Legion: Mark 5:1-20

The boat scraped ashore in Gentile territory—the region of the Gerasenes, where pigs rooted in the hills and Jews rarely ventured. Before Jesus could step fully onto the beach, a figure came hurtling from the tombs.

He was a horror. Naked, filthy, his body a map of self-inflicted wounds. The townspeople had tried to restrain him—chains on his wrists, shackles on his ankles—but he had torn them apart like thread. No one was strong enough to subdue him. Night and day, among the tombs and in the hills, he shrieked and slashed himself with stones. The living dead, haunting the houses of the dead.

But when he saw Jesus, he ran toward him—not to attack, but to fall at his feet.

"What do you want with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God?" The voice was his but not his—a chorus of voices tangled together. "In God's name don't torture me!"

Jesus had already commanded the spirits to leave. Now he asked: "What is your name?"

"My name is Legion," came the answer, "for we are many."

A Roman legion was six thousand soldiers. The man before him was a battlefield, a conquered territory occupied by an army of darkness. And now that army begged—begged—not to be sent out of the region.

A herd of pigs grazed on the hillside. Two thousand of them. "Send us among the pigs," the demons pleaded. "Let us go into them."

Jesus gave permission.

The effect was instantaneous and catastrophic. The entire herd—two thousand animals—stampeded down the steep bank and plunged into the lake. The water churned with their thrashing, then went still. Two thousand pigs floated dead in the Sea of Galilee.

The herdsmen fled to town, words tumbling over themselves. People streamed out to see what had happened, and what they found terrified them more than the demoniac ever had: the wild man sitting calmly at Jesus' feet, dressed, clear-eyed, sane. The chaos was gone. The army had been routed. And the pigs were dead.

They begged Jesus to leave.

The healed man begged to stay with Jesus, to follow wherever he went. But Jesus said no. "Go home to your own people. Tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you."

So he went. He told everyone in the Decapolis—ten Gentile cities—what Jesus had done for him. And all who heard were amazed.

One man, sent home, became a missionary to regions Jesus would never reach. The first evangelist to the Gentile world had once called himself Legion.