LEGION OF…HOPE

MONDAY AFTER SECOND SUNDAY IN LENT 2015

Today is Mark 5:1-20. It is the story of the man who is so deranged, so possessed, that chains cannot hold him. Jesus heals the man by sending his demons into a legion of pigs. Bishop Wright in his commentary does a great job showing how Mark’s Gospel is real literature, how this story really functions at three different levels. And it clearly does. The “thing” that I wonder about is how do people who might have a sort of abstract idea of God, but are not too interested in God, react to this story?

My experience is that people, who often are critical of Christians, level the charge that we are literalists in reading the Bible. These folks then become even more literal with the text than perhaps we would be. Now please do not misunderstand, I believe Jesus healed this man and in an earlier post I wrote about demons. I write about literalism because I think it shows that as modern people, part of us are malnourished and underdeveloped in one aspect of our lives. We are so in tune with science, technology and math (all of which I love)…that we have lost our imaginations. We, when presented with something different, immediately subject it to a rational, scientific, critical and even literal critique…we prevent the message of the story to reach us.

So let me ask a different question. When you read this story of Jesus healing this man, don’t you wish it were true? I know the word “wish” is a word that you might immediately react to, so let’s try a better word, hope. Don’t you hope that there really might be a God who cares enough to act as Jesus did in the story? Can you imagine, can you dream? People of faith are people of hope. We would say because of the person of Jesus, his life, and all the eye witnesses of his presence, not just 2,000 ago…but for the last 2,000 years…that we can believe such a God is real…a God who can help us deal with the legions of issues that confront us.