Text
23 He got into a boat, and his disciples followed. 24 A great storm rose up on the sea, so that the boat was taking on water from the waves. He was asleep. 25 They woke him, saying, “Lord, save us! We are perishing!” 26 He said to them, “Why are you afraid, you of little of faith?” Then he rose and rebuked the wind and the sea, and there was a deep calm. 27 They were amazed, saying, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey?”
28 When he arrived on the other side, in the country of the Gadarenes, two demon-possessed men came out from among some tombs to confront him. They were very violent, so that it was impossible for anyone to pass by them on that road. 29 They screamed and said, “What have you to do with us, Son of God? Have you come to torment us before our time?” 30 A long way off from them, there was a large herd of pigs grazing. 31 The demons begged him, saying, “If you cast us out, send us into that herd of pigs.” 32 He said to them, “Go.” They left the men and entered into the pigs, and the whole herd rushed down the bank into the sea, where they drowned in the water. 33 The swineherds fled back to the city, where they told the people what had happened to the demon-possessed men. 34 The whole town came out to meet Jesus, and when they saw him, they begged him to leave their territory.
Comments
Up until now, Mt can give the impression that Jesus is a humane ethical teacher and a gentle faith healer. That is not wrong, but it is also not complete. In this passage, Mt makes clear that Jesus represents a breaking of the Divine into the human world - an invasion of Heaven into Earth - with effects that can rightly terrify people. While crossing the Sea of Galilee, Jesus rebukes the wind and the sea, calming a violent storm. Outside the Hellenistic city of Gadara, he exorcises two violent demoniacs. Mt presents these as twin stories: in both cases, Jesus calms violent forces that are blocking his progress: a storm blocking his voyage across the Sea of Galilee, and the two demoniacs blocking his passage along the road. In both cases, Jesus seems totally unconcerned: sleeping through the storm, and uninterested in sparing more than a single word for the demons. In both cases, other people are frightened of Jesus: the shaken disciples are forced to ask themselves who their teacher really might be, while the Gadarenes (who are Greek-speaking Gentiles, hence the pigs) want no part of whatever might scare the two horrors who had been living in their cemetery and ask Jesus to leave.
