Mark says, Sophroneo, the man is in his right
mind. And the town tells Jesus to Vamoose? Who's
the crazy one? You step off the boat on a far
shore. The storm is still rolling behind you,
a rumor on dark water. The wind has gone quiet.
The air feels changed. And now you're standing
in Gentile country, the wrong side of the lake,
where tombs gape open in the hills and something
wounded comes running out to meet mercy. Before
you know what it costs, before you know who it
threatens, you're watching a man come back to
himself, sitting clothed in his right mind, and
the whole town is afraid. Now, wherever you are,
driving home, washing dishes, sitting in the
dark, You've just wandered into our fellowship
hall after our midweek meal. Tables are still
warm from conversation. Coffee's on in the back.
Pull up a chair and grab a cup. It's time for
our Wednesday night Bible study. And I'll see
you on the other side. This is a perfect time
for me to begin as we're wrapping up our dinner.
But before we begin, there it is. Mr. Wayne giving
us the big thumbs up. All right. I have a Bible
story tonight that I think is a pretty cool one,
but as always, I forget sometimes. I need to
set the scene for you guys about where we are
in the story to talk about the story we're going
to talk about tonight. So let me do that. Before
we begin tonight's story, let me place ourselves
first and foremost at the time of where we're
at in the story of Jesus' ministry and the geography
where Jesus has spent the day teaching parables.
And he is on the shoreline of the Sea of Galilee.
Now, I have a Q -tip here. I thought this might
work. If you can't see it, then imagine instead
of a Q -tip I'm holding up, imagine I'm holding
up a lollipop with lollipops on both ends. The
bottom part, that's going to be the Dead Sea.
Then the stick part, that's the Jordan River.
The top lollipop. part is the Sea of Galilee,
okay? And the Jordan River, the stick part, separates
Judea from not Judea. And Jesus has spent the
day, he's been teaching parables, and then he
says, let's go to the other side of the lake,
the other way. During the night, storm comes
up, Jesus is asleep, he gets up, he tells The
sea to calm down? It does. The disciples freak
out. And then the story says, we find them on
the shore, the other side. That's where we are
tonight. The shore on the other side is a Gentile
region known as the Gerasenes. Okay? So where
we're going to jump off tonight is literally,
we are stepping off that boat. onto the shore
of the Sea of Galilee in the Gennesarenes. And
the storm that has just tried to swallow you
whole an hour or two ago, it's only a memory
rolling behind you in the dark water. The disciples
are still shaken. Each one of them knows that
something has shifted. When he stood up in the
bow, he looked at that storm like it owed him
money and told the sea to calm down. And it did.
And now you hear it. Gentile country. The wrong
side of the lake. These are the hills of the
Decapolis. Decapolis means ten cities. And there
are these hills around, and there are these ten
little towns around it. That region. It was known
as the Decapolis. Roman roads, Greek cities,
occupation layered upon layered upon layered
of these people's memory. And these hills, they're
punctured with caves. Not decorative caves, but
burial caves. Open mouths of rock and earth that
hold bones and silence and decay. Jesus has crossed
a storm to get here. He did not drift aimlessly
to the other side. He aimed for this. And then,
while standing there on the shore, a man starts
running towards you. Mark doesn't soften it.
Chapter 5, verse 2, we read, When he had come
out of the boat, immediately a man with an unclean
spirit met him out of the tombs. Mark says immediately,
no welcome party, just a man from the graves
running hard in your direction. He lives here
in the tombs among the bones. And chapter 5,
verse 3 says this. Nobody could bind him anymore.
Not even with chains. Anymore. That word should
break our hearts. Because anymore means that
they had tried. Not necessarily cruel people.
People who didn't know what else to do. And they
built systems. Shackles, chains, a perimeter,
a zone where the brokenness was supposed to stay.
But he tore through all of that. Verse 5 says,
This is not villain language. This is suffering
language. He's the town's open wound. What happens
when pain goes untreated long enough that it
becomes spectacle? When the community stops asking
how to help, starts asking how to manage. But
when he sees Jesus from far off, he begins running
towards him, not away, towards. The man who could
not be chained bows. The man who could not be
managed needles. The town built systems to restrain
him. The demons took up residence in him. But
when mercy steps off a boat onto foreign shore,
this howling, bleeding, cave -dwelling man recognizes,
sometimes in our lives, the most broken person
in the story. as the clearest sight. And sometimes,
the people who think that they're stable are
the ones who are about to be exposed. Friends,
a few verses of Scripture tonight. Our few verses
tonight comes to us from the Gospel account according
to Mark, as recorded by Mark, but really spoken
by Peter. Chapter 5, beginning with 15, and I'll
read 17. They came to Jesus, they, the people
of the town, and saw him who had been possessed
by demons, now sitting clothed and in his right
mind. Even him who had the legion, which is what
the demons called themselves, and they, now spoke,
were afraid. They began to beg him, verse 17
says, To depart from the region. Hear that again.
Let's not rush past it. The possessed man is
now sitting. Clothed. And in his right mind.
And they are now afraid. They have begun begging
him to leave. Something is cracking open in this
part of the text, and it isn't the man from the
tombs. Why? Why would a town witness the most
dramatic restoration in the gospel of Mark and
respond to Jesus with, please go? They didn't
say, teach us. They didn't say, heal more. They
said, leave. It wasn't disbelief. Mark is clear
about that. They saw the man. They knew him.
They had chained him themselves. Problem had
a cost. 2 ,000 pigs had just stampeded down a
steep bank into the sea and died. It's not metaphor.
That's inventory. It's livestock. That's somebody's
retirement. In one afternoon, the cost of one
man's restoration was written in many other people's
account ledgers. Healing stops being abstract
when it hits the books. And here's the layer
beneath the layer. because the man's suffering
had become load -bearing. He was the town's warning
label, the cautionary tale fathers told their
sons, the one that they could all point to and
say, well, at least I'm not that. Their social
order had quietly organized itself around his
instability. built on other people's brokenness,
function. They're terrible, but they work. A
demonized man in a graveyard doesn't disrupt
the normal seating charts. He doesn't apply for
jobs. He doesn't walk back into the room and
demand he be heard. But a healed man is unpredictable.
answers now for the years of chains who loses
the comfort of comparison if the man is now restored
the narrative collapses and if the narrative
collapses the town must reckon with what it's
tolerated what it called necessary as long as
it stayed manageable healed people expose what
normal is hiding. And sometimes, normal depends
on somebody staying sick. Notice Mark's language.
Sitting, not pacing, not screaming. The posture
of peace, a man whose interior weather has now
gone quiet. Clothed, dignity restored, no longer
a spectacle. In his right mind, surgical phrase,
his mind returned to itself. This is not merely
a spiritual deliverance. It's the restoration
of a human being to his dignity. And their response
to that is fear. And I also don't want to miss...
That what the demons call themselves, they use
a term. They call themselves legion. That's a
Roman military term. 6 ,000 soldiers. Occupation
fragmentation by force. Man didn't carry only
personal torment. Embodied what an empire does
to people. What domination does to our souls.
Now consider the pigs for a second. In Jewish
territory, on the other side of the lake, pigs
were unclean, according to Leviticus 11. Avoiding
them was an identity marker. We are Israel, not
the nations. But here, in the Decapolis, pigs
are ordinary livestock, economically normal,
culturally native. And Mark, very cool here.
stacks these scenes deliberately. The tombs,
unclean. Gentile land, outside covenant boundaries.
Pigs, unclean in Jewish imagination. And a demon,
named with a Roman military term. When Jesus
casts out legion, and the pigs rush into the
sea, marked. lets the unclean and the oppressive
collapse together in one violent purge. And the
town stands on the bank and starts doing the
math. This is why they asked him to leave. Not
because they doubted the miracle, but because...
They understand the authority that just stepped
on our shore is real. And then they began to
ponder, what might it cost us next? And you know
what? Cushing knows this math. Oil has run through
our veins longer than the pipelines. It gave
us jobs, identity, a welcome sign, slogan that...
I think is now rusting. It built churches just
like this one, 123 years old. But it also taught
us what it feels like when the only economy you've
known begins to cost something deeper. People's
health, fatigue, their imagination. The capitalist
was asking the same question Cushing has been
asking for decades. What if the system that feeds
us is also the one that keeps some of us bound
up? When Jesus steps ashore, healing becomes
expensive. Man gets his mind back and somebody's
herd runs into the sea. And they're grieving
the pigs. So here's my question. What are you
grieving? that you've been calling economics.
And Jesus doesn't argue with the town's ledger.
He doesn't apologize for the pigs. He does not
offer a slower, economically sensitive version
of liberation. He restores the man. And then
he leaves. He doesn't force his presence where
he is unwelcome. That's a whole nother sermon.
But he leaves behind something that cannot be
rechained and sent back into the caves. A healed
man, a witness, a disruption dressed in restoration.
Chapter 19 of our text says, Go, Jesus' words
to the man, go to your own people and tell them
what the Lord has done for you. And now he has
had mercy on you. And now let me turn the lens
on you, my fellow Christians, because your healing,
yours, is not only personal. It is public in
the truest sense of the word. Your healing, it
concerns the common life, the town, the system.
When you return restored, you disrupt the arrangement.
you remove their excuse against you. And your
healing may cost somebody their pigs. And they
may stand on the bank and grieve them. And you
know what? Let them grieve. You keep walking.
You're not meant to be load -bearing suffering.
You were not created To hold up someone else's
stability by staying unwell. By staying small.
By staying in your designated caves. Tragic,
but predictable. And if grace ever comes close
enough to threaten your version of normal, pay
attention to what it is you're protecting. Because
one thing we stand on around here, friends, is
grace does not ask permission. The kingdom of
God does not preserve dysfunction for the sake
of comfort. No, it restores. Even when restoration
costs pigs. Even when it frightens the neighbors.
even when it has to cross a storm to reach you
on the wrong side of the lake. A man once howling
in caves, now sitting clothed in his right mind.
And somewhere in the Decapolis, in the ten cities
where they knew his name and his history, he's
walking and he's bearing witness. Remember this,
one healed person loose in a system is more dangerous
than any chain ever forged. Amen? Amen. Thanks,
guys. Thanks for coming tonight. If you saw yourself
anywhere in that shoreline tonight, Standing
there doing the math, grieving the pigs, wondering
what mercy might cost, take a breath. Grace does
not come to humiliate you. It comes to restore
you. But restoration is honest. It will ask what
you've been protecting. It will name what you
have called necessary that might actually be
bondage and still, still crosses storms to reach
you. You're not meant to be load bearing suffering.
You are not here to hold up someone else's version
of normal by staying small. And if something
in you stirred tonight, don't push it back down.
Let it rise. Let mercy do what mercy does. And
hey, if you heard something new today, if you
heard something you hadn't heard before, something
you hadn't considered before, or a little like
in the offering plate like we used to do in church.
And we're just stepping into Lent. We're walking
this road all the way to Easter morning. And
if you'd like to keep walking with us, tithe
your subscribe. That way you'll know when it's
time for church again. And until we meet again,
friend, be blessed.