“My name is Legion–for we are many.” – Part 1
We’ve all encountered crazy people. They are the ones howling at the moon or swatting away invisible objects or having conversations with themselves. They are the ones who hear voices and have hallucinations and are disconnected from reality. And when we see ‘crazy’, we know what to do–cross to the other side of the street and pull our children a little closer to us because there is something “wrong with them.”
Jesus encountered ‘crazy’ too. And no one seemed more crazy than the man Jesus and his disciples met upon arriving at the region of the Geresenes. (See Mark 5:1-9) This man is obviously deranged. He is out of his mind. He lives in a cemetery–completely isolated from the rest of the community and family. He is out of control. The community has tried to contain him, but he has broken free every chain and shackle they have used to bind him. He is self-mutilating. He is more like an animal than a man, howling in the night. This man has experienced complete social, physical, mental and spiritual dis-integration. He’s insane.
What is the cause of his insanity? Mark describes the man as possessed by an impure spirit. He is under the control of an outside demonic influence. But rather than avoid the man, Jesus engaged him and sought to help him. In an uncharacteristic act, Jesus asked the man/impure spirit his name. And the man/impure spirit identified himself as “Legion–for we are many.”
For many of us who have grown up with this story, we assume that this man had become possessed because of some deficiency in his moral character, some commitment of terrible sins, some omission in his spiritual practice, or worse–some active participation in the occult, opening himself to the Satanic world. For most of us, Legion is simply a reference to the multiple demons possessing the man as a result of his own multiple acts of spiritual waywardness.
But for the people reading Mark’s gospel, the name “Legion” meant more than just a large number. The name indicated the real source of the man’s madness.