bible study

After the disastrous outcome of trying to conduct a study in an apartment while four children ran about screaming and playing and distracting us from the study at hand, we are once again planning to have it at our house. Next meeting is 7:30 p.m. Aug. 28.

We ended up reading Mark 4:35-5:20, the account of the disciples' crossing the Sea of Galilee and the encounter with Legion.

We talked a bit about why Jesus wanted to go to the other side of the lake. Possibilities included a calculated decision to take the gospel to Gentiles and even to Legion specifically (the other side of the Sea of Galilee, the Gerasens, was a Gentile-occupied area). We also considered the possibility that Jesus just wanted to get away from the crowd and figured the other side of the lake would do the job. And of course, he was just plain tired -- Mark makes a point of it that Jesus was so tired he was sleeping through a storm the disciples thought they were going to drown in.

And of course, this is the famous scene where Jesus commands the sea to be quiet. We talked about that as well, namely why Jesus rebuked the disciples for their lack of faith and why the disciples would lack faith. They had seen a few healings so far, and they had witnessed Jesus' authority over demons repeatedly.

What struck me as we discussed it was that the disciples probably lacked faith because they kept seeing Jesus' humanity. Usually when we read the gospels we read miracle after miracle and encounter mind-blowing teachings and cleverness. The disciples, while they witnessed these things, also witnessed other things that we normally wouldn't associate with divinity: things like Jesus not watching where he was going and tripping as a result, cooking dinner poorly, going to the bathroom, and all sorts of other all-too-human things like falling asleep from exhaustion.

Evidently Jesus felt they should understand his fully human, fully divine nature better, or he wouldn't have rebuked them. It's interesting that we often fall into the opposite error and forget his humanity.

We also stopped to talk a bit about what it must have done to the disciples' faith to see Jesus calm the storm with just a word -- and hit upon the application of the times we feel a little overwhelmed with a situation and wonder if Jesus is asleep at the wheel, not caring if we get swept away.

The talk about Legion perhaps got into demonology more than I had wanted it to. John proposed the notion that demons possess people as a sort of parasitic need; i.e., they draw energy off a person. I countered that that's a little too anthropomorphistic for my tastes. Instead, I mentioned that -- as I've heard -- the Greek word or phrase we translate for possession in different contexts is translated as an anointing. Rather than a demon speaking through a person or controlling them, the demon is warping or corrupting the person. Why? I posited that it's mainly to revel in the destruction of a living being and its pain. Thus, the legion of demons tormenting the tatterdemalion at the start of Mark 5 are doing it just to torture him. It would be interesting to know this fellow's back story; evidently he recognizes Jesus, probably as a result of the demonic influences on his life (every other demon encountered so far in the book of Mark has identified Jesus' authority and divinity as well).

Another interesting note is that while the NIV notes that Legion runs forward and falls at Jesus' feet, the RSV translates this as "worship." Ironically, it seems to be the same thing happening -- not an ecstatic act of worship, but a recognition of Jesus' authority and a request for clemency.

And another aside: This is about as unclean an area as you can get. They're in a land of an unclean people (Gentiles), with a man possessed by unclean spirits and who lives in tombs, near another man who herds unclean animals (pigs). In a very literal sense, Jesus has entered hostile territory. Hard to imagine a more hostile territory in some ways.

Discussion also dealt with the pigs. Why did the demons ask to be sent into the pigs? Why did Jesus allow them to go there? My contention as to the second point -- aside from the acknowledgment that this was a tremendous loss to the swineherd -- was what happened next. The swineherd ran into town, and everyone came out, only to find a bunch of dead pigs floating in the water and the demoniac completely in his right mind.

Interesting that, like the disciples, the crowd is terrified of Jesus and asks him to leave.

Final comments were on the demoniac's desire to go with Jesus and that Jesus actually tells him to stay, facilitating greater knowledge of him throughout the Gentiles of the Decapolis.