Our text for Sunday has a lot of “strangeness.” One of the strange things is the presence of pigs among Jewish people (or at least near them). Hey, Moses commanded they shouldn’t eat pork he didn’t say they couldn’t raise pigs. Perhaps it wasn’t Jews at all, maybe it was Gentiles with all these pigs. There were a lot of pigs, over 2,000! I worked on a pig-farm in Fenwick where we had about 800 pigs, I can tell you this, it can be smelly and frustrating work. However, there is profit in pork today and there certainly was money to be made in the first century as well. When Jesus arrived at Gadara, He met two demon possessed men in torment and who were tormenting others. Jesus wasn’t scared of them; the demons were scared of Him. He had the power and authority to send them to their final judgment. They requested permission to go to the aforementioned pigs. Jesus said, “Okay, go!” Whether Jesus knew what would happen or not, I do not know, but what did happen is pretty crazy, the pigs ran off a cliff and committed suicide in the Sea of Galilee! For this, the owners of the pigs were afraid and angry and they asked Jesus to leave their region. Their profitable pigs were more important than redeemable people and more important than Jesus! Of course it is easy for most of us to say, “That is silly, why would they pick pigs over Jesus?” But this isn’t about pigs alone, this is about values. What do we have in place of pigs that might cause us to ask Jesus to leave? Have you ever done that? Have you ever said, “Jesus look the other way or please at least go away for a while?” If we are honest I think we would have to say yes. As strange as it is, we too would dismiss Jesus at times. May we grow in our appreciation of the Beautiful One and say at all times, “I’d rather have Jesus than anything this world affords today.”