Every so often I run into a story in the Bible that leaves me speechless. It's one of the ones that is so odd we don't really know how to react to it. And in these stories we can take a few different paths. One of them is we simply call it allegory or metaphor and we can allow ourselves to learn from it without ever accepting the truth of it. Another pathway we can take is that it is 100% real we need to read it as real and interpret it as real and allow it to speak into our lives as real.

And I think this is one of them.

Clean and Unclean matter to Jesus, not out of judgement, but because of healing.

They came to the other side of the sea, to the country of the Gerasenes. And when Jesus had stepped out of the boat, immediately there met him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit. He lived among the tombs. And no one could bind him anymore, not even with a chain, for he had often been bound with shackles and chains, but he wrenched the chains apart, and he broke the shackles in pieces. No one had the strength to subdue him. Night and day among the tombs and on the mountains he was always crying out and cutting himself with stones. And when he saw Jesus from afar, he ran and fell down before him. And crying out with a loud voice, he said, "What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I adjure you by God, do not torment me." For he was saying to him, "Come out of the man, you unclean spirit!" And Jesus asked him, "What is your name?" He replied, "My name is Legion, for we are many." And he begged him earnestly not to send them out of the country. Now a great herd of pigs was feeding there on the hillside, and they begged him, saying, "Send us to the pigs; let us enter them." So he gave them permission. And the unclean spirits came out and entered the pigs; and the herd, numbering about two thousand, rushed down the steep bank into the sea and drowned in the sea.

The herdsmen fled and told it in the city and in the country. And people came to see what it was that had happened. And they came to Jesus and saw the demon-possessed man, the one who had had the legion, sitting there, clothed and in his right mind, and they were afraid. And those who had seen it described to them what had happened to the demon-possessed man and to the pigs. And they began to beg Jesus to depart from their region. As he was getting into the boat, the man who had been possessed with demons begged him that he might be with him. And he did not permit him but said to him, "Go home to your friends and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you." And he went away and began to proclaim in the Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him, and everyone marveled. Mark 5:1-20 ESV

Through the last few weeks we have talked about Jesus' struggles with the religious leaders about purity and behavior. And we don't need to think that Jesus doesn't care about our holiness. This story is one that jars our senses, but also makes us think about how clean or unclean we might be.

So lets talk about what we have hiding out in caves and running to Jesus