Rejoicing at Christ’s Feet - Homily for the 5th Sunday of Pentecost - The Gergesene Demoniacs (2026)

“For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost,” (Lk 19:10). We find throughout the Gospels Christ coming as the good shepherd to rescue His scattered flock. He comes to enlighten the ignorant, to raise up the fallen, to heal the diseased, to redeem from hell. Today’s Gospel gives us another episode in Christ’s search for His lost sheep.

We are presented with us two types of sinners today—the possessed men and the swineherding townsfolk of Gergesa. On the one hand, we see the horrifying outcome of living a life steeped in sin and wickedness in the case of the demoniacs. We witness the opposite of theosis—the subhumanization of man. Man—insane, naked, and outcast.

One the other hand, we see the swineherds. “Comfortable” sinners, whose outward appearance deceives those who don’t know better. However, it was not lawful for Jews to herd swine. Perhaps they had fallen into this trade because they had grown lax in their observance of the Law, for Gergesa was in Galilee, a land populated by Gentiles. As St. Paul writes to the Corinthians, “Do not be deceived, 'Evil company corrupts good habits,'" (1 Cor. 15:33 NKJV). In seeing that their pork-eating neighbors weren’t otherwise wicked people, perhaps they decided it must not be a big deal to transgress the law in just this one, small way. Or perhaps they were legalistic—technically it is forbidden to eat the flesh of pigs or touch their carcasses. Maybe they justified themselves, “I don’t eat them or kill them, I just herd them”. Then after they fatten them up, they proceed to sell them to a Gentile butcher. Either way, from laxity or legalism, herding pigs was not a one-time occurrence or even a bad habit they couldn’t overcome; it was their chosen lifestyle. 

While perhaps some of us have had harrowing spiritual experiences and have felt the strong and powerful redemption of our Savior like the demoniac, I suspect most of us would identify more with the swine herds. We go about our daily life—with our family, with our friends, in our various occupations. Everything can look good and seem in order. And yet, we herd our swine. We make peace with our passions. The ones that no one notices too much. But it’s all the same for the devil. He does not care which hook he uses to drag us to hell. And sometimes the subtler sin, the swineherding, is more effective. 

We can herd swine in many ways. Living for our bellies, for our bodies. We can keep the fast and yet stuff ourselves. We can herd swine by always being busy. Maybe we’re motivated by the praise of men. Or, because we can’t handle being alone with our thoughts. Or, because we are avoiding people we can’t get along with. We herd swine by imitating the lives of worldly people, by always insisting on our will, our way of understanding, our opinions. Often, we don’t even know that we’re doing this. We don’t see how attached we are to these pigs until Christ suddenly allows them to be swept away, until our ability to tend to them is gone.   

Our Savior performed one act in today’s Gospel. With this one act, He freed the men possessed of devils and gave an opportunity for innumerable others (both the swine herds and the citizens of the city) to be delivered in one fell swoop from a livelihood built on sin.

Yet how different this liberation was perceived! The other evangelists tell us that once delivered from the demons, the men who were possessed, who knew in their own body and soul the torments of hell even in this life, joyfully received the Savior and sat at His feet. The townsfolk, numb to their own wickedness and quite comfortable making a living in sin, were terrified. For those who in like manner are numb to their sinfulness, the advent of Christ is inconvenient. Christ’s desire to deliver them from bondage to sin is experienced as a catastrophe and they ask Him to leave them. Christ performed one act, but it is up to us to choose how we will respond.

Christ’s comes to each and every one of us in ways similar to the events described in the Gospels. Christ shows up in our everyday occurrences but especially in our suffering. Just like then, sometimes He shows up and allows all the swine we were tending to be swept away, drowned-gone!  

St. John Chrysostom repeats throughout his homilies over and over again that the only evil is sin. Everything else—illness, loss of reputation, poverty, hardships and so forth, is indifferent. They’re matters of indifference. Because these are not evil in and of themselves, but rather these incidents, these states we find ourselves in, can hinder or aid us depending on whether we have a view to our salvation.

When we lose our jobs, perhaps it is only then that we realize that we were tending the pigs of avarice. Our concern goes to the loss of pleasures and desire to get those back. Or perhaps we tend the pigs of anxiety and we trust in money more than God. And yet, we can use this opportunity to sit at Lord’s feet and hear Him teach us, saying,

“Do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?... But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.” (Matt. 6:31,33)

How often we ignore these words when times are good. How trite they sound when we seem to lose everything. But it is only when we stop mourning the loss of our pigs that we can learn the power of Christ’s words.

Even for monks, having surprises and unexpected occurrences in our obedience can show us how much we cling to our own way of doing things. Perhaps our calculating minds try to figure out why this is really unnecessary or that someone else should do it.  And yet we find the pigs of our self-will are drowned. We can resist and fight to get new pigs. Or we can choose to remember that Christ came down not to do His own will, but the will of His Father in heaven. We can make a good beginning in cutting off our will when being asked for things we don’t usually do and especially for things we don’t particularly enjoy.

This is the same with any disaster that confronts us—do we cling to what we lost, or will we be found sitting at Christ’s feet? Are we desperate to get those pigs back or are we grateful we finally are free from what is in reality a cruel burden? Are there places in our hearts we don’t want Christ to enter? If so, then let us repent and sincerely ask Christ to teach us how to sit at His feet, how to rejoice in the death of all those pigs, to finally take this as an opportunity to start again.

I read a story some years ago about a woman in modern Russia who was living a promiscuous life. She knew her life was not pleasing to God, but she could not pull herself away from her sins. One day, she desperately pleaded in her prayer, “God, you have to stop me!” Soon after her heartfelt prayer, she was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Despite her life of wallowing in filth, her heart was correctly oriented, and she was relieved when she found out the diagnosis. She was relieved because she knew God had answered her prayer. She was not a masochist—she did not seek out pain and suffering, but she desperately wanted to be delivered from the swine she was forced to herd. Now death became a reality for her, it was no longer abstract. She did not lament the inevitability of her body succumbing to cancer; she did not lament that she no longer could engage in a life of sin. Rather, she rejoiced the pigs were finally dead. With God’s grace, she was finally able to leave her life of sin and died in repentance. May we likewise see the destruction of our countless swine to be a blessing from God, His answer to our prayer whenever we ask Him to have mercy on us and an invitation to finally sit as His feet and rejoice in His presence. Amen.