Oct 7 2019 Matthew 8: 28-34

Then the whole town came out to meet Jesus; and when they saw him, they begged him to leave their neighborhood.
This is Matthew’s account of Jesus healing the demon-filled men. There are two other accounts of this story in Mark and Luke. These three writers were talking to different audiences, trying to point out different stories. The three tellings are slightly different, and if I were more interested in comparing and contrasting their styles and audiences and messages, that would be an interesting rabbit hole. But other than to acknowledge that this is one of the stories that’s repeated and not exactly the same, I’m not interested.

Instead, I’m fascinated with the reaction of the townspeople. Jesus has healed two men who were so fierce, the people avoided them. The spirits of the two men saw Jesus, and acknowledged that Jesus could ‘torment’ the evil spirits. The spirits asked Jesus to send them into the neighboring herd of swine. In one powerful simple statement, “Go!”, Jesus did. The swine ran off the cliff into the sea. The swineherds ran off and told the townspeople what happened.

Instead of amazement at Jesus’ power over the spirits, joy in the healing of their fellow townspeople, or sadness over the loss of their herds, the people are apparently angry, and begged Jesus to leave their neighborhood.

It’s ironic, that in this story, the people who behave the worst by the end of the story are not the fierce men, but the townspeople. What is it they’re so upset about? Is it just about the loss of the swine?

I fear that it’s about the normalization of the other. For some reason, we seem to need to have someone who’s lower than us, less than us, worse off than us. We need to have someone to blame. We even go so far as to demonize the other. Whether it’s the homeless, criminals, refugees, corrupt political leaders, or even political leaders with whom we disagree, we ascribe so much other-ness, that they become the fierce demoniacs we try to avoid.

And the sad part is we are the ones who demonized them to begin with. We avoid immigrants. We walk on the other side of the street from the homeless. We avoid the mentally ill. We blame the political leaders. These are all conditions we created, or at least we could change.

In this story, Jesus removes those characteristics that resulted in the men’s ostracization. No longer is there anything that separates them from the rest of the townspeople. They are ready to be reintegrated into the society. Maybe not exactly as before, and maybe with different resources or supports.

The people will have none of it. They would rather have Jesus leave, than to be asked to dismantle their sense of the other, the lesser.

This morning, I’m thinking about how we do that, how we demonize people to separate them from us, and how we’d rather ask Jesus to leave than for Jesus to ask us to love. Today, I want to see those people we’ve demonized, and listen to Jesus’ command to help, heal, and love. For as uncomfortable as that might be, I’d rather be asked to love than to ask Jesus to leave.