The Cost of Wholeness

Scripture — Mark 5:1–13 (NRSV)

They came to the other side of the sea, to the region of the Gerasenes. And when he had stepped out of the boat, immediately a man from the tombs with an unclean spirit met him. He lived among the tombs, and 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. Night and day among the tombs and on the mountains he was always howling and bruising himself with stones. When he saw Jesus from a distance, he ran and bowed down before him, 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.” For he had said to him, “Come out of the man, you unclean spirit!” Then Jesus asked him, “What is your name?” He replied, “My name is Legion, for we are many.” He begged him earnestly not to send them out of the region. Now there on the hillside a great herd of swine was feeding, and the unclean spirits begged him, “Send us into the swine; let us enter them.” So he gave them permission. And the unclean spirits came out and entered the swine, and the herd, numbering about two thousand, stampeded down the steep bank into the sea and were drowned in the sea.

Devotion

Today’s story from Mark is one of the strangest in the Gospel, perhaps even in the whole Bible. There is much about this story that is hard for us to comprehend. When I was a young Christian, this story disturbed me. I wasn’t so sure what I thought of demons, whether they were real or not. If they were, I was happy that Jesus delivered a man from demonic bondage. But I just couldn’t understand why Jesus let the demons enter the herd of pigs. It seemed terribly unfair to the owner of the herd that he lost 2,000 pigs. I fretted about why Jesus did such an odd and apparently unkind thing.

Our story for today begins with Jesus going across the Sea of Galilee to “the country of the Gerasenes” (5:1). There, he encountered a “man with an unclean spirit” (5:2). In fact, as we learn in verse 9, the man was filled with many unclean spirits, and they tortured the man regularly. When faced with Jesus, these spirits begged not to be sent away. So, Jesus, apparently giving in to the request of the demons, sent them into a herd of pigs, who rushed down the hill and into the lake, where they drowned. Mark reports that this was a large herd of pigs, “numbering about two thousand” (5:13).

What motivated Jesus to let the demons enter the pigs? I don’t think we can know the answer to this question for sure. Speculations about Jesus’ intentions cannot be verified in this case since Mark does not tell us why Jesus acted as he did. But one thing is clear. Jesus valued the wholeness of the demonized man more than 2,000 pigs. Assuming that Jesus knew what would happen to the pigs, he was willing to sacrifice the herd so that a man might be set free from his bondage and live as a free man.

There is much about Jesus that we will not understand, at least not this side of the age to come. But we do know for certain that Jesus wants us to be whole, and that this is worth more than we might think. After all, our Lord gave his own life so that we might be delivered from our bondage to sin and death, and set free to live the abundant life. For us, Jesus sacrificed infinitely more than a herd of pigs.

As you wrap up this devotion, perhaps you’d like to reflect on the following questions.

Find all Life for Leaders devotions here. Explore what the Bible has to say about work at the High Calling archive, hosted by the unique website of our partners, the Theology of Work Project. Reflection on today’s Life for Leaders theme can be found here: Prison in a Bottle.