Posts Tagged ‘pigs’

Terrified of Jesus?

June 18, 2022

Pentecost 2 – 2022
Luke 8: (22-25) 26-29
Marian Free

In the name of God who is both comforting and challenging, benign and threatening. Amen.

According to a report by ABC news, at least 10, 000 cattle were washed away during the recent floods in Northern NSW. A vast majority of these will have drowned. One resident – trapped in her home and waiting for help – described a cow that was floating past her in the water. The animal looked at her, its eyes pleading for help, but of course, there was nothing she could do. It is a haunting image and one that came to mind as I wondered about the unsuspecting pigs in today’s gospel. Like the cattle they will have been caught completely of guard. Unlike the cattle the pigs will not have had the warning signs of heavy rain and rising water, and, rather than being propelled by an external force, they will have been driven by an internal urge. Either way cattle and pigs are caught up in the water and drowned.

I can’t help but think about the pigs in today’s gospel – the surprise and then the terror as they found themselves involuntarily propelled towards the water. I see them struggling to keep afloat before taking their last (fatal) breath and drowning. Why the pigs? What had they done to deserve such a fate?

The pigs are not the only conundrum in this story. There are so many unanswered questions. Why does Jesus bother to cross the lake into Gentile territory only to cause havoc come straight back again? Why did the demons have a choice as to where they were sent? How were the owners of the pigs to recoup their losses? Would the swineherders be out of work as a consequence of there being no pigs to herd?

It is impossible to come up with satisfactory answers to all those questions and it is conceivable that, in order to make a point, the narrator allowed himself the luxury of a little exaggeration. As it is, this is one of the more memorable and colourful gospel stories.

One component of this story, (and the one that precedes it) is that of fear. It is not just the pigs who are afraid. When Jesus rebukes the wind and the raging waves, the disciples are afraid. In today’s gospel the demons are afraid, the people who came out to see what had happened are afraid and the people of the surrounding countryside are greatly afraid. The demons are afraid, because Jesus sees them for who they are. The people are afraid – not because Jesus has been the reason that they have lost all their livestock – but because he healed the demoniac! The disciples and the people of Gerasene are afraid of Jesus – of his power over the natural elements and of his power over demons.

Why, you might ask, would anyone be afraid of Jesus? Why in particular would they be afraid of Jesus when he has saved the lives of the disciples and restored the demoniac to life thus freeing them from the burden of restraining him? Surely, those who witnessed Jesus’ power in these events would be amazed and grateful, but afraid? It doesn’t make sense – or does it? You and I are so familiar with the stories of Jesus that they have lost their power to confront, let alone terrify. When we are faced with the destructive powers of the natural world, we long for Jesus to intervene – to stop the fires, halt the floods, suppress the earthquake. When we watch someone suffer unbearably from mental illness or a deteriorative disease we yearn for Jesus to step in and bring about healing. What could be terrifying about either of those things we wonder?

I suspect that what is terrifying is Jesus’ display of power – the way in which he upsets the natural order – of creation, of society. When the disciples called out in terror as the waves threatened to sink the boat, I suspect that they wanted Jesus to share their fear, to help with the boat. They did not imagine that this wonder worker could or would exert the power of the creator. In their day there were many healers and exorcists – but no one who had control over the natural elements. Jesus’ demonstration of such extraordinary power would have been overwhelming. If the wind and sea obeyed Jesus, what other powers might he unleash? Was anything/anyone safe in his presence?

The source of the Gerasenes’ fear is similar. Here too, Jesus has upset the natural order of things. For, while he was possessed, the demoniac had a place (albeit it distressing) within the society. People knew how to respond to him, and his demonic state told them something about their place in the world. While he was under the influence of demons, those around him were able to define themselves in relation to him, to reassure themselves that they were not possessed, to feel superior to him, to feel a certain amount of self-righteousness concerning their acceptance of him and his condition and to have the role of carers – even if that care was limited to chaining him when he got too wild and providing him with the occasional scrap of food. In other words, when the demoniac was possessed, they knew where he fit and where they fit in relation to him.

When the demonic was possessed they knew what to do with him, but now that he is healed they find themselves in a completely new situation – one which they did not ask for and one over which they have no control. The delicate balance of their community has been disturbed. They are afraid because they do not know what to do now and they are afraid because they do not know what Jesus will do next.

These two stories reveal that both the disciples and those who met Jesus for the first time; that both those of a Jewish background and those from Gentile lands experienced fear in his presence. They recognised Jesus awesome presence and power and were terrified.

When Jesus unleashes the power of God creation itself obeys and our lives are changed forever. Perhaps the question we need to ask ourselves is not: “Why were they afraid?” but “Why are we not afraid.”

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Double meanings

June 22, 2019

Pentecost 2 – 2019

Gerasene Demoniac Luke 8:26-39

Marian Free

In the name of God, who through Jesus, sets us from from doubt and fear. Amen.

“Goosey, goosey, gander

Where shall I wander,

Upstairs and downstairs

and in my lady’s chamber.

There I found an old man

Who would not say his prayers,

I took him by the left leg and threw him down the stairs.”

This and many other well known nursery rhymes had a hidden (often political) meaning in their time. Goosey, goosey gander for example references the religious persecution that occurred during the English Reformation when Catholic priests were hunted down and killed. In a similar vein, “Mary, Mary, quite contrary” refers, not to gardening, but to Queen Mary 1 who, during her short reign, condemned to death hundreds of Protestants (silver bells and cockle shells were not flowers but instruments of torture). “Ring a ring of rosies” apparently refers to the Plague of 1665. The “rosie” was the rash that signified the onset of the disease and the posies were an attempt to cover up the foul smell that resulted from the plague and from the bodies of the dead.

Of course, apparently innocent nursery rhymes are not the only form of literature to have hidden or double meanings, or that can be interpreted in a number of different ways. People under oppressive regimes often use coded, seemingly innocuous, messages to avoid detection or to ensure that their plans do not fall into enemy hands. Early Christians are said to have used the symbol of a fish or of the Chi Rho to signal to others that they were believers. These signs meant nothing to unbelievers but to those who did believe, mutual understanding of the symbols allowed them to speak freely to one another.

There are instances of coded language in scriptures – notably in the apocalyptic literature that includes the Book of Revelation. Judith Jones, an Episcopal priest in Oregon, suggests that today’s account of the Gerasene demoniac is an example of a coded, subversive message written for an oppressed people.

She points out that, at the time that Luke was writing his version of the gospel, the Jewish uprising had been quelled, Jerusalem destroyed and the Roman legions had swept through Gerasa. According to Josephus during the campaign one thousand young men were killed, their families imprisoned and their city burned. As if this were not enough the soldiers then attacked the surrounding villages (The Jewish War IV, ix, 1). Those buried in the tombs of Gerasene would have been those slaughtered by the Roman legions. In such circumstances it is not impossible to imagine that Luke would frame his account of Jesus in such a way as to suggest that Jesus had power, not only over evil spirits, but also over the evil that was the Roman Empire. Nor should we be surprised that Luke would try to tell his story in such a way that it would have meaning for those who were living in the aftermath of such brutal repression.

Jones suggests that words that we take at face value could have been heard entirely differently by those to whom Luke addressed his gospel. The word ‘Legion’ for example, had only one literal meaning. It was a unit in the Roman army that consisted of 6,000 soldiers. The demons were code for Rome. Other words used in the miracle story are translated differently in other New Testament contexts – suggesting that those meanings could be applied here. For example, the word translated here as ‘met’ is used for a king going out to battle against another king in Luke 14:31. The demons are said to ‘seize’ the man in the same way that the disciples are ‘seized’ by the authorities in the Book of Acts, and the chains of the demoniac might well have reminded Luke’s readers of the chains in which the first Christians were bound when they were arrested and imprisoned. Even the pigs may have had a double meaning for Luke’s audience. The legion that led the attack on Palestine and that remained behind in Jerusalem after the war was the Legio 10th Fretensis whose symbol was the pig. The image of a pig featured not only on their flags but also on ordinary objects such as coins and bricks. Pigs therefore might have seemed to be an appropriate home for Legion, though as Jones points out: “Here the story takes a darkly humorous turn, for Legion, thinking that it has avoided the abyss, promptly charges into the deep and drowns.”

Read in this light, Luke appears to be using the story of the demoniac to reassure his readers that ultimately Rome has no power over them.

From this subversive, political standpoint, the exorcism becomes not a quaint miracle story but a story for our own time: a time in which men, women and children are enslaved and brutalized for selfish gain, in which oppressive governments repress dissent and and torture and imprison those who dare to challenge them, in which minorities (including Christians) are persecuted and in which some families are so impoverished that parents are forced to leave their children in the care of others while they travel to far away lands to work (sometimes in dangerous and exploitative situations) so that the children have a chance at a reasonable life.

Even without the political overtones, the story still speaks today to all those who are tortured by addiction or mental illness, to those who are imprisoned by doubt and fear, to those who are enslaved by poverty and disadvantage and to those who are rejected and cast out by society because they do not conform to our definition of normal.

Jesus’ healing of the demoniac reminds us that Jesus has the power to heal and to set free, that Jesus is sovereign over the powers that we can see and the powers that we can’t see and that Jesus love brings us in from the margins to where we truly belong.

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