 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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 [Jesus] also said, “With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? It is like a mustard seed... ~Mark 4:30-31a Great storytellers and masterful artists know how to craft a piece of art that has the power to hold our attention while, at that same time, push us off kilter just enough to leave us questioning, wondering, and eager to think and talk more. As they do this, they open us up to parts of humanity, parts of being alive, that we did not see before. They open us to fuller, richer understandings of our own lives and others. Jesus was a great storyteller and a masterful artist. With his parables, accessible stories of real people, he pulled his audience in while also deploying an image or a detail that would have thrown them off kilter.
What do we expect of this “holy wisdom” in our day? Do we have more to learn and in what ways—additional knowledge or new points of view or matters of the heart…or all of this? Enter into worship this Sunday. Readings: 1 Samuel 15:34-16:13 † Psalm 20 † 2 Corinthians 5:6-10, 14-17 † Mark 4:26-34 About the Art: Gogh, Vincent van, 1853-1890. The Sower III (version 2), from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=58327 [retrieved June 12, 2024]. Original source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Vincent_van_Gogh_-_The_sower_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg. About the painting (commentary by Michael Banner): In the foreground a deeply shadowed sower in darkest blue works under a vivid yellow-green sky with pink clouds and a large lemon sun, over a violet earth. The intense, incandescent colors are meant to communicate the intensity of the moment, as the sower, with the sun forming a halo behind his head, bends to his holy task. From his right hand the sower broadcasts seed on the rough ground, and approaches a tree which, bending and twisting like the sower, dramatically divides the canvas on the diagonal. The tree guides our eye into the picture, providing scale and depth, and also some visual relief from the wearying extent of ground over which the sower has to tread, reaching away to the long and low horizon. More importantly, however, the tree speaks of the aching mix of pathos and consolation which Van Gogh found in this motif. Just as the tree sharply divides the canvas, so the seed will fall into either good or bad soil, to live and bear fruit, or to die. The tree is heavily pollarded, and at certain times of year, might itself seem dead, like the seed. Yet from its wounds fresh blossom springs, holding over the sower’s lowered head a sign of promise; hope and joy even as the light of the setting sun fades.
 “For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.” ~2 Corinthians 5:1 The Episcopal priest Stephanie Spellers says “Institutions and cultures are durable partly because they obey the law of inertia. Even if you think you’ve exerted a strong external push and knocked a moving object or an entire institution off its set course, wait. Just wait. With barely a nudge, the object will drift right back to its original path.” There is value, of course in institutional stability. Their predictability provides shelter and nurture and a moderating influence that keeps us steady in tumultuous times. The downside, of course, is they delay needed change, repress diverse life-giving creativity, perpetuate inequity, and exclude. It should be no surprise that Jesus would seek to turn upside down his own religious tradition given the disruptive and chaotic scene Mark has for us in today’s gospel text. Indeed, while the institution of family continues to be one of humanity’s greatest blessings, we can see along with him the tendencies to lose sight of these central purposes and fundamental human connections. Who are my mother and my brothers? Who is counted among our true family? What is this durable shelter we have from God, eternal in the heavens? We will have an opportunity to experience a sign of this truth, of the promise of the church as a place of nurture and thriving on Sunday as we celebrate with Violet Montano her quinceañera—the celebration of a girl’s 15th birthday, marking her passage to adulthood. Many of us have known Violet and her sister Jasmin and mother Mirna for over a decade when they came to the Center of Hope. They have made a life for themselves and kept company with many of us over the years, including Godparents Roger and Judy Paulsen. We celebrated Jasmin’s fifteenth when we were separated furing the Covid years. You can see that celebration here as a part of our Advent worship in 2020. The family has asked to celebrate with St. Andrew again for this important marker in Violet’s life. Come and join the celebration. Festive dress is perfectly appropriate! Enter into worship. Readings: 1 Samuel 8:4-11, 16-20 † Psalm 138 † 2 Corinthians 4:13-5:1 † Mark 3:20-35 About the Art: Dennis Oppenheim. Device to Root Out Evil (second version), from Avenue Magazine, Calgary, Canada. Original source: https://www.avenuecalgary.com/city-life/work-of-art/device-to-root-out-evil-by-dennis-oppenheim/. Five years after it disappeared from its former site in Ramsay, the sculpture found a new home in 2019 in Calgary’s East Village neighborhood. Made of aluminum, galvanized steel, Venetian glass, and Plexiglass, the sculpture depicts a New England-style church turned upside down as if to invite scrutiny from the heavens.
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