March 14, 2025
Today’s Reading: Mark 5:1-20
Daily Lectionary: Genesis 13:1-18; Genesis 14:1-24; Mark 5:1-20
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. (Mark 5:13)
In the Name + of Jesus. Amen.
Unclean spirits hate water. When Jesus explains what happens after an unclean spirit has gone out of a person, he says, “…it passes through waterless places seeking rest, but finds none.” (Matt. 12:43). Waterless places–the wilderness and the desert–are often associated with demonic forces in the Bible.
Such a dry spirit can return. Jesus continues, “Then it says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came.’ And when it comes, it finds the house empty, swept, and put in order. Then it goes and brings with it seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they enter and dwell there, and the last state of that person is worse than the first” (Matt. 12:45). What do you do when the spirits are many?
Such a fate had befallen the madman from the Gerasenes. So wild and erratic and even violent was he that he lived among the tombs–a place filled with dry bones. No one could overcome his seemingly supernatural strength, and his cries and self-harm repelled most other helpers.
But then the man met Jesus. He confessed Him to be the Son of God. When Jesus asked him his name, he responded, “My name is Legion, for we are many.” He took a plural pronoun because there was not just one unclean spirit inhabiting the man. His–or rather, their–wild and erratic and even violent behavior was because there was a war going on within him. A struggle for identity. He was a living example of the warning Jesus once gave about unclean spirits and waterless places.
There is only one possible destination for this Legion to take care of them for good. “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.’” Jesus grants the request but then drives the herd of swine into the sea to drown them. Unclean spirits hate water. And having been drowned, they will not return.
“What does such baptizing with water indicate? It indicates that the Old Adam in us should by daily contrition and repentance be drowned and die with all sins and evil desires, and that a new man should daily emerge and arise to live before God in righteousness and purity forever.” Baptism makes you a watered place, a place unfit for unclean spirits. Daily contrition and repentance keep the baptismal spring flowing so that there is room for only one spirit. A new spirit. The Holy Spirit.
In the Name + of Jesus. Amen.
This is the Spirit’s entry now: The water and the Word, The cross of Jesus on your brow, The seal both felt and heard. (LSB 591:1)
-Rev. Jacob Ehrhard, pastor of St. John’s Lutheran Church and School in Chicago, IL.
Audio Reflections Speaker: Pastor Jonathan Lackey is the pastor at Grace Lutheran Church, Vine Grove, KY.
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