The gospel tells us, He continued according to plan, traveled to town after town, village after village, preaching God’s kingdom, spreading the Message … They sailed on to the country of the Gerasenes, directly opposite Galilee. As he stepped out onto land a madman from town met him: he was a victim of demons (Luke 8:1, 16, The Message).
Jesus got out of the boat and was immediately face-to-face with the demoniac. The man had no name, no home, no community, and lived in the graveyard, the city of the dead. Jesus didn’t go to the middle of town, or into the settled communities of the Decapolis. He landed in the liminal space, the in-between place, between town and country, between farmland and desert, between land and sea, and even between life and death. And Jesus asked this nameless man his name, what some would say was an attempt to help the man locate his identity, something often lost by those who suffer from mental illness.
The in-between spaces in our community are often inhabited by those like the Gerasene.
