"Follow the Money"

One of the predictables I’ve found in life is that everything costs. What one gives with one hand has to be taken from somewhere else with the other. I suppose this is why every government falls in time when the costs come home.

“Follow the money”, they say. The reason is that some many problems are not resolved is that more money is made out of the problem itself than from the solution. To solve a problem means that it will cost some one else.

During 2012 we read the Gospel according to Mark. In Chapter 5:1-19 we read the story of the deranged man called “Legion” living it rough in the tombs on the east side of the Sea of Galilee. He answered to this name because of his multiple personalities and that no one could do anything with him. Jesus healed Legion and the locals approached to find their monster now “clothed and in his right mind”(v15).

However, everything costs, and this healing did not come free. From my reading of the story, also repeated later in Matthew 8:28-34 and Luke 8:26-39, it would appear to me that at the point of his deliverance, a loud yell from Legion disturbed a large herd of about 2000 head of swine collectively belonging to the town. They panicked and stampeded headlong down a steep bank into the Sea of Galilee. The town lost its meat supply in one fell swoop.

Legion was grateful to Jesus but not so the townspeople who saw this stranger calming their monster at the expense of their livelihood and all but ran him out of town. Solving one problem creates another. The reality of vested interests keeps intruding.

There are two similar stories in the Acts of the Apostles. Chapter 16:16-24 finds Paul and Silas accosted by a disturbed slave girl in Philippi making buckets of money for her owners by soothsaying. Paul confronted the girl restoring her to normal. Doubtless, like Legion before her, she was greatly relieved, to say the least, but what about the owners whose profitable “freak show” was now over. They had these two strangers worked over and locked up in prison. Such gratitude! Everything costs.

The other story is set in Ephesus later in chapter 19:23-41. Paul’s preaching that God is not “made by hands” (v26) upset the silversmiths who did very well out of making little but expensive statuettes of their goddess Diana of the Ephesians. They took to the streets and dragged several of Paul’s colleagues into the local theatre. Oh dear, those vested interests again propping up the problem and scared of solutions.

These three stories do not visit our Lectionary very often but they were part of the narratives I heard and read during my boisterous Sunday School days when such “action” stories stuck in our minds forever. They may be ancient stories two thousand years old, but one cannot but notice the same human nature cropping up whenever there is good to be done.

Pokie reform is now on the agenda to protect family savings needlessly going down the tube. To restore people to a healthy way of life will eat into profits somewhere. If one takes seriously the opposition to this reform then the whole economy depends upon believing in one’s unalienable right to milk the vulnerable.

This and other issues bring to mind that the Kingdom of God that Jesus announces right through the Book of Mark and other books is continually frustrated by the fear it may truncate one’s income however large it may be.

If it has not already dawned upon us now, we can begin to see that when it comes to cost in introducing the Kingdom of God, there was an ultimate cost much greater than that borne by those adversely affected by these three stories.

After the season of Epiphany when we enter Lent and follow Jesus’ fateful path towards Jerusalem we will again realise who really picked up the bill.