In His Right Mind

Context

There's a man in Mark's gospel with no name and no backstory. His whole community has already filed him under lost cause. He lives in the tombs outside a Gentile town, in pig-farming country, because nobody can hold him anymore. Chains, shackles, they've tried it all. He snaps through everything, and eventually they just stop trying. He spends his nights howling on the hillsides.

Story

Then a boat shows up. Jesus crosses the lake, lands on the shore, and before anyone can unpack, the local nightmare comes sprinting at them. But the man doesn't attack. He falls down.

"What do you want with me, Jesus, son of the Most High God?"

The one nobody could chain knows exactly who Jesus is, before any disciple has clocked it. Jesus asks his name, and the answer comes back: Legion, for we are many. A Roman legion is around six thousand soldiers. That's the math the man is giving.

The demons beg to go into a herd of pigs, and Jesus lets them. Two thousand pigs go sprinting off the cliff. The farmers watch their whole livelihood drown in real time.

When the town comes out, they find the man they'd given up on sitting at Jesus's feet. Clothed. Calm. In his right mind. And then they beg Jesus to leave. The pigs cost them more than the man ever did.

What We Learn

The man wants to come with Jesus. Instead Jesus tells him to go home, back to the town that locked him out, and tell them what God has done. So he does. He walks into ten cities carrying his own story.

The people we write off are often closer to seeing Jesus clearly than we are. The man in the tombs recognized him on sight. The respectable town wanted him gone.