Freeing Legion

SLAVERY isn’t always about treating people as commodities and seeking to extract economic value from them. Sometimes it is about controlling others, or refusing them the freedom to live and flourish within a community.

In Mark 5.1-10 we hear the story of someone whose slavery was not economic in character. Rather he was deprived of his freedom and enslaved by the attitudes and prejudices of the people around him. Their fear and ignorance limited his potential.

Jesus crossed the Sea of Galilee to a place little frequented by Jewish travellers. Gerasa was Gentile territory (as the presence of a herd of pigs in the story attests.) Immediately on arrival, Jesus and the disciples are confronted by an agitated man living among the burial caves.

To his neighbours, he is a frightening and mysterious character. They cannot understand why he wanders among the tombs and hills, shouting out and cutting himself with stones. Their crude attempts to control him by putting him in chains have all failed due to his extraordinary strength.

The man from Gerasa is not a slave in our usual sense. But he is enslaved by the mental or spiritual disturbance he suff ers. It dominates his life, dictates his actions, and disconnects him from his community. He refers to himself as Legion, perhaps because it feels like there are many voices within him all competing to be heard. In a vain attempt to distract himself from his mental anguish, he even resorts to self-harm, hoping the physical pain will blot out the mental pain for a while.

Attempts to constrain his freedom with chains may have failed, but the suspicion and fear with which he is regarded remove his freedom to live in society. The only place he feels at home is amongst the dead.

Yet Jesus refuses to see him as just a nuisance or someone to be avoided. He gives him the respect of asking his name. He talks to the man about his condition, and then he carries out an act of healing.

Legion’s slavery is the consequence of his mental or spiritual health combined with the attitudes of his society, but his neighbours have a diff erent kind of enslavement of their own. The sight of their neighbour, calm, dressed and reasonable does not evoke their gratitude. Instead they are enraged at losing their pigs who have stampeded into the lake. Their thoughts are dominated to the point of enslavement by their possessions, so they cannot appreciate what Jesus has done. The healer is told to leave town, for the freedom he off ers is too costly.

Understandably Legion wants to escape the place where he has been rejected and excluded. He wants to go with Jesus. Instead, however, he is freed to live within his own community and given the challenge of reminding people there of the depth of God’s love, evidenced by his healing.

The straitjackets of conformity and expectation too easily chain those who could, with understanding and consideration, enjoy flourishing lives. Missing the potential of those who are difficult, disturbed or unconventional is not a price we can aff ord to pay. We too are called to enable people to flourish, and to include them in welcoming communities.

The Rev Richard Baxter is minister at Fort William: Duncansburgh MacIntosh linked with Kilmonivaig