 He woke up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm… [they] said to one another, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?” ~Mark 4:39, 41 Who is this? In a way, it is an odd question because it has already been answered. Mark 1:1, “the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God” sent to heal and liberate. One of his first public acts is to exorcise an “unclean spirit” (Mark 1:25-27) and now that act of resistance against death-dealing agents is amplified (along with the silence, the astonishment, the whispering) in case who didn’t catch it the first time. This time, the adversary is much larger—an angry sea, wind and waves. The young shepherd David knows an overwhelming adversary in the legendary Goliath (1 Samuel 17:32-49). And yet, in all these stories, an underdog triumphs. Is it ever not the case with this God? Death-dealing power is overcome when God is in the mix. Who is this? It is one who comes from a God who liberates not just on an individual level, but a corporate one, not with might but calm, courageous healing and liberation. A healer and a healing story write large. Who is this? Indeed, who are we in response to this one? This may be the better question. Sweet Jesus, talking his melancholy madness, stood up in the boat and the sea lay down, silky and sorry, So everybody was saved that night. But you know how it is when something different crosses the threshold — the uncles mutter together, the women walk away, the young brother begins to sharpen his knife. Nobody knows what the soul is. It comes and goes like the wind over the water -- sometimes, for days, you don’t think of it. Maybe, after the sermon, after the multitude was fed, one or two of them felt the soul slip forth like a tremor of pure sunlight before exhaustion, that wants to swallow everything, gripped their bones and left them miserable and sleepy, as they are now, forgetting how the wind tore at the sails before he rose and talked to it -- tender and luminous and demanding as he always was -- a thousand times more frightening than the killer sea. “Maybe” by Mary Oliver Enter into worship. Readings: 1 Samuel 17:32-49 † Psalm 9:9-20 or Samuel 17:57-18:5, 10-16 † Psalm 133 † 2 Corinthians 6:1-13 † Mark 4:35-41 About the Art: Koenig, Peter. Calming of the Storm, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=58522 [retrieved June 18, 2024]. Original source: Peter Winfried (Canisius) Koenig, https://www.pwkoenig.co.uk/.
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