MARK 5: 1-20

Who is the filthiest: the pig or rather the one who feeds him?

Gerasa is a small ultra pagan village that is perched on a cape over the Lake of Galilee. A subdivision of the Roman Legion made it a military basis and 2,000 soldiers armed to the teeth have set up camp in that place. Their mission is to rule with a strong grip the whole of that zone that is light-heartedly colonized and exploited by the Roman Empire.

In the eyes of the well-bred Jews who live on the other shore of the lake, those Romans are wicked creatures sent by no other than the devil to contaminate their blessed soil and to drive their people to perdition. That soldierly presence coming from abroad does not only kill with all one's strength and engage in all kinds of vices, but also adores degenerate gods, forces the people to worship the statue of its emperor and, to cap it all, eats pork!

Who are therefore those people who supply with pigs those damn Romans, if not the big owners of Gerasa? For them the Romans are manna from heaven. And so, they frantically invest in the raising of pigs and then sell them at a high price to the rich occupiers.

Funny, is it not? Those Roman «pigs» which poison the life of the Gerasians are fattening themselves, thanks to other Gerasians who in turn grease themselves, thanks to the pennies of the Romans. So what? Business is business!

The country of Jesus is a country of Jews allergic to pork and it is located, as we said already, on the other side of the lake, facing Gerasa. Never would Jew who respects himself would allow his fishing boat to approach that Gerasa that smells the devil and the pig within kilometers.

But one day, without any passport nor any other ID card, Jesus decides to cross that forbidden frontier. He calls his travelling companions, all of them as Jewish as he is, brings them into their boat and head straight for Gerasa.

No need to insist, the crossing rapidly turned into a nightmare. The boys were frightened out of their wits, maybe more because of their prejudices and their superstitions than by the terrible rainstorm that suddenly begins in the middle of the lake. Jesus is forced to raise his voice so that his friends pull themselves together and finally calm down. At last, it is the arrival in Gerasa. All are safe and sound.

The moment Jesus sets foot outside the boat, a dark thing looms up from behind the tombs of the local cemetery and runs at full speed towards him. The people of the place explain that it is a mad person who lives with the dead; at all hours of the day or of the night, he shrieks like a wild beast while slashing his body with sharp stones (like are used to do the pagan seers during their mystic delirious state). Each time we try to tie him with chains and shackles, he smashes everything to pieces. No one can dominate him. He is a monster.

Arriving near Jesus, the monster jumps over him as if to kill him. But Jesus balks, and using the same voice which had overcome the storm on the lake, he succeeds in having the unfortunate fellow fall at his feet. A husky voice, together imploring and sarcastic, comes out of his throat. Whining, he implores Jesus not to torture him.

- If you want me to get out of the body of that man, I beg you, send me in the body of the pigs that are there on the hillside...

- What is your name? asks Jesus, really decided to get at the bottom of things.

- My name is...« Legion »...

It is now all clear! That man is not an ordinary man! He embodies the people of Gerasa, and many other peoples who, like Jesus' own people, are dominated, if not, « possessed » by the Roman legion...

To adapt to the empire, those peoples lose their identity, their liberty, their dignity and even their reason to live. They become like waste...They self-destruct. They cover their bodies and souls with mortal wounds, like that poor fellow with his sharp stones and his haunt among the tombs.

And so, Jesus orders to the spirit « Legion » to leave the body of the poor devil and sends it packing into the herd of pigs that were grazing in the steep slope above the lake. The shock is brutal. In spite of their very bad reputation, the pigs, less accommodating than some Jews, show themselves incapable to swallow the spirit « Legion » and prefer to commit suicide by hurling themselves from the cliff into the lake. 2,000 pigs died by drowning that day. As many drown pigs as soldiers forming the Roman subdivision of Gerasa!

That is when our unhappy fellow recovers his spirits. He is washed, neatly clothed, and he has become a new man. Bur the celebration immediately turns sour. The owners of the pigs are beside themselves and expel Jesus from their country.

Who wants to understand, may he succeed in doing so!

With this story, we clearly see that Jesus does not like the Roman legions, neither those who collaborate with them. He is not a friend of the military boots neither a friend of dictatorships. He is not friend of foreign powers that, under the mask of love for democracy, of human aid or of development or under the mask of the fight against terrorism or drugs, slip into other countries to control them and dominate them. He is not also a friend of those who raise pigs to fatten other pigs...

But what a lack of kindness on his part! That he has raised a miserable man from a bottomless abyss, everyone rejoices, but at what price, God almighty! Let us put ourselves in the place of those pig breeders of which Jesus has caused the death: are they not right to be furious against him? By chance, does a human being worth 2,000 pigs?

- Yes, of course! answers Jesus.

Even if it is about a marginal, a madman, a pervert, a monster who sows terror? Even if he is full of demons, even if he is also as wicked as a Roman legion that steals, rapes, tramples on, humiliates and oppresses a whole people?

- Not only is it just to sacrifice the economy of a whole village, but also that of a whole country, says Jesus. Even the economy of the whole world!

The economy which until now has dictated what goes on in the world is more destructive than 2 billion bombs equal to those that were used, 50 years ago, to wipe out Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

That economy was built on the back of 99% of humankind, at the cost of the dignity, of the freedom and of the rights of individuals and of whole nations, by flouting them, by mocking them, by deceiving them, by corrupting them, by totally exploiting them and by slaughtering them.

That economy is responsible for the wounds, the frustrations, the hate, the violence and the decline of its victims. Monsters like that poor devil of Gerasa are created each day by that economy which sends them by thousands to live among the dead and experience the nightmares of the huge human dumps which constantly pop up all over the planet.

That economy which sacrifices persons and peoples to pigs and not pigs to persons is damned. That is why, some day, everything will blow up. It is not only 2,000 pigs that will fall in the water, or two towers of New York that will go up in smoke, but it will be the whole world economy that will collapse. What's more, it has already begun.

Obama himself, and he is a good boy, feels pity for the pigs of Wall Street and feeds them. But it is possible that some day those same pigs turn against him and bite him, because we must not feed the pigs neither throw pearls to them (Matt. 7:6).

And much less give them billions, would add Jesus...

Eloy Roy

Translated from the French by Jacques Bourdages