Jesus has just calmed one storm, and he steps off the boat into another kind entirely. The man who meets him on the shore is described in terms meant to horrify. 27"For a long time he had worn no clothes, and he had not lived in a house but among the tombs." Tombs were a place of ritual defilement for any Jew and a place of terror for anyone. He had been bound with chains and had broken every restraint. Every marker of an ordinary human life had been stripped from him, clothing, shelter, community, and even his name.
That last loss is the most striking. Jesus asks plainly, 30"What is your name?" and the answer is no name at all. 30"Legion," for many demons had entered him. A Roman legion numbered thousands of soldiers, and the word shows how completely the man had been occupied from the inside by a force that had no interest in who he was underneath. He had lost his own identity to something that now answered for him with a number.
The demons recognize Jesus at once and correctly, 28"Jesus, Son of the Most High God." This time there is no silencing, only negotiation. They beg to be spared the 31"abyss," and ask instead to enter a herd of pigs on the hillside. Jesus gives permission, and the outcome is total. 33"the herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and drowned." The lake that had nearly drowned Jesus' disciples now swallows the forces that had been drowning this man for years.
What happens next says as much about human nature as the exorcism said about demonic power. The townspeople come out and find the man 35"sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind." Every marker taken from him is restored in one sentence, clothing, sanity, and a posture of quiet discipleship in place of wild torment. It should have been a moment of celebration for a community that had lived in fear of him. Instead, 35"they were afraid," and 37"all the people of the surrounding country of the Gerasenes asked him to depart from them." A healed man sitting calmly at Jesus' feet frightened them more than a screaming man among the tombs ever had. Whatever this power was that could command demons and empty a herd with a word, they wanted no more of it, whatever it cost one restored life.
The healed man wants the opposite. He 38"begged that he might be with him," the longing every disciple who has left everything to follow Jesus has felt. But Jesus refuses this particular request, and the refusal is a commission. 39"Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you." This man, unlike the fishermen at the lake, is sent back to the community that had just asked Jesus to leave, to be the living testimony of what Jesus had done among the people too afraid to want him near.
And he does it. He went away 39"proclaiming throughout the whole city how much Jesus had done for him." He was the first witness in that region, and he was not one of the Twelve. It was a man who, only hours before, had no name of his own to give.
Consider where you have been sent. It is likely the same home, the same neighbors, the same workplace where people know your history best. Declare what he has done for you.
Prayer
Father, thank you for a power strong enough to restore clothing, sanity, a name, and a life. Forgive us the fear that greets your work even when it is plainly good, the instinct to ask you to depart in place of reckoning with what your presence might cost. Wherever you have restored us, send us as you sent this man, back to the people who know us best, to declare how much you have done. In Jesus' name, amen.