Scripture Daily

Context No. 208 of 4322 · Matthew

Context · Reflection

Matthew 8:26-34: in context

26He said to them, “Why are you fearful, O you of little faith?” Then he got up, rebuked the wind and the sea, and there was a great calm. 27The men marveled, saying, “What kind of man is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?” 28When he came to the other side, into the country of the Gergesenes, two people possessed by demons met him there, coming out of the tombs, exceedingly fierce, so that nobody could pass that way. 29Behold, they cried out, saying, “What do we have to do with you, Jesus, Son of God? Have you come here to torment us before the time?” 30Now there was a herd of many pigs feeding far away from them. 31The demons begged him, saying, “If you cast us out, permit us to go away into the herd of pigs.” 32He said to them, “Go!” They came out and went into the herd of pigs; and behold, the whole herd of pigs rushed down the cliff into the sea and died in the water. 33Those who fed them fled and went away into the city and told everything, including what happened to those who were possessed with demons. 34Behold, all the city came out to meet Jesus. When they saw him, they begged that he would depart from their borders.

The scene opens in the middle of an action. Jesus and his disciples have just crossed the Sea of Galilee in a storm, and the passage begins with him rebuking the wind and the water into a dead calm. Then the boat lands on the far shore, the eastern side, Gentile country, and two men come out of the tombs to meet him.

Everything here would read as unclean to Jesus' own people: the tombs, the foreign territory, and the herd of pigs feeding on the hillside, an animal Jews did not raise or eat. The two men are so violent that the road past the tombs is closed. The demons in them know exactly who Jesus is, calling him Son of God and asking whether he has come to torment them ahead of the appointed time. They ask to be sent into the pigs. He allows it, and the whole herd runs down the slope into the water and drowns.

Then the part worth sitting with. The people who kept the pigs run to the town, and the whole town comes out, and what they ask is that Jesus leave their region. Two of their neighbors have just been freed, and the request is for the man who freed them to go. The herd was a livelihood, and its loss is real, and they weigh it and choose the quiet they had before. What have I asked God to take somewhere else, because his arrival cost me something I had counted on?

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