There are increasing numbers of mentally disturbed people on the city streets these days. Many have been released from long term psychiatric care into community-based housing where they can live a more normal life. Many others have left these community houses and are now homeless upon the streets. Many are without their own homes because mental illness is not confined by education, income, social status or faith.

To live successfully in our city, we have to deal with stress, anxiety, depression, schizophrenia, eating disorders and a host of other mental illnesses which will inevitably touch us personally, or through our children, our friends or our neighbours. Learning how to cope with people with mental illness is a key ingredient in successful living in our city.

Each of us sees these people upon the streets: the man who is walking along talking to himself or shouting to the world; the woman who is muttering and glancing at everyone; the young man who keeps walking up and down, and the woman who stares into your eyes and tells you how demons are possessing her. Others may be the young teenage girl who is incredibly thin and is troubled by her bodily image. Another may be an elderly parent so depressed they cannot get out of bed. These people are not to be feared but to be helped.

We live in an age of anxiety, a word which comes from the Latin term “angustia” which means “shortness of breath”. It is as if many people are suffocating from the influences of our secular world. Hence our phobias multiply: the “New Gould Medical Dictionary” catalogues 217 phobias. This terrible condition, among the mentally and emotional hurt of our community, provides an opportunity for Christians to serve.

But many churches do not want to become involved. They want to build a membership of people who are happy, married, affluent, and family based. They advertise themselves as the Happy Family Church, to make sure that people who are not happy, or who do not have families, who are problem people or people with problems, stay away!

That was not the attitude of Jesus. Our Bible reading demonstrates that. At the northern end of the Sea of Galilee, on the western side, lie the New Testament towns of Capernaum and Bethsaida the towns of the fishermen disciples: of Andrew and Peter, James and John and Philip.

On the southeastern side of the lake lay the towns of Gadara and Gergesa. The area was known as the Transjordan. Here were ten towns called “The Decapolis”, or “The Ten Cities”.

It was in these towns, opposite the region of Galilee, that Jesus healed a mentally ill man said to be possessed by demons (Mark 5:1 20; Luke 8:26 39, Matt. 8:28 34), and where he healed a man who was deaf and mute (Mark 7:31 37). The healed men came from the towns. The area in which Jesus healed them was outside the towns, but in their region, closer to the lake side.

Jesus crossed the lake by boat to rest over on the eastern side when He encountered this man after a wild storm at sea the night before. The man lived in caves and tombs, probably in the cliffs that front the lake, and originally came from one of the nearby towns. The herd of pigs stampeded over the edge of the cliffs nearby. The healed man, who said his name was “Legion”, went and “proclaimed in the Decapolis, how much Jesus had done for him.” (Mark 5:20).

Here Jesus came for rest and recuperation, in the same towns where other people collapsed under stress and mental illness.

Gadara was a Graeco-oriental city located south of the Yarmuk River with its territory reaching to the Sea of Galilee. It was one of the centers of Greek culture in the Transjordan the Roman General Pompey rebuilt and made part of the Decapolis.

There is an aqueduct at Gadara which ran for more than 30 miles, with pipes hewn of solid basalt, of a diameter like our drain pipes, and fitting each other with flanges. There was a Roman bridge at Gadara which was the first to span Syrian rivers.

There were features common to most the cities in this area especially the architectural features. There were the usual buildings of a Greek city of the Roman period, a colonnaded street, arches, the temple, a theatre, bath and mausoleum, in Doric and Corinthian styles. Some of the archaeological ruins are today some of the most spectacular in the Middle East.

Tourists visiting Jordan today are shown the remains of the Byzantine church / monastery complex at Kursi, now a National Park, on the southern banks of Wadi Samek. Just to the south of the site is a sharp decline that might fit the geographical requirements for the place where the swine went into the sea. The site of Kursi was excavated in the early 1970’s and identified by the excavators with the demoniac event.

Those who hold to the Kursi site as the place of the demoniac event also argue that Mark and Luke would use the familiar Greek name “Gadara” because the readers would be familiar with this name.

This church should be identified with the feeding of the 4,000 recorded in the gospel narratives (Matt. 15:32-39; Mark 8:1-10). In 1985, however, as a result of an extraordinarily low water level of the Sea of Galilee, a harbour was discovered. This harbour is the largest harbour on the east side of the lake. Its outer breakwater measures some 250 metres long and has a 5 metre wide base. The quay, or landing place for the boats, is some 200 metres long.

There is also a 500-metre pier along the shore. This once had been the harbor of Gadara, located on the heights of Gilead above the Yarmuk River – the largest and most magnificent of the Hellenistic towns that encircled the Sea of Galilee.

Coins from Gadara depict boats commemorating the “Naumachia,” or naval battles re-enacted by the people of Gadara with comfortable seating of the spectators along the 500-metre pier as they watched the sea battles.

Another interesting observation is the discovery of a Byzantine “church” unearthed in the excavations adjacent to the harbour. To whom or what was this church dedicated? Did it commemorate the demoniac event? We do not know for sure because the excavations have never been properly published.

Assuming the location of this event is the harbor of Gadara, how does the geography fit the Biblical text? The Lord Jesus and His disciples landed in the harbour and got out of the boat and were met by a demon possessed man (men) who lived in tombs (Mark 5:2; Luke 8:27). There were tombs in the area as attested to by three sarcophagi that were found in the area.

The demons requested to be thrown into the herd of swine which were “a good way off”, “on / near the mountain (s)” (the Golan Heights) (Matt. 8:32; Mark 5:13; Luke 8:33).

Today, Geresa is marked with the magnificent ruins of a large Byzantine Church built in the 5th century, and with 1st Century ruins of a circular Roman forum enclosed with 56 towering columns, a Temple to Artemis, a Triumphal Arch erected to honour the visit of the Emperor Hadrian in 129 A.D., and a street with a colonnade.
The ruins of Gadara are like that of any Greek city, containing two theatres, a basilica and a street of columns. These were not Jewish cities, as could be guessed by the herd of pigs that were foraging there, but were occupied by Greeks in the 300 years B.C.

The example of Jesus in these cities, gives us another insight into the urban ministry of Jesus and its implications for us today: the church of Jesus Christ, following the ministry of Jesus, must have a ministry that seeks to heal people from the city who suffer from mental, emotional, psychological and physical diseases. Any successful living in our city demands we know how to serve the disturbed.

The two men that Matthew speaks about are from the same incident recorded by Luke and Mark. They report that Jesus healed one man, but Matthew records that a second man was there repeating the words of the first and copying his actions. To anyone used to dealing with mentally disturbed people, this is a common occurrence.

Mark says the man is deaf and mute, with a severe speech impediment, and could speak only with difficulty (Mark 7:31 37). The healing was difficult. The man that Luke records, was also bound with mental, emotional and spiritual bondage. He needed his demon within to be exorcised (Luke 8:26 – 39).

Naked, bruised and bleeding, out of his right mind with broken pieces of chains about his wrists and feet, he cried out; “Jesus, son of the Most High God! What do you want with me? I beg you, do not punish me!” Jesus quietly answered, “What is your name?” “My name is Mob … Legion.” Jesus healed that man. The swine owners called all the people of the nearby by farms and the town to come out and see what had happened, and “they found the man from whom the demons had gone out sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind; and they were all afraid.”

1. The Healing Ministry Of Jesus

Jesus had a healing ministry to those who found the strain and stress of city life too much. For many people in our city, mental, emotional, spiritual and psychological illnesses overwhelm them.

Dr Lindsay Madew, a psychiatrist with the N.S.W. Health Commission, has said that 20% of Australians are seriously disturbed; 20% will never suffer from mental illness; but the remaining 60% will at some time suffer from some mild form of mental illness.

There is something in the nature of city living that causes many of us to have mental, emotional, psychological or spiritual illness. Note how Jesus ministered to these people in the city:

1) Jesus Confronts The Disturbed

In every case, Jesus came to them, He saw them, He stopped, He was unafraid of the troubled. Every afflicted person will tell you how their friends now avoid them. But Jesus comes and confronts the ill.

The meaning is this: You do not have to search for God. He comes to you in love: “I am come to seek and to save the lost”. He comes. This man lived among tombs, naked and bloodied, broken chains hanging, deranged. But Jesus came to him.

2) Jesus Disturbs The Disturbed

The rest of the world does not know to handle the disturbed, and constantly wants to hush them up and quieten them down. When Jesus confronted him, the man cried: “Do not torment me.” Jesus disturbs our fears, our phobias, our favourite demons.

3) Jesus Provokes The Disturbed

So many people are so drugged, so comatose, so lethargic, that they cannot respond. But Jesus provokes a response. The disturbed man said: “I know who you are Jesus, Son of the Most High God.” He was treating this man as a responsible person, making his own decisions and responses. Jesus was a reality therapist.

4) Jesus Restored The Disturbed

That was the positive result. The man was made whole: mentally, psychologically, spiritually and emotionally. He was restored from his bondage and misery. He was brought from living among the dead, and was “clothed, in his right mind, sitting at the feet of Jesus.”

5) Jesus Commissioned The Disturbed

He wanted the formerly disturbed man to now be one of his followers, not by getting into the boat with the other disciples and crossing the lake on further missionary journeys, but to return to his own family and home among the Ten Cities, and to witness what God in His mercy had done. Jesus sent him to face his family and his problems with faith, spiritual resources, and a sound mind.

What was accomplished that day was most beautiful and is needed in every city of the world where the disturbed haunt our streets and sleep in our underground railways. How can we help?

2. The Gadara Principle

The Gadara Principle means that if we are to follow in the ministry of Jesus, we must approach those who are sick and suffering, confront them with their situation, counsel them and heal them, and then help them fit back into the community.

The Gadara principle says we must not be afraid of the mentally ill, but seek to restore them to their own minds, and the society in which they belong.The rest of the community does not care for the poor, the sick, and the mentally afflicted. It prefers they just be out of sight and out of mind. But we must care in Jesus name!

Charles Dickens went for holidays at the Bay of Naples where he stayed in a magnificent palace. But he did not remain in the palace but went round the houses of the poor nearby. The burial place of the poor was “a great paved yard with three hundred and sixty five pits in it: everyone covered by a square stone which is fastened down. One of these pits is opened every night of the year; the bodies of the poor dead are collected in the city; brought out in a cart and flung in, uncoffined. Some lime is then cast down into the pit and it is sealed until a year is past.

The cart has a red lamp attached and about ten o’clock at night you see it glaring through the streets of Naples, stopping at the doors of hospitals and prisons, to increase its freight, and then rattling off to the pits again.” (Edgar Johnson p 291)

That terrible attitude to the poor and sick lies not too deep beneath the social skin of our city. Their only hope lies in the concern and commitment of Christians who follow the example of Jesus in caring for the disturbed, the distraught, and the distressed.

3. How We Heal The Sick

While I ministered for twenty-seven years at Wesley Mission Sydney, there was not a single service without some who were disturbed, distraught, unbalanced. Sometimes that was distressing for some other attendees. Sometimes a disturbed person will become distracting by their habits or noisy presence. But when we love them, we grow closer to Christ, because that is where He is with them!

We seek to heal them: by our counsellors, trained and serving every hour of the day and night; by specialists in our hospitals and in Wesley Centre; by our staff being trained in how to handle difficult people; by our provision of showers and soap, clothes and meals; by our accommodation and rehabilitation; by houses and training centres; by our psychologists and psychiatrists; our nurses and chaplains; by our worship services open for everyone, our opportunities for ordinary people to stand up and request prayers for healing, by our elders who listen and care and pray.

We fulfil the Gadara Principle in a large city that still does not know how to respond to the disturbed on its streets. But think not only of people obviously disturbed, for many of us have deep needs we mask from society. What has Jesus for you?

Jesus confronts you. Your righteousness is as filthy rags. You too have broken chains hanging from your wrists of those enslavements: thoughts, deeds, habits that have bound you. You too are living among the tombs of the spiritually dead.

Jesus disturbs you. Your complacency, conformity and comfort are always challenged by Jesus. He can shake your little world with His example of caring for others. He does not let you rest, careless of others, and heedless of your own need.

Jesus provokes you. He wants you to make that response to Him. You cannot be silent, but you can surrender. You can say also; “I know who you are: you are Jesus, Son of the Most High God.”

Jesus restores you. You can be restored from bondage as he frees you, restored to your right mind, as He gives you peace within. You can be restored to true perspective on life as you sit at His feet. You can be restored to the community, clothed and in your right mind, and sitting at the feet of Jesus.

Jesus commissions you. You may want to serve Him in gratitude in some special place, but Jesus sends you back to your own family and friends, and to face your problems. Christianity is no escape from your problems, but a strength enabling you to face them. The most mentally healthy thing you can do is to accept Jesus Christ as Lord and find the integration he brings to your life and outlook.

Rev The Hon. Dr Gordon Moyes AC MLC

Thursday, 11th June, 2009, 6:15 pm | Bible Studies