An Uncommon Experience

They came to the other side of the sea, to the country of the Gerasenes. And when Jesus had stepped out of the boat, immediately there met him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit. He lived among the tombs. And no one could bind him anymore, not even with a chain, for he had often been bound with shackles and chains, but he wrenched the chains apart, and he broke the shackles in pieces. No one had the strength to subdue him. Night and day among the tombs and on the mountains he was always crying out and cutting himself with stones. And when he saw Jesus from afar, he ran and fell down before him. And crying out with a loud voice, he said, “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 was saying to him, “Come out of the man, you unclean spirit!” And Jesus asked him, “What is your name?” He replied, “My name is Legion, for we are many.” And he begged him earnestly not to send them out of the country. Now a great herd of pigs was feeding there on the hillside, and they begged him, saying, “Send us to the pigs; let us enter them.” So he gave them permission. And the unclean spirits came out and entered the pigs; and the herd, numbering about two thousand, rushed down the steep bank into the sea and drowned in the sea. (Mark 5:1-13 ESV). Just as everybody in Capernaum knew the centurion, so everybody in Gerasa, facing Capernaum on the other side of the Sea of Galilee, knew the demon-possessed man. For the opposite reason, of course: the soldier inspired admiration, the maniac inspired terror. The gospel writers have not named either of these two men for us. But of all our gallery of anonymous people, today’s character is the one who most nearly wasn’t anonymous at all. Jesus actually asked his name, and perhaps, in a lucid interval, he was beginning to answer, “My name is…” when the demons in his mind took over, shouting “Legion! There are crowds of us!” As Christian converts from other religions have often adopted Christian names in place of their old pagan names, we are also seeing an increase in the number of people converting to Islam and abandoning their English “Christian names” for Muslim ones. For better or worse, what people call themselves sometimes speaks volumes about what they truly are. “Legion,” once he was healed, presumably reverted to whatever his parents had named him. It might have been a very common name for the day. The key was not in the common nature of his name but the uncommon experience he had with Jesus. Everyone in the town must have known of him. After all, he was chained to a tree in the cemetery just on the edge of town. You couldn’t get in or out of town without seeing and hearing him. His wailing must have haunted the townspeople day and night. Yet, when Jesus had finished his conversation with him, he was completely changed. The people had to have wondered who had such power. Thankfully the man had the courage to tell them. In many ways we are just like that man. I hope we have that same courage! We have had that same uncommon experience!