean's mother, Mrs. Gladys Baker, was periodically committed to a mental institution and Norma Jean spent much of her childhood in foster homes. In one of those foster homes, when she was eight years old, one of the boarders raped her and gave her a nickel. He said, 'Here, Honey. Take this and don't ever tell anyone what I did to you.' When little Norma Jean went to her foster mother to tell her what had happened she was beaten badly. She was told, 'Our boarder pays good rent. Don't you ever say anything bad about him!' Norma Jean at the age of eight had learned what it was to be used and given a nickel and beaten for trying to express the hurt that was in her.
"Norma Jean turned into a very pretty young girl and people began to notice. Boys whistled at her and she began to enjoy that, but she always wished they would notice she was a person too--not just a body--or a pretty face--but a person.
"Then Norma Jean went to Hollywood and took a new name-- Marilyn Monroe and the publicity people told her, 'We are going to create a modern sex symbol out of you.' And this was her reaction, 'A symbol? Aren't symbols things people hit together?' They said, 'Honey, it doesn't matter, because we are going to make you the most smoldering sex symbol that ever hit the celluloid.'
"She was an overnight smash success, but she kept asking, 'Did you also notice I am a person? Would you please notice?' Then she was cast in the dumb blonde roles.
"Everyone hated Marilyn Monroe. Everyone did.
"She would keep her crews waiting two hours on the set. She was regarded as a selfish prima donna. What they didn't know was that she was in her dressing room vomiting because she was so terrified.
"She kept saying, 'Will someone please notice I am a person. Please.' They didn't notice. They wouldn't take her seriously.
"She went through three marriages--always pleading, 'Take me seriously as a person.' Everyone kept saying, 'But you are a sex symbol. You can't be other than that.'
"Marilyn kept saying 'I want to be a person. I want to be a serious actress.'
"And so on that Saturday night, at the age of 35 when all beautiful women are supposed to be on the arm of a handsome escort, Marilyn Monroe took her own life. She killed herself.
"When her maid found her body the next morning, she noticed the telephone was off the hook. It was dangling there beside her.
Later investigation revealed that in the last moments of her life she had called a Hollywood actor and told him she had taken enough sleeping pills to kill herself.
"He answered with the famous line of Rhett Butler, which I now edit for church, 'Frankly, my dear, I don't care!' That was the last word she heard. She dropped the phone--left it dangling.
"Claire Booth Luce in a very sensitive article asked, 'What really killed Marilyn Monroe, love goddess who never found any love?' She said she thought the dangling telephone was the symbol of Marilyn Monroe's whole life. She died because she never got through to anyone who understood."
Maybe you’ve felt like a Norma Jean—everything great on the outside, but inside all emptiness and desperation to connect in a real way. The role of the Church today is to do as Jesus would have done. As Jesus called out the unclean spirit from the frightening man, so he would call out to the real person inside of Marilyn Monroe, as to you and me, in order that we might be rescued, redeemed, whole.
LOVE FOR THE WORST OF US
The world is filled with people who may or may not like you. They may find reasons for singling you out or separating you out from fellowship. They may judge you unworthy, or problematic, or just difficult; and then consign you to a world of emotional isolation.
Jesus, on the other hand, loves you no matter what things get ahold of you. He’s not coming to blame you for your afflictions. He didn’t blame the man for being possessed. His only interest is to heal and restore people from whatever this world and its dark mysteries may put upon us.
Jesus wants the inner man or woman restored, rescued, and redeemed from every affliction of the soul.
As his Church, we can start by loving first, loving well, and pursuing that inner person—that image of God—in all who are disconnected, unloved, or howling among the tombs.
Epilogue
Years later, a disciple traveling east comes to a Roman town. He is there to talk about Jesus. He tells them that Jesus is Lord, the Son of God, and the people say, “Oh yeah, we’ve heard all about Jesus! Please stay and tell us much, much more, because we all want to know all there is to know about Jesus. We want to know him too. Please, tell us all everything, we’re with you all the way.” †