What have we to do with You, Jesus, You Son of God? Have You come here to torment us before the time?

 When He had come to the other side, to the country of the Gergesenes, there met Him two demon-possessed men, coming out of the tombs, exceedingly fierce, so that no one could pass that way.  And suddenly they cried out, saying, "What have we to do with You, Jesus, You Son of God?  Have You come here to torment us before the time?"  Now a good way off from them there was a herd of many swine feeding.  So the demons begged Him, saying, "If You cast us out, permit us to go away into the herd of swine."  And He said to them, "Go."  So when they had come out, they went into the herd of swine.  And suddenly the whole herd of swine ran violently down the steep place into the sea, and perished in the water.  Then those who kept them fled; and they went away into the city and told everything, including what had happened to the demon-possessed men.  And behold, the whole city came out to meet Jesus.  And when they saw Him, they begged Him to depart from their region.

- Matthew 8:28-34

Yesterday we read that when Jesus saw great multitudes about Him, He gave a command to depart to the other side.  Then a certain scribe came and said to Him, "Teacher, I will follow You wherever You go."  And Jesus said to him, "Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head."  Then another of His disciples said to Him, "Lord, let me first go and bury my father."  But Jesus said to him, "Follow Me, and let the dead bury their own dead."  Now when He got into a boat, His disciples followed Him.  And suddenly a great tempest arose on the sea, so that the boat was covered with the waves.  But He was asleep.  Then His disciples came to Him and awoke Him, saying, "Lord, save us!  We are perishing!"  But He said to them, "Why are you fearful, O you of little faith?"  Then He arose and rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was a great calm.  So the men marveled, saying, "Who can this be, that even the winds and the sea obey Him?"

When He had come to the other side, to the country of the Gergesenes, there met Him two demon-possessed men, coming out of the tombs, exceedingly fierce, so that no one could pass that way.  And suddenly they cried out, saying, "What have we to do with You, Jesus, You Son of God?  Have You come here to torment us before the time?"  Now a good way off from them there was a herd of many swine feeding.  So the demons begged Him, saying, "If You cast us out, permit us to go away into the herd of swine."  And He said to them, "Go."  So when they had come out, they went into the herd of swine.  And suddenly the whole herd of swine ran violently down the steep place into the sea, and perished in the water.  Then those who kept them fled; and they went away into the city and told everything, including what had happened to the demon-possessed men.  And behold, the whole city came out to meet Jesus.  And when they saw Him, they begged Him to depart from their region.  My study bible comments on the demons in today's reading.  It says that they recognize Jesus as the Son of God, and are surprised that their power is being terminated before the time of the last judgment.  Although the malice of the demons is evident, they still can do nothing against the will of God, and therefore can only enter the swine at the command of Christ.  The immediate destruction of the herd of swine, my study bible says, shows that the men had been protected by God's care.  Otherwise, they would have perished under this clearly destructive demonic influence.  Moreover, it's a reinforcement of the unlawful practice of swineherding for the Jews, and it also shows the incomparable value of human beings, for whom salvation is worth every sacrifice. 

It's interesting to think of the protection of these men, although they were demon-possessed.  Clearly the demons are destructive, and they lead the swine to mass suicide.  So what of these men?  Why does God allow evil in the world, and yet the men were protected?  I don't pretend to have the answers to all of the questions raised by such a scenario, for many theologians and philosophers -- geniuses all -- have provided us with various answers.  I can't even pretend to know or understand them all.  But we have been taught to stick with what we know or have experienced, and so I may say that it is my belief that very deeply within us there are choices that are made.  Sometimes, perhaps even often, those choices are made without our conscious knowledge.  We might wonder how we can claim a freedom to choose when we aren't even conscious of rational reasoning about those choices.  Nevertheless, I think it's true that we make choices from such deep places within ourselves that we're not entirely aware of them, and those choices do tell us something about ourselves.  Our deepest impulses of the heart are, importantly, clearly known to God.  This is why it is so significant that Christ is known as the "heart-knower" (see Acts 1:24).  There are things deep within ourselves of which we are not aware, but Christ is aware.  These demonic forces have chosen for destruction of human beings.  Why?  That is another question I could not venture to answer.  I simply know that it is so.  But one thing is clear from the Bible and the Gospels in particular:  that our world is not "fixed" simply because Christ has come into it.  Oh perhaps in an absolute sense this is true, that salvation is already full in a place we cannot access.  But the time when that occurs is "the time" of Judgment, Christ's return, to which the demons allude when they ask if He has "come here to torment us before the time."  Where we are now in time, we human beings live with both evil and good, and we are in the midst of time making choices.  Jesus teaches us, in the Sermon on the Mount:  "You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven; for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust" (Matthew 5:43-45).  To my mind it is a clear acknowledgement of the evil and the good existing at once together in this world.  That would include even the demonic influences we see at work in today's reading.  So given this state of the world, one might conclude that it's simple to think why that might be.  We are called to choose the good.  But choosing the good is not so simple.  Christ Himself makes that clear in the teaching just cited from the Sermon on the Mount.  We're not called upon to respond to evil with evil; that does not build up Christ's Kingdom in the world.  We are called instead to "withdraw" into Christ's love and protection, and to follow Him.  This is the way that we build the Kingdom in the world.  It is the way that we live a prayerful life with each decision and step.  It is the sense in which we may start to understand the mysteries He opens to us, that He came into the world to reveal and to draw us into.  And that protective power of God, even to cast off demons, is with Him and in Him and in the life into which He invites us to participate.  It doesn't come with conventional understanding nor conventional weapons.  It comes through the saints, through the Church as a whole, and by doing our best to keep His word, to love God as God loves us.  Let us start there and find our places, even as Jesus calls these demon-possessed men to wholeness as well.  Let us note in the text that those raising swine are most likely meant to be apostate Jews who do not follow the Mosaic Law.  They reject Jesus through fear, and do not embrace what He offers with love.  In that is also a story of how we choose and reveal what is most important to us - and that we cannot embrace both God and mammon, and what Jesus calls the deceitfulness of riches.