The Man Who Lived in the Tombs

The boat was still dripping from the storm when it bumped onto the stones on the far side of the lake. Jesus climbed out with his friends at the foot of a steep hill. Up the slope, cut into the rock, were tombs where the dead were buried.

Something was moving among the tombs.

A man came running down the hill toward them, shrieking. He had no clothes on. Night and day he wandered the graves, crying out and hurting himself with sharp stones. Bits of broken chain swung from his wrists. The townspeople had chained him again and again, and every time he snapped the chains apart. Nobody was strong enough to stop him, so they had left him out there with the dead.

(If you had been one of Jesus' friends, you might have wished you were back in the boat, storm and all.)

But the man did not attack. He threw himself down at Jesus' feet, and a loud, terrible voice came out of him.

"What do you want with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? In God's name, don't hurt me!"

For Jesus had already been saying, "Come out of this man, you evil spirit!"

"What is your name?" Jesus asked.

"My name is Legion," said the voice, "because there are many of us." (A legion was a Roman army of thousands of soldiers. This poor man had a whole army of evil spirits inside him.) And they begged Jesus again and again not to send them out of that country.

On the hillside a huge herd of pigs was snuffling for roots. (God's people, Israel, never kept pigs. The people who lived on this side of the lake did.)

"Send us into the pigs," the spirits begged. "Let us go into them!"

Jesus let them. Out of the man they went, and into the pigs, about two thousand of them. The whole herd squealed and stampeded down the steep bank, SPLASH, into the lake, and every pig drowned.

The pig-keepers ran all the way to town. "The pigs! All of them! In the lake!" The whole town hurried out to see.

There sat the wild man of the tombs, beside Jesus, dressed and calm and thinking clearly.

The townspeople had been afraid of him for years. Now they were afraid because he was well. When they heard about the pigs, they begged Jesus, "Please leave our country."

Jesus got back into the boat. The man ran down to the water. "Let me come with you!" he begged.

"No," Jesus said. "Go home to your family. Tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you."

The man went. He walked through the Ten Towns there, telling everyone what Jesus had done for him, and everyone who heard was amazed.

The town had brought chains, and when the chains broke, it walked away. Chains can hold a body for a while. They cannot reach inside and set a person free.

Jesus had once said that the devil is like a strong man guarding his house, and no one can rob it until someone stronger ties him up. On that hillside the stronger one stepped out of a boat. He carried no chain. He spoke, and a whole army of darkness had to beg him for permission. He had crossed a stormy lake for one man the whole town had given up on.

Later, Jesus came back to the Ten Towns. This time no one asked him to leave. They brought him a man who could not hear and begged Jesus to lay his hand on him. Someone had been telling them what Jesus could do.