I was getting home late on a Saturday night from a gathering at a friend’s home, so I did all the things I ought to as a single woman alone after dark: looked around me before getting out of the car, kept my keys in my fist, made sure I walked on the more brightly lit side of the street. All of these precautions are meant to keep me safe, silently proclaiming to would-be attackers: I am alert! I am ready! I am not an easy target!
Safety is one of our most basic human needs, right up there with love and belonging as essential to our basic wellbeing. And like those things, we sometimes have misguided ideas about how to get it. In today’s passage, the people of Gerasene were clearly afraid of the demon-possessed man and in response they put him under guard, chained hand and foot.* It didn’t work — the man was still beset by demons, estranged from the neighbors that feared him. What ultimately brought safety to that community, upsetting and expensive though it may have been, was the man’s healing.
I wonder if the people of Gerasene ever came to see this healing as a miracle, one to be grateful for – or did they simply find a new outlet for their fear, shrinking from the love and kindness that Jesus had shown? Will we ever learn from their story?
-- Erica Lloyd, Seekers Church
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“…safety is not something that I can possess in a permanent, personal way. Safety isn’t a thing: it’s a social relation. I’m more or less safe depending on my relationship to others and to my proximity to the resources I need to survive.” – Mariame Kaba, Illusions of Safety
