The Compassion of Jesus for an Unlikely Person (Mark 5:1-20)

How should we read this story? Is the man an example of every kind of person who needs Jesus? I don’t think he is because the majority of people do not find themselves in the state that this man was in. I don’t think we are meant to read this passage and try to find out how we are similar to this man. Instead we are to look at Jesus and be amazed by what he did for this man.

There are features of this story that seem alien to our experience of Christianity because its presence in our society has protected us from gross expressions of evil. But the decline of Christianity will give opportunities for such evil displays to happen and we need to know what Jesus can do about them when they appear.

The location

Mark says that Jesus and the disciples crossed to the region of the Gerasenes. Matthew, in his account, is more specific and says that the incident occurred near to a place called Gadara. No one is entirely sure where the exact place was, except that it was near the town (people came out of it to speak to Jesus) and close by the seashore (the pigs ran into the sea).

The large herd of pigs indicates that Jesus had travelled to a Gentile community because it is unlikely that Jews would have kept pigs. Some scholars speculate that the herd was kept as food for soldiers of the Roman Empire who would have been stationed in the area.

Mark does not say that the disciples got out of the boat. Instead they would have stayed in it and watched Jesus deal with this needy man whom he had crossed the sea to meet. In a sense we can sit beside them and watch how Jesus did it. The disciples would have learned several important details about Jesus and we can learn them as well.

Obviously this visit to a Gentile area was a very brief one. Yet it was clearly part of the kingdom strategy being implemented by Jesus. We can see that was the case from the role that was given to the man after he was cured by Jesus. The restored demoniac was to be the person who prepared the Decapolis for the later spread of the gospel into that area. So the disciples should have seen that Jesus was working to a grand plan far bigger than they had imagined.

Would anything else have been taught them from this incident? Imagine them twenty or more years in the future, after they had taken the gospel into all kinds of pagan communities. They would have been encouraged by recalling the love and power that Jesus revealed towards this demon-possessed man and how complete was the deliverance provided by Jesus. What they had seen Jesus do in Gadara they would see him do elsewhere as the kingdom progressed.

Jesus loves to deal with different cases

One of the common problems in the church is that people are apprehensive of variety in the spiritual life. The disciples sitting watching from the boat would have known by now how each of them came to know Jesus. Some, like Peter and Andrew, had been followers of John the Baptist and he had directed them to leave him and follow Jesus instead. Others, like Matthew the tax collector, had been focussing on building wealth and were doing what they could to get it. We could go through the list of disciples, but having done so we would have to conclude that none of them had the kind of background that the man from Gadara had.

Jesus loves to deal with difficult cases

The man from Gadara was in deep spiritual bondage. We are not told how he had come to be in this mess. He was in the grip of dark spiritual powers and they had made his life into one of torment. Mark tells us that the man could not communicate with others, could not live with others, and could not be controlled by others. He was disturbed, distressed, detached and dangerous.

Who was there in the area who had good thoughts for this man? No one would have had any now, even if some had tried to help him in the past. Yet there was one person who did have good intentions towards this man, and it was Jesus, and he had not merely crossed the sea but in addition had come down from heaven to help him. Here we have a marvellous insight into the compassion of Jesus for difficult cases. There is not a situation that will be too big for him to handle. This story tells us that Jesus can deal with the biggest sinner in our community, whoever he or she may be.

Jesus is confronting the kingdom of darkness

Early in the Gospel story, after he was baptised and commenced his public ministry, Jesus had marched into the desert to confront the enemy of our souls, the devil. In this incident, Jesus is again facing that malicious enemy, except now he faces him in a victim and not merely in a hostile environment. It is obvious that the power of darkness dominated this poor man.

Yet we should not miss the details Mark stresses. First, it is clear that neither the man’s own problems nor his controlling spirits could prevent him or them from being summoned into Jesus’ presence. It is true that Jesus crossed the sea to meet this man, but it is also true that the man moved from the tombs to the feet of Jesus, drawn by an invisible but compelling authority to do so. Until that moment, it could be said that the devil was in charge of that area. Now it was obvious that Jesus was in charge. The disciples were learning that Jesus by his mere presence possessed tremendous authority.

Second, we should note that the man is not drawn to the feet of Jesus in order to worship him. The words of the man, which are intermingled with fears of the indwelling spirits, indicate that they think the moment of judgement by Jesus has arrived. The enemy powers recognise the authority of Jesus over them and confess that they can do nothing without his permission. So the disciples who have just seen the waves and the sea obey Jesus now see the representatives of the kingdom of darkness cowering before him. The disciples needed to see this because they were to be his witnesses in a world in which the kingdom of darkness had held sway.

Third, the disciples also saw that the kingdom of God does not make agreements with the powers of darkness. The demons seemed to have realised that their grip on this man was now over, and therefore they wanted to enter into a kind of dialogue with Jesus about where they could go next. First they suggested that they not be sent out of the region and then they suggested that they enter the pigs. It is important to see these requests as expressions of panic because they realised they were only going to go where Jesus would allow them to go.

Fourth, it is possible that the demons tried to distort who Jesus was in the mind of the man. When he speaks to Jesus he assumes that all Jesus will do with him is torment him. Where did the man get that idea from? He did not get it from having previous knowledge of Jesus. So he must have got it from the demons who controlled him. In passing, can we not testify to the fact that people without any evidence for their opinion will say the most outrageous things about Jesus? Where do such ideas come from? The answer is from the enemy of Jesus and the enemy of their own souls.

Jesus tests the priorities of people

Many people have questioned why Jesus allowed the demons to go into the pigs. I suppose different answers could be given. One is that that they had had the same effect on the pigs as they had on the man – both the pigs and the man behaved madly when under the influence of the devil, and Jesus was making clear why the man had behaved so oddly.

A second is connected to the possibility that the pigs were food supply for troops. The pigs would be killed in a way that acknowledged pagan deities, and here that purpose was being prevented. This prevention would apply even if the animals were only killed for the inhabitants to eat. Since they were pagans, there would have been some form of idolatry connected to using the pigs as food.

A third reason is that Jesus tested the priorities of the people. Since those who were looking after the pigs chose to inform the townspeople about what had happened it looks as if the townspeople in some way had an interest in the pigs. Whether they did or not, they still had to decide if the recovery of the man was more important than the loss of the pigs. It is clear from their response that they saw no value in that the man was healed by Jesus. In fact, they had the same reaction to Jesus as the man initially had, which was that Jesus should leave them alone. So they failed the test and lost out on personal experience of divine blessing at that time.

It is worth stopping to think a bit about the men who looked after the pigs. They were able to describe to others what Jesus had done in the life of the demoniac, yet they did so in a completely detached manner. It is very sad if all we can do is recite accurately what Jesus has done in the life of someone else. Watching Jesus in action should have caused them to worship Jesus. But they did not and therefore their witness about Jesus did not help the people from the town.

Jesus has the capability to deliver such cases

Mark gives a beautiful picture of the man who once was out of his mind. Instead of running about out of control he was sitting calmly. Moreover he was now clothed. Where did he get the clothes from? Perhaps he had some of his own, which he had retrieved and put on. Or is it possible that Jesus had given some of his own clothes to the man? After all, the account says that only Jesus and the man were there.

Jesus had a surprise in store for the cured man. It was natural that the man would want to spend some more time with Jesus and even to have some contact with the watching disciples. I suppose we could say that the man had all of eternity to do what he wanted whereas he only had a few years to do what Jesus wanted him to do.

The Saviour reminded the man that he had a specific priority, which was to tell his own family what had happened to him. In giving this instruction Jesus also told the man what to say. The message was two things basically. First, he was to tell them that Jesus was divine and, second, he was to tell them that the divine Lord wanted to show mercy to sinners, with himself as an example of what the Lord could do for such.

It looks as if this unknown man was the first evangelist to Gentiles. The area called the Decapolis was a general term for ten city-states, most of which were east of the River Jordan, although one of them was Damascus, and which were given trade and other privileges by the Roman Empire. This man took the message of what Jesus had done for him to some of those places (Matthew 4:25 reveals that there had been people from the Decapolis among the crowds that followed Jesus initially, but they were probably Jews from the area). It is interesting and challenging that Jesus regarded the man as ready to engage in the basic Christian activity of witnessing. Why did he engage in it? The answer is that he was a changed person who wanted those who knew him to know his Saviour. These people had not known what to do with him before he met Jesus, but he now knew what Jesus could do for them. And that was a secret he wanted to share.