Send Them to the Pigs! Reflections on Luke 8:26-39, Pentecost 2, Year C

by John C, Holbert on Friday, May 2, 2025

          We have today a text with a named location for which we have no solid evidence of its existence. Manuscripts vary about the title of the city where the action occurs: Gerasenes, say some; Gaderenes, another; Gergesenes a third. It is supposed to be close to the Sea of Galilee, but we will never be certain. What we can be certain of is the existence there of a man possessed by demons. There is little use in fighting about whether the tale is somehow historical, that these supernatural beings really exist. It is 2000 years ago, and rational explanations for odd human behaviors are not easily available. The man said to be possessed, due to his violent and unpredictable actions is no longer welcome to live in a house, but must reside among the tombs, the place of the dead, and like those dead he wears no clothes, but is naked. In short, he is a man cut off from any community.

         When the man saw Jesus, who has stepped out of a boat after a rough voyage on the sea, the man fell on his face, a typical action of worship, but not in this case. He cries out in a very loud voice, “What is there between us, Jesus Son of God Most High?” (Luke 8:28) This is of course the demons talking, and already they are cowed by the presence of Jesus, because they “beg him,” “do not torment me!” Luke tells us that “Jesus was (already) ordering the unclean spirit to go out of the man” (Luke 8:29). Luke follows Mark’s telling here quite closely, making it plain that the demon knows well just who Jesus is, while his disciples are very slow to understand that fact.

         Jesus demands the name of the demon, and receives a memorable reply. “Legion,” he shouts. The word is a Latin loanword in Greek. The Roman military unit called Legio had between four and six thousand soldiers; thus, the possessed man is riddled with demons indeed! The demons began begging Jesus “not to send them to the abyss” (Luke 8:31). While Mark has the Legion afraid to be sent out of the region, Luke makes their fears far more cosmic. They do not want to be returned to the place whence they came, namely abyssos. The abyss is the place of the beast in Rev.11:7 and 17:8, and ultimately in Rev.20:3 the final abode of Satan. The word comes from the Septuagint translation of Hebrew tehom,the “deep” where the sea monsters live (Gen 1:2, 7:11).

         Instead, the demons ask Jesus to send them into a herd of pigs grazing nearby which he allows them to do. Ironically, the pigs rush headlong into the sea, dragging the demons with them, so the demons end up in a watery place anyway! The reactions to all this drama are interesting. The pig-keepers watch their flock drown in the sea, and immediately flee into “the city and the countryside” to tell the tale (Luke 8:34). As a result, “people come out to see what had happened, go up to Jesus, and see the formerly possessed man clothed and in his right mind” (Luke 8:35). “And they grew afraid.” The source of their fear is not all that clear. Are they afraid because of Jesus’s display of power? Are they afraid because the man they had pegged as insane was now no longer so? Just what sort of world will it be for them if crazy people, living outside and naked, suddenly seem fine? 

         But that is not their only, nor greatest, fear. “Those who had seen told them how the demoniac was saved. The entire assembly of the Gerasene region asked him to depart from them, for they were seized with great fear” (Luke 8:36-37). They are afraid for several possible reasons, but now they are “seized” with a much greater fear, and as a result, demand that “he” get out of their region. Is the “he” the demoniac or Jesus? Perhaps both? Since Jesus gets into the boat apparently to depart, the “he” is presumably Jesus. But what are they to do with this man, formerly dangerous and uncontrollable, but now calm and sitting among them?

         That man, seeing Jesus leaving, begs to go with him (Luke 8:38). Jesus refuses, but rather assigns the man a task: “Go back to your house  and relate everything that God has done for you.” But will that not be a very hard task! He has not lived in a “house” for a period of time, but has squatted among the dead, bound with chains and screaming wildly. How will he be received in a house after all that? Who will listen to him? Nonetheless, “he went away, preaching throughout the whole city everything Jesus did for him” (Luke 8:39). We note that Luke does not tell us if his preaching bore fruit!

         We see clearly here the result of being saved, being made whole again. Salvation, according to Luke, is a two-pronged event. First, there are the signs of being made whole. Here the demons are controlled and sent to their watery abyss. But second, the saved man is charged with the call of Jesus to tell his story, no matter how difficult that may be under the circumstances. Is it not so for us? Being “saved” is merely step one; the one saved must be ready to tell what has happened, to spread the good news widely that Jesus is active in the world, moving that world toward wholeness and unity. Those saved ones are the witnesses to that reality.