Jesus (34 page)

Can you hear Jesus inviting you to more calm in your stormy life? Even Jesus needed to take time alone to pray.

Reading this you might fear. What would it mean for the storms to cease and for you to live more contemplatively? The disciples knew this fear. Even when things grew calm on the Sea of Galilee, when one would think that their fear would lessen, it only
grew
.

Jesus gently guides us away from fear, and he calls to us, as he did to the disciples, inviting us onto the calm waters of life.

Listen to him. He says to you, “Come.”

T
HE
S
TILLING OF THE
S
TORM

Mark 4:35–41

(See also Matthew 8:18; 23–27; Luke 8:22–25; John 6:16–21)

On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, “Let us go across to the other side.” And leaving the crowd behind, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. Other boats were with him. A great gale arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped. But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke him up and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” He woke up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm. He said to them, “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?” And they were filled with great awe and said to one another, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?”

C
HAPTER
14

Gerasa

“Night and day among the tombs and on the mountains he was always howling and bruising himself with stones.”

E
ARLY IN OUR STAY
at the Franciscan hostel, I asked Sister Télesfora about the surrounding geography. I pointed vaguely to the opposite bank of the Sea of Galilee, where the rolling hills looked like folded cloth, and said, “What's over there?”

“Oh,” she said airily, “the land of the Gerasenes.”

“You're kidding,” I said. “Is that really where the story of the Gerasene demoniac happened?”

Raised eyebrows indicated that she was not kidding. “That's the other side,” she said.

Immediately I remembered the story of Jesus and the disciples crossing in a boat to what the Gospels called the “other side,” which had always seemed vague. It's hard to imagine the other side when you don't know any side at all. Once again, the force of being here, where Jesus was, almost floored me.

George seemed startled. “Oh, I really want to go there,” he said. “That story is really important for me.”

F
OR ME TOO
. I
T
is a stunning story, both touching and disturbing, found in all three Synoptic Gospels. It recounts the healing of a strange man who hurts others and himself. Its power to shock has been undimmed by two thousand years: the tale is called by modern Scripture scholars both “eerie” (Barclay) and “bizarre” (Meier).

Matthew, Mark, and Luke place the tale immediately after the Stilling of the Storm. Jesus and the disciples have sailed to the “other side” of the Sea of Galilee, to the “country of the Gerasenes,” according to Mark. Before Jesus even steps off the boat, we must navigate our way through some textual difficulties.

Here's why: Other ancient copies of the Gospels speak of the land of the “Gadarenes” and still others, the “Gergasines.”
¹
This is a hotly disputed phrase, because the name does not correlate with the most likely site. Gerasa (modern Jerash, located in what is now Jordan), a large city in the region, is located roughly thirty-seven miles southeast of the sea. As we will soon see, this makes it an impossible candidate for the place. Or perhaps Mark simply intended to describe the general area between Gerasa and the Sea of Galilee.
²
But although Mark may have gotten the name of the town wrong, he is clear about the importance of the general location: Jesus is setting foot for the first time in “pagan” territory.

“Immediately,” says Mark, as Jesus is still disembarking, a possessed man confronts him. The man, who has been living in the tombs that were cut into the limestone rock of the nearby mountainside, is possessed by an “unclean spirit.” (Later, Mark refers to him as a
daimonizomenon
, or demon-possessed man.) Living in burial sites was, according to rabbinic literature, a sign of madness.
³
Interestingly, the word “tomb” is mentioned three times in only a few sentences, setting up Jesus's conflict not only with a demoniac, but, in a sense, with death.

The madman possesses terrifying physical strength: “No one could restrain him any more, even with a chain; 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.” Donahue and Harrington point out that the Greek's proliferation of negatives—literally, “No one” (
oudeis
), “not even” (
oude
) with a chain, “was ever” (
ouketi
) able to bind him—heightens the coming conflict with Jesus. That is, Jesus is about to do something that no one else can do. No one. Ever.

Then comes an achingly poignant description: “Night and day among the tombs and on the mountains he was always howling and bruising himself with stones.” It is easy to hear in this story echoes of people we know who seem intent on harming themselves, and indeed anyone who engages in self-destructive behavior through addictions, compulsions, or habits. Probably the man desperately wanted to be free of these demons, but had no idea how to free himself. His cries (
krazōn
, to shriek) are those not just of a frightening man, but of a frightened man.

The man rushes up to Jesus in what must have been a terrifying scene, clambering down from the dusty mountainside, probably falling headlong, terrifying the disciples and onlookers. If this occurred shortly after the storm at sea, it would have happened as night was falling—or even in the dead of night. As Barclay notes, “The story becomes all the more weird and frightening when it is seen as happening in the shadows of the night.”
⁴
The disciples, still recovering from Jesus's rebuke of the storm, have stepped onto unfamiliar ground, in the dark, and are now confronted by a dangerous, violent, probably lethal figure.

Then, touchingly, the crazed man prostrates himself before Jesus in a gesture of worship or respect. It seems to be the man who does this, not the demons. The poor man knows he is powerless to heal himself and hurls himself before Jesus.

But then the demon spits out his threat to Jesus, crying out again in a loud voice: “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I adjure you by God, do not torment me.” It is the same furious cry, nearly word for word, that Jesus first heard from the possessed man in the synagogue at Capernaum: “
Ti hēmin kai soi Iēsou?
” “What have you to do with us?”
⁵
And here: “
Ti emoi kai soi Iēsou?
”

Jesus's first exorcism on Gentile soil will mirror that in the Jewish synagogue: his power is equal in both settings. And as in the synagogue, the demon already knows the Messianic Secret. The demon identifies Jesus, even though the disciples failed to grasp this in the Multiplication of the Loaves and Fishes and at the Stilling of the Storm.

The possessed man's conflicted behavior points to a deeply divided self. He prostrates himself before Jesus, but then screams at him. He asks Jesus to swear “by God” that he won't be tortured, even as he is possessed by demons. The most succinct description comes from Donahue and Harrington: “The words of the demoniac show the inner division and turmoil he suffers.”
⁶

Why has the demon said these things to Jesus? Mark tells us that Jesus had already said to the demon, “Come out of the man,” prompting the demon's response. Then Jesus addresses the demon again, directly, asking, “What is your name?”

In the ancient Near East, names held great significance and power. In the Book of Genesis, God renames Abram as Abraham, signifying a divinely ordained change in identity. Jesus will rename Simon as Peter, a sign of his new life and mission. Moreover, knowing a person's name was believed to give someone power over that person.

This is one reason that, when Moses asks to know God's name, the answer is, “I am who am.” In other words, “That is my business.”
⁷
Moses has no right to access the “power” of knowing God's name. Thus, when Jesus asks the demon's name, he poses a direct threat. “What is your name?” means “Let me have power over you.”

The scene always brings chills to my spine and reminds me of the scene in the film
The Exorcist
when the psychiatrist addresses the demon within the possessed girl, Regan, whom he has hypnotized. “I'm speaking to the person inside of Regan now,” he says. “If you are there, you too are hypnotized and must answer all my questions. Come forward and answer me now.” After a growling Regan writhes on the bed, he asks, “Are you the person inside of Regan? Who are you?” This is Jesus's question.

Jesus receives an answer: “My name is Legion; for we are many.” What a chilling statement—there are many demons within the man.

There are a number of interpretations of this famous name. First, Mark may simply be reporting what transpired, with the “legion” as a colloquial expression for “many.” Second, the demon may use the word to avoid giving Jesus his precise name.
⁸
Third, it may relate to the Roman legions. “Legion” is a Latin word for a military unit of around six thousand men. It was also used by Greek and Aramaic speakers of the day, what scholars call a “loan word,” borrowed directly from another language. The Greek word in Mark is simply a direct transliteration of the Latin
legion
.
⁹
The word could also be a not-so-subtle reference to the presence of Roman forces in Palestine. On the other hand, as Donahue and Harrington point out, Jesus is not expelling Romans from Jewish lands here, since he was in Gerasa, a largely Greek city. However, if he is on the “other side” of the Sea of Galilee and still near Jewish territories, the word may still evoke the image of Roman legions and their own “possession” of Palestine.
¹⁰

The demons beg Jesus not to send them out of the country, but rather to send them into the herd of pigs nearby. The Greek word for “beg,”
parakalein
, is used not only for someone in need who begs, but also for an “inferior” speaking to a “superior.” The begging shows us who is already in charge.

At that time, the notion that the demons would want to have some place to reside (rather than being sent to an everlasting place of damnation) was common.
¹¹
The introduction of pigs also reminds us of the pagan setting of the story and, also, the sense of uncleanness, because Jews were forbidden to keep pigs or use them for food.
¹²

Jesus gives the demons permission to enter the pigs. Immediately the unclean spirits enter the swine, and the entire herd (two thousand, says Mark) rushes down the precipice into the sea and drowns. This is one reason for the confusion over the location. If the original story took place in the town of Gerasa, the pigs would have had to run a marathon thirty-seven miles to the sea.
¹³
Once again, though, Mark may simply have been referring to a general region.

In a sense, the demons—who
asked
to be cast into the pigs—are the agents of their own destruction. Nonetheless, Jesus is shown as the quietly powerful one who liberates the man from what had kept him bound. Also, in contrast to the terrifying rantings of the man, Jesus speaks few words and, having recently fallen asleep on the boat, is an emblem of calm—in the midst of storms both physical and emotional. Mark may also want readers to see the destructive power of the demons as mirroring the destructive power of the sea, which figures into the previous passage. Both have now been decisively conquered by Jesus.

News of Jesus's astonishing feat is told by the swineherds both in the city and in the country. Some time afterward people returned to see the man “clothed and in his right mind.” No longer naked (which we can infer from the “clothed” comment) and no longer deranged, he is restored to the community. No longer living among the tombs, he is symbolically restored to life. In most translations, onlookers are described now as “afraid.” But the original Greek (
ephobēthēsan
) also conveys the sense of being awestruck by the power of Jesus.

Strangely, having been witness to a stunning miracle, the people plead (
parakalein
again) for Jesus to leave the area. It is the opposite of the request of the demons, who ask if they can stay. Why is this? On one hand, the swineherds were probably angered by the loss of their revenue. On the other hand, people in the pagan region might have been terrified by this Jewish wonder-worker's power. (Not to mention the sight of two thousand pigs floating in the water.) We'll return to that question.

Later, as Jesus is boarding the boat to return to the western shore, the former demoniac returns. The man begs (
parekalei
) Jesus if he can “be with him.” It's easy to conjure up a quiet scene, with the water placidly lapping at the sides of the boat, a striking contrast to the turbulent episode that has just happened. Violence has been replaced by peace.

As in many cases, the man is not called to be a conventional disciple, that is, to leave everything behind. Instead, Jesus says, “Go home to your friends, and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and what mercy he has shown you.” The man is restored not just to the community at large, but more specifically to his friends. He is sent with a mission: to tell the story. There is a practical aspect to this command as well. Jesus commissions the man to spread the Good News to his people. Mark tells us that in this area, called the Decapolis—a federation of ten cities east of Samaria and Galilee—the story of Jesus's power spread.