God’s Word for You
Mark 5:14-17 dressed and in his right mind
by Pastor Timothy Smith on Sunday, September 25, 2022
14 The men herding the pigs ran and reported it in the town and in the countryside. Then the people came to see what had happened. 15 When they came to Jesus they saw the man who had been possessed by the legion of demons, sitting there, dressed and in his right mind, and they were afraid. 16 And those who had seen it described for them what had happened to the demon-possessed man and to the pigs. 17 And they began to beg Jesus to leave their region.
The pig herders had to report what happened to the pig owners. Moses said that a herdsman was required to bring proof if an animal under his care was killed by a wild animal or lost in some other way (Exodus 22:13; Amos 3:12). It would probably make a hired worker nervous to report one dead pig. Imagine having to go and say, “All of them, all two thousand, are drowned!”
The owners and the other townspeople came to see. They all would have been filled with dread because they were going to be close to the place where that wild, untameable demon-man lived. Had the wild man killed the pigs? Had he driven them into the sea? Did they imagine him wielding a club and shouting like the maniac that he was, frightening the pigs so that they ended up with their snouts under water?
When they arrived, sure enough, there were the hogs. The sickening scene of the pig’s dead bodies rocking gently under water with each back-and-forth wash of the tide filled their attention, but something else caught their eye right away, too. There was the wild man, but not wild. There was that man who was usually naked and bleeding, crying and sobbing or screaming, but he wasn’t screaming or sobbing or crying. There he was, dressed, calm, quiet, and in his right mind. He was their old acquaintance from town once again. There was their friend. Once again he was their old neighbor. He was his mother’s son.
This man was a living reminder of the way each one of us was saved; most of us as infants. We were wild, crazed with unbelief, crying, sobbing at least inwardly, enemies of God without fear of God or faith in God. Then came Jesus. He drove out our unbelief and filled us with faith.
This filling, the working of faith, is always through the arrival of the gospel. The gospel can be transmitted through the application of baptism (which is the gospel together with the washing of water, Matthew 28:19), or through the arrival of the text of the gospel in our eyes, ears, or mind, through preaching, hearing, reading, or meditating on the word of God. Jesus said: “I pray for those who are going to believe in me through their (the apostles’) word” (John 17:20).
Pray for those who read, teach, preach, and share the word of God in your church and in your home. If you share it with a child, don’t assume that they know what every word means. If a strange word shows up in what you read, teach them honesty in reading by looking the word up. If it’s a strange name, do your best. If it’s an unusual English word, that’s one to look up, like the word “legion” in this passage. If your children know that you have to look things up, too, then they will feel better about doing it themselves. If you already know, then share that with them and be a genius in their eyes. This is part of what it means to be a child of God—a child of God who helps look after some of God’s other children. One day, following your example, they will do the same.
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in New Ulm, Minnesota. To receive God’s Word for You via e-mail, please visit the St. Paul’s Lutheran Church website.