We come from God, we belong to God, we go to
God.
Life
is an accompanied journey whether people recognise it or not.
To
be a Christian is to be aware of the company of God alongside us in Jesus
Christ sharing our joys and sorrows. We are never alone, contrary to outward
appearance.
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 does that speak to us this morning? As we go against the flow, or think
of those we know who’re desolate over a bereavement or relationship breakdown?
Or those we see in our mind’s eye though a long way away, depicted hour by hour
across our visual media in the world's agony zones.
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 our
patron Peter taking heart exactly and walking the walk of faith. He 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're 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 the late Bishop of Guyana, Cornell Moss's phrases was ‘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?
When
you retire - I've just retired - you get unsettled. You've less to direct your
life and get anxious at first. I'm happy to live in today without fear of
tomorrow knowing I'm on a journey with God at my side. I rest in belonging to
him, in his purpose, empowerment, forgiveness and direction.
Like
Elijah I have my cave of contemplation in which I await the Lord's still small
voice guiding me in different ways, as with Fr Christopher's phone call
inviting me to celebrate the Eucharist this morning.
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 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 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 or thin ice.
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 right now in his word
and in the bread and wine of the eucharist which is food for the journey of
faith.
Blessed, praised and hallowed be our Lord
Jesus Christ upon his throne in glory, in the most holy sacrament of the altar
and in the hearts of all his faithful people, now and ever and to the ages of
ages. Amen.
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