We Know What to do With Madmen

“When they came to Jesus, they saw the man who had once been full of demons. He was sitting there with his clothes on, and in his right mind, and they were terrified.” Mark 5:15

We know what to do with mad men. I don’t mean angry guys; I mean crazy people. I also don’t mean that we are comfortable with or know how to fix those who seem insane among us. But we do know what to do with them when their madness is obvious.

We may each choose something different, but we do choose something. You see them in an urban downtown setting just off the business district. They are disheveled, their hair never meeting a comb in a decade. In the elements so long the skin of their face matches the ruddy mud hue of their hair. They talk gibberish. And if not gibberish, they string sentences together with such seriousness that, were we in another setting, we might take them for a gospel preacher or a scientist explaining their latest discovery.

We know what to do with them. If we encounter them alone, we nearly always make as circuitous route as possible. We know to avoid eye contact, thereby making certain we will not have to engage them in conversation. If we are in a group, feeling safe, we may glance at them and then with knowing looks all round our posse, whisper about what in the world is going on with “that person”.

If they are a member of our family and not quite certifiably insane, we tolerate them just enough to allow them at Christmas and Thanksgiving. If resources allow and the kooky relative acquiesces, we may actually try to find them some help. Every family has their favorite aunt or uncle who is simply not all there.

If we are children, and the nutty fellow is as well, we tease them. We make fun of the way they walk, mock their talk, or wait for them after school to perform some embarrassing stunt. Or, if the young fellow is known well and we have been raised well, we come to his defense against the world that wants to whisper about him as they walk on by.

We know what to do with madmen. In Jesus’ day a certain town had their own experience with a fellow who grew up with all the rest of them. He was demon possessed and was at the brink of utter insanity as a result. He ripped chains apart that were meant to hold him. He gouged his arms with the shards of pottery, perhaps trying to dig out the horrible influences of what had come to inhabit him.

The townspeople knew what to do with him. They sent him out to the tombs and let him set up housekeeping among dead people’s remains. Give them a break; at least they didn’t kill the poor fellow. They found a way to keep him alive, to keep him out of their hair, and to feel as safe as possible. They knew what to do with him.

But along comes Jesus. More than any of us, Jesus know what to do with our insanity. He knows the deep causes of darkness that grab at the dignity of human souls. Perhaps others wished they could do something, but chose to leave him on the outskirts of town because they could not. Jesus, on the other hand, has no need to ostracize the irritatingly insane. They cause Him no fear, and He has the compassion and power to deliver them from the utter darkness that unrelentingly tortures them.

And so He did in this man’s life. Inhabited by so many demons that they were called “Legion”, this man would momentarily be as pure, innocent and sane as a baby’s first thought. With but a sentence of command, Jesus orders the Legion to be gone and the madman is lucid for the first time in, well, far too long.

End of story, happy ending, we go home from the movie theater with tears and happy thoughts about the hope there is for the least of us. All except for one maddening detail: now that he was sane, the townspeople had no idea what to do with him!

Once a man who wandered naked among the tombs, he now sat at Jesus’ side fully clothed. Once babbling gibberish and phobic prophesies, he now is stringing one simple and reasoned thought after another. He is indeed “in his right mind.” And seeing him so, the people are “terrified!”

I hope I’m not satisfied with a Jesus who just leaves things status-quo. I hope I want more than a Jesus who makes me feel better because I gave the madman a place to live, albeit among the tombs. Jesus wouldn’t leave things the way He found them, and He certainly wasn’t going to let a home in the graveyard be acceptable for this poor demon-bitten man.

And He is still the same! Oh let me never be happy with the status-quo. Jesus, turn my world upside-down. Please. I beg you. I would rather be terrified at the results of what You did in my life than to live another day thinking madmen living among the dead is ever acceptable to the God of Life and Love!