The story of lost bacon and found people is told in all three of the Synoptic Gospels: Matthew, Mark, and Luke. It is a story about Jesus restoring sanity to two insane men who had been cast out of normal society. These men could only find asylum in a cemetery. They were really sick and believed that they were possessed by thousands of demons. In order for Jesus to cure them he had to somehow convince them that the demons had departed from them. He did this by sending those demons or whatever possessed the two men into a nearby herd of pigs. The hogs went absolutely crazy. The pigs stampeded headlong over a steep cliff and ended up in the Sea of Galilee.
Now, as you can well imagine, the farmers weren’t very happy about all that floating pork, which translated into dollars for them. They didn’t begrudge the healing—they were not inhuman—but they could not understand or accept why that healing had to happen at the expense of their bacon. The story says, “They began to beg Jesus to depart from their neighborhood”—but they probably said, “You care for the crazy people; we like our pigs. That’s where we differ, so please get out of here. We can’t afford to have you around.”
The farmers had one set of values; Jesus had another. They put their pigs first—above the mentally deranged men. Jesus put people first and put bacon second. People were his priority whether insane or sane.
What do you make of the story? Does it speak to our priorities as individuals, society and nation? Do we want to save our bacon and ignore the people who wander about in the cemetery?
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