Pigs or People?

Gospel: Matthew 8: 28-34

What would we do for another person to see them freed from the demons that torment them?  How many people see their loved ones in the grips of addiction or mental illness - and what they would give to see their loved one made whole again, or even for the first time!  What that person in the grips of their demons would not give in order to be liberated from what has oppressed them for so long! Imagine the joy they would feel at being set free!

Yet, the people of this town in today's Gospel portion feel otherwise.  They do not at all rejoice at seeing these two people freed from their demons.  They are more concerned about their livelihood of tending swine - an unclean practice in Jewish law and therefore sinful! - than with the welfare of two fellow human beings who have suffered for so long under the torments of their demons.  They beg Jesus to leave their town.  

Consider a nation that calls itself Christian and that takes away assistance to the poor in order to demonize immigrants, refugees, migrants, and foreigners in general.  How often do we beg Jesus to depart from us in the person of the poor and the stranger we refuse to help and whose misery we have caused with our own actions!  How often do we find money for sports stadiums for the rich by cutting services to the poor!  We prefer the city of pigs to the city of God.