We come from God, we belong to God, we go to God. Life is an
accompanied journey whether people recognise it or not.
In our Old Testament reading from the first book of the
Kings, Chapter 19 we’re told how Elijah felt very alone at mount Horeb when he came
to a cave, and spent the night there. Then the word of the Lord came to him, saying, ‘What are you
doing here, Elijah?’ He answered, ‘I have been very zealous for the Lord, the God of hosts; for the
Israelites have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed
your prophets with the sword. I alone am left, and they are seeking my life, to
take it away.’
I alone am left – how that speaks to us this morning, and to our
thoughts of those we know who are desolate over a bereavement or relationship
breakdown or those we can see in our mind’s eye in the warzone of Gaza or under
threat of execution for their Christian faith in Iraq?
What
does God say – how does he speak to Elijah? Now
there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking
rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after
the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the
earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound
of sheer silence. When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and
went out. God spoke in the silence after the storm and sent Elijah on his
way.
The
story is chosen to match the Gospel passage from Matthew 14:22f where once again God is revealed in the wake
of a storm. The boat, battered by the
waves, was far from the land, for the wind was against them… Jesus spoke to
them and said, ‘Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.’ Then we see Peter
taking heart exactly and walking the walk of faith. Peter got out of the boat, started walking on the water, and came
towards Jesus. But when he noticed the strong wind, he became frightened, and
beginning to sink, he cried out, ‘Lord, save me!’ Jesus immediately reached out
his hand and caught him, saying to him, ‘You of little faith, why did you
doubt?’
This
morning both Elijah and Peter are set before us as those consciously on the
move with God. They are a wakeup call for us to challenge false securities and
get on the move spiritually, just as Peter left the security of the boat to
walk on water.
One
of Bishop Cornell of Guyana’s phrases is ‘I’m not afraid to walk on thin ice as I serve a
Jesus who walked on water’. It may be there’s a situation you’re in where you
feel you can’t move forward. It looks like thin ice ahead – take heart. If God is with you, and
calling you to work through that situation, though the ice cracks you’ll be
able to walk on the water. Peter did, but he slipped under once he took his
eyes off the Lord. Faith, the journey of faith, is belief in the divine
accompaniment, of Jesus Emmanuel God with
us. Is there anything, any challenge before us that’s too great for us on a
journey with God at our side?
We come from God, we belong to God, we go to God. In him we live and move and have our being. (Acts
17:28). That’s faith speaking as it looks to the facts of God’s love around,
alongside and before us and ignores, as both Peter and Elijah did, those
natural fears. Peter naturally feared being overwhelmed by the water and Elijah
feared the isolation he was in as a believer in a hostile climate. Both men
looked in faith to the fact of God’s love and away from their fears.
This reminds me of a story the late Bishop Maurice Wood used
to tell: ‘Faith, facts and feelings were three figures walking on a wall. Faith
walked behind facts and in front of feelings. Faith kept going as long as he
looked to the facts of God’s love. Whenever he looked over his shoulder to
feelings behind him he wobbled and came in danger of falling off the wall.
So it is with the journey of faith that we travel on – and we
have to keep moving. We were made to move
finding no ultimate security this side of the grave save in the promise of God.
As Paul spells out that saving promise to the Romans in our second reading if you confess with your lips that Jesus is
Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be
saved. … ‘No one who believes in him will be put to shame.’
To have faith is to be on the move.
I think of people I know who’ve moved forward courageously
through financial insecurity putting trust in God that he wouldn’t see them put
to shame, continuing to give as he would have them give but out of real
poverty. Or of people who recognised
their life’s journey had stopped as Elijah’s did but their stopping place,
their cave was one of destructive anger God had to call them out of. Or people
who’d sensed a forward call out into the sacred ministry which took their gifts
away from serving money into serving God and the Church. Or people who, faced
with a diagnosed terminal illness lost no forward momentum, no sinking under
the waves of self-pity but pressed forward to make the passage to Jesus as
though walking on water.
We come from God, we belong to God, we go to God. He would be
our guide and support but we have to recognise that and welcome his leading in
our circumstances as surely as we welcome him in his word and in the bread and
wine of the eucharist which is food for the journey of faith.
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