Pigs

A sermon for Sunday, September 6, 2020, based on Matthew 8:28-34.

Would you pray with me?

God whose love extends to places we don’t yet know, thank you for bringing us together in this time and place. By your Spirit, make your presence known here today. And may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable to you, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.

You know, sometimes we don’t realize how ridiculous the stories we tell sound to people who haven’t heard them before. Our stories are our stories and most of the time, we’ve told them over and over again, so they don’t phase us anymore. Like, take for example the time that I stabbed a pitchfork right through my toe. If you grimaced, that’s the normal reaction. But I just go about my day being like, “Oh, yeah, when I was in seventh grade, I accidentally stabbed a pitchfork in my toe while we were spreading mulch as a church fundraiser. I didn’t even notice that I’d done it until I went to go walk to the car and noticed that I couldn’t move my left foot. I’ve got a cute little scar, though!”

Sometimes, we don’t recognize how bonkers our stories sound.

And I think that’s the case with our passage from Matthew this morning. Maybe you’re like me and most of your “read the bible in a year” challenges end in Matthew, so you’ve read this passage before and you just scroll on past, like, “Yeah, yeah, demoniacs, pigs, sea, I got this. NEXT!” Or maybe you’ve seen the same passages in Mark and Luke and you’re just a little numb to the details. Or maybe you know that the Resurrection is how this whole story ends and you think, “Sure, it’s cool that Jesus cast out some demons, but have you heard about how he DEFEATED DEATH??” Whatever it is, I think most of us gloss over our story today.

Which is a shame, because our story this morning has a fair amount of shock value, when we learn to read it right. So let me give you some background. As we've learned before, Matthew likes to arrange stories or teachings by theme, and this story is no exception. After Jesus finishes the Sermon on the Mount, he comes down the mountain and immediately performs several miracles and healings: cleansing a man with leprosy, healing the centurion's servant, healing many at Peter’s mother-in-law’s house, and calming the storm as he and his disciples cross the Sea of Galilee.

It’s important to notice that he crosses the Sea of Galilee. Before, when he was preaching and healing in Galilee, he was traveling through towns west of the Sea of Galilee, places like Capernaum. According to tradition, he preached the Sermon on the Mount somewhere northwest of the Sea of Galilee, though we’ll likely never know for sure. But as we read in scripture, he crosses the Sea of Galilee and ends up somewhere southeast of the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the Decapolis, or the Ten Cities. And here, he runs into a herd of pigs.

There are two important clues here, two things that tell us something about the people who live east of the Sea of Galilee.

The first in the name Decapolis. It’s Greek. And the second is in the fact that there are pigs. As some of you may know, pork isn’t kosher. In fact, pigs are unclean under Jewish law, so this tells us that the people living here aren’t Jewish. Jesus has left the neighborhood.

Now, we usually gloss over the fact that Jesus isn’t surrounded by his fellow Jewish people, because we think that everybody loves Jesus and so it shouldn’t matter who he’s hanging out with. But it mattered to the people to the people in the story. Jesus, who isn’t from around here, came into town, and the first thing he does is drive a large herd of swine into the sea. Of course they’re going to want this outsider to leave. We miss this fact when we read through this story without context. Jesus, early in his ministry, coming off of a powerful sermon and several successful healings, decides to take his message to a new region, but he gets in over his head and almost right away heads back to Galilee. We think of this exorcism as a miracle, as a good thing, but it frightens the people in the Decapolis.

But more than that context that we gloss over, we somehow just accept that Jesus DROVE THOUSANDS OF PIGS INTO THE SEA. This is the bonkers part of the story, the story that should cause us to pause. THOUSANDS OF PIGS. DROWNING IN A LAKE. And you know what? Matthew’s doesn’t even carry the whole meaning that it does when Mark tells the story. In fact, the way the whole story is told in Mark is even more remarkable than Matthew. So let’s flip over to Mark, chapter 5, one of my favorite chapters in the Bible, and read the story there.

“They came to the other side of the sea, to the country of the Gerasenes. 2 And when he had stepped out of the boat, immediately a man out of the tombs with an unclean spirit met him. 3 He lived among the tombs; and no one could restrain him any more, even with a chain; 4 for he had often been restrained with shackles and chains, but the chains he wrenched apart, and the shackles he broke in pieces; and no one had the strength to subdue him. 5 Night and day among the tombs and on the mountains he was always howling and bruising himself with stones. 6 When he saw Jesus from a distance, he ran and bowed down before him; 7 and he shouted at the top of his voice, “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 had said to him, “Come out of the man, you unclean spirit!” 9 Then Jesus asked him, “What is your name?” He replied, “My name is Legion; for we are many.” 10 He begged him earnestly not to send them out of the country. 11 Now there on the hillside a great herd of swine was feeding; 12 and the unclean spirits begged him, “Send us into the swine; let us enter them.” 13 So he gave them permission. And the unclean spirits came out and entered the swine; and the herd, numbering about two thousand, rushed down the steep bank into the sea, and were drowned in the sea.

14 The swineherds ran off and told it in the city and in the country. Then people came to see what it was that had happened. 15 They came to Jesus and saw the demoniac sitting there, clothed and in his right mind, the very man who had had the legion; and they were afraid. 16 Those who had seen what had happened to the demoniac and to the swine reported it. 17 Then they began to beg Jesus to leave their neighborhood. 18 As he was getting into the boat, the man who had been possessed by demons begged him that he might be with him. 19 But Jesus refused, and said to him, “Go home to your friends, and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and what mercy he has shown you.” 20 And he went away and began to proclaim in the Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him; and everyone was amazed.”

Different story, right? At least, there’s a lot more detail in Mark. Twenty verses verses the six we find in Matthew. But the bones of the story are still the same: Jesus crosses the Sea of Galilee, comes to a place, either Gerasa or Gadara, they’re both in the Decapolis, though Gadara is closer to the Sea of Galilee. One, or two, fierce and strong demons are possessing one, or two, men. The demons know that Jesus is the Son of God and beg to be cast into this herd of pigs nearby, the demons drive the whole herd into the water, and the swineherds go and tell everyone about it.

But the differences are important. What’s maybe the biggest difference between the story in Mark and the story in Matthew? I’d say it’s the inclusion of Legion.

We have such heart-wrenching details about the man who was possessed by Legion. He lived among the dead. He was so strong that no one could restrain him, but with all that strength, he only hurt himself. Imagine this man, the horror he must have gone through. Day and night he’s howling from the pain he’s in. No one can approach him. No one can care for him. He’s in a constant state of torture.

And how different this man is after Jesus comes to town! The people find him sitting with Jesus, clothed, and in his right mind. He begs Jesus to let him come back across the sea with him, but Jesus restores him to his community instead and throughout the Decapolis, people are amazed at what Jesus can do, all because Jesus banished the legion from him.

Not only is the story of the man possessed by Legion powerful, but the name Legion itself is powerful. Everyone in the Decapolis who heard the word legion would immediately think of the Roman legion, the thousands of Roman soldiers who were deployed to the area. The Decapolis was fully governed by Rome, part of the Roman buffer zone in the region. The whole region was possessed by a legion, so strong that no one could restrain it.

It’s no wonder, then, that the people wanted Jesus to leave after he exorcised a legion of demons and sent them into pigs. If word got around to the actual legion, to any powerful Romans, they’d see it as an act of insurrection, or at the very least, an insult to Rome. A lot has changed in the two thousand years since the Gospels, but calling the soldiers of the police state pigs is not one of them. Jesus, in Mark’s version of the story, is an outside instigator threatening the boys in red, to say nothing of the property he destroyed by sending the pigs into the sea.

So in Mark’s gospel, we have this powerful story of Jesus setting a man free, a story rich with revolutionary overtones. But we don’t have that in Matthew’s gospel. There’s no mention of Legion at all. In fact, just before this story in Matthew’s gospel, as we mentioned before, Jesus heals a centurion’s, a Roman soldier’s servant. Very different symbolism. Very different message. Instead of implying that the Roman legions should be abolished, Matthew’s gospel focuses on the fact that Roman soldiers are people too, with complex lives and people who matter to them.

So what’s happening? Why these differences in how the story is told?

Well, as we learn in biblical studies, Mark’s gospel was probably written first, in a time when Judea was in more turmoil, when it felt like maybe the uprising and instability in the area would actually topple Roman rule. The Temple in Jerusalem might not have been destroyed yet; scholars aren’t sure. But either way, there is a lot more anti-Rome sentiment in Mark’s gospel.

Matthew’s gospel, though, is written a little later, after it’s clear that Rome isn’t going anywhere. Though the gospel is still life-changing, still world-shaking, it can’t take shots at Rome like Mark’s gospel did. The community Matthew is writing for is worried about losing their lives at the hands of Rome, so we get this different version of the story, one without the revolutionary overtones. We get this story that says maybe we can live with the Roman legion.

Now, there’s an important lesson here, as we engage with both of these stories and notice how extraordinary they are in their own right. It’s easy to say that because Mark’s gospel came first, it’s a more authentic picture of Jesus, and so we should follow it. It’s equally as easy to say that the version in Matthew’s gospel is a more refined version, and so we should give that more weight. I say that it’s easy to say these things because drawing those differences in the two stories makes it easy for us to choose one over the other, depending on what we already believe. If we already believe that Jesus came to teach us how to live peaceably with the status quo, Matthew’s gospel makes that argument for us, albeit with some incidental property damage. If we believe, though, that Jesus came to set the captives and the oppressors free by radically ending oppression, Mark’s our man. No matter how much we want the Bible to comforting or challenging, the fact is that it’s both.

That’s the lesson I want us to take away from this tale of two exorcisms: both of these stories are gospel. Both Jesus the revolutionary we find in Mark and Jesus the equal-opportunity healer we find in Matthew are gospel truth, different pictures of Jesus meant to speak to different communities in different situations. One stands strong and one shows finesse. But it’s our task, anytime we come to scripture, to do the hard work of understanding all of the wisdom Jesus has to offer us and listening close to the Spirit to discern how to apply this wisdom in our lives. We have to let ourselves be surprised again by these stories, so that Jesus’ example can change us.

Because there will be times in our lives when following Jesus will be revolutionary, and there will be times in our lives where following Jesus will be a little more measured. Our task is not to immediately know what to do but to listen to the Spirit’s calling and go where we are led, trusting that no matter where the Spirit leads us, we will always be led in the way of love.

Amen.