AN UNLIKELY ANSWER

As the storm on the lake subsided, the disciples were left to whisper among themselves rhetorically, “Who is this?” amid the unnaturally sudden quiet.

But as the morning light began to creep over the hills of the eastern shore of Galilee, the disciples arrived to hear a frantic and aggressive answer to their question. “What do you want with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God?” yelled the demon-possessed man as he came to a stop in front of them (Luke 8:28). It is easy to imagine the disciples shrinking back, perhaps preparing to jump back into the boat. It was another moment for genuine fear.

But Jesus seemed undaunted in the face of this overt manifestation of evil. He engaged the man—or the demons that possessed him and spoke through him—in what would seem a strange conversation, except for our having heard this story so often. Jesus de-escalated the situation and dramatically changed the story in a way that demonstrated the truth of the man’s answer. That unfortunate man was in every way outside acceptable Jewish society—a demon-possessed non-Jew who lived in the cemetery of a community that kept pigs.

Yet he was healed and restored by Jesus, and such was the magnitude of his transformation that he became a messenger of Jesus in his home community.

“So the man went away and told all over town how much Jesus had done for him” (Luke 8:39). This is a story of the ultimate restoration of a man and his relationship with God, which then led to a restored relationship between him and his community, which then led to many more restored relationships with God. Sometime later, Jesus returned to this region, and it was near there that Jesus fed the crowd of “about 4000 men” (see Mark 8:1–9).