A New Language for Distress

Reframing the Demon Stories

One of the challenges many modern readers face when they open the pages of the New Testament is encountering story after story of the demonized. People possessed, distressed, and Jesus casting out demons. There's a lot of it. And to our contemporary sensibilities, this often feels disconnected from how we understand the world.

But what if the issue isn’t the stories themselves, but the language we've inherited to describe them?

What if peeling back some of the layers of cultural and linguistic history might actually bring us closer to the kinds of suffering Jesus encountered in his time? And more importantly, what if that same lens could help us see the very real parallels in our world today?

Healing, Not Magic

In one particularly revealing story, people begin to gather around Jesus at sundown, bringing their loved ones who are sick or, as the text puts it, "demonized."

But here's what stands out. In this version of the story, Mark uses a very specific Greek word to describe what Jesus does next: therapeuo. It's where we get the English word "therapy." But even more interestingly, in ancient Greek, it wasn’t a term associated with miracles. It was medical.

Therapeuo described what a doctor did—applying a salve to a wound, setting a broken bone, staying with someone through their healing. This wasn’t quick-fix, magic wand kind of stuff. It was slow. It was attentive. It was care.

And that's worth sitting with.

Because in using this word, Mark seems to be signaling something that often gets missed. This isn’t just about power. It’s about presence. Jesus isn’t merely fixing people. He’s with them. In their distress. In their fear. In their isolation.

What If It’s About Community?

Now, does this preclude the miraculous? Not at all. In fact, the next story in the gospel is overtly miraculous. But the point isn’t to choose one or the other. It’s to recognize the layers.

Because even here, in a story filled with expectation and divine power, Mark chooses a word that suggests process. He describes Jesus not as a magician, but as a healer. As someone who waits. Who touches. Who sees.

And that takes us back to the first story in the chapter—the healing of Simon's mother-in-law. There, too, it wasn't just about physical recovery. It was about restoration to community.

In the same way, when Jesus stays up late into the night with the distressed, the ostracized, those seen as threats or burdens by their communities, something more than healing happens. They are slowly welcomed back into belonging.

An Invitation to See Differently

So maybe these stories about demons aren’t as distant as they first appear. Maybe they’re stories about people who are struggling. People in crisis. People who have been pushed to the margins because of their pain.

And maybe Jesus’ response to them offers us a model: not of judgment, but of patient presence. Not of fear, but of compassion. Not of exclusion, but of slow, deliberate reintegration into community.

What if that’s the real miracle?

And what might it mean for how we see those around us today?