making a memory

A couple of weeks ago, when our Mission Briefing instructed us to read and reflect on Jesus' encounter with the demonized man in Mark 5, I read and re-read that story five days in a row.  Each day I was surprised to find new questions and meaning in the passage I thought I knew so well.  


For example, I had never noticed or paid any attention to the sheer number of pigs in the story.  You remember that the demons, Legion, begged Jesus not to send them out of the area but to let them go into a large herd of pigs nearby.  Jesus gave them permission and the demons went into the pigs.  Then the whole heard of them ran down the bank, into the lake and drowned.  Mark says that there were about 2,000 pigs in all.  Two thousand?  That's a lot of pigs.  I'm thinking there is no way anyone that day forgot about those pigs.  


Imagine 2,000 pigs running down a bank and into the water.  The noise.  The splash.  The stink a few days later.  Whatever else Jesus was doing in this strange little story, he was making a memory.  And the image onlookers would have had in their minds for decades to come communicated two truths, if they were willing to admit them.  First, this legion of demons had a lot of power - enough to cause 2,000 pigs to jump to their deaths.  That's the kind of power that had been abusing and torturing the man, before Jesus came on the scene.  That kind of power is frightening.  Second, Jesus had even more power than the demons.  Jesus, after all, is the one who sent them into the pigs.  Jesus was the one with all of the say-so in the story.  They had to go where he told them to go or, at the very least, where he permitted them to go.  The legion of demons were powerful.  But Jesus was more powerful.


This part of the story speaks to an important reality in our study of spiritual warfare.  There is no dualism in Christianity.  God and Satan are not "equal but opposite" powers.  Not in the least.  God (and God in Christ) is the one who is in charge.  The legion of demons under the command of Jesus testifies to this reality.


As we put on the full armor of God, wage war against the enemy, pray and seek to live in ways that bring forth the kingdom of God, let us always be reminded of this memory: "You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world." (1 John 4.4)