GREAT THINGS ENTERPRISE
CLAUDE BLACK
Mark 5:17
Do Not Distrub
In most hotel and motel rooms, there is a door hanger which reads: “Do Not Disturb.” The message and meaning of the sign are clear.
Before I retired, my day started early, at 5:00 a.m. I tried to get to the office early to prepare for the day. At that time of the morning, there were no voices or traffic in the hall, so there were a couple of hours for devotional reading, preparing the devotion for the classes, and preparing the lessons for the day. Starting the day early was a practice I began in my early pastoral days, and it felt comfortable. However, Alice insisted on beginning her day at the same time by preparing breakfast.
Saturday was a different day, though—it was the one day that I didn’t have to be in the office. It was the one day Alice didn’t have to start her day early, so if I stirred or attempted to get out of bed, her sleepy voice said, “Don’t bother me!” Those words were practically a threat.
St. Mark described Jesus’ confrontation with a man with an unclean spirit on the beach in the region of the Gerasenes. At last, the unclean spirit, or spirits, left the man to live in or among the pigs grazing on a nearby hillside. The pigs then stampeded into the sea and were drowned—Mark said there were about 2,000 pigs. The swineherders went through the country and into the city, reporting what happened on the beach. A sizeable crowd gathered to see a wild man in his right mind, clothed, and sitting before Jesus. “And they began to beg him to depart from their borders”—one might interpret this, in other words, that the crowd said, “Do not disturb us.”
Do not disturb our economy. By doing some rough, imprecise exchange-rate math, the people saw about $480,000 worth of pigs floating, dead in the sea. The writers do not state that the pig owners were Jewish, but this was a Jewish neighborhood, the Decapolis, surrounded by Roman soldiers, so the pig owners were likely Jewish—raising pigs?!
Do not disturb our society. It is incredible to think that these people, most of whom had likely never met Jesus, had a full Christology, but they saw someone whose presence would require reform, and they didn’t want it.
Do not disturb our religion. The religious leaders had accommodated themselves to congregants who were raising pigs. It’s interesting to see religion adjusting itself to society. The religious leaders had accepted the brutal treatment of a disturbed man whom people had tried to shackle and drive out of the city. This man’s presence would require a benevolent readjustment. The religious leaders had their liturgy, and this man Jesus did not fit into that liturgy.
“Do not disturb” and the presence of Jesus do not seem to be congruent.
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