1 Kings 19.9-18
Matthew 14.22-33
I
made an interesting discovery many years ago,
and this was that I can actually
walk on water.
You
don’t believe me? It’s true, I promise.
Well, sort of…
It
happened like this:
Liz
and I went on holiday to the Austrian Tyrol
and had a lovely week taking cable
cars to the tops of mountains
admiring views, and
taking a few walks
At
the top of one of these mountains, near Mayrhofen,
there was a beautiful lake, crystal
clear, and blue to match the sky;
And
there, floating on the lake, were what I can only describe
as three very large hamster balls
And
a sign on the bank, written in English, proclaimed the slogan:
“You can walk on water! It’s fun!”
Liz
turned to me and said, ‘you want a go in one of those, don’t you?’
And I thought, yes I do,
but I also don’t want to make a
complete fool of myself in public!
Well,
as we stood watching,
a young German girl, about ten years
old, decided to have a go.
So
the man in charge pulled one of the balls from the water,
opened a zip in the side so the girl
could climb in,
and then pumped it back up again
with her inside it.
All
she had to do then was to step off the little pontoon,
and start walking on the water.
Well,
she stood there, and stood there, and stood there,
and then after a minute, started
crying in frustration,
because she didn’t have enough courage
to step off onto the water.
Eventually
the man in charge let her out, and she walked back up the bank,
looking very upset with herself for
not doing it.
Right,
I thought, I’m in!
Maybe if I do it, she’ll see it’s OK
and then she’ll have another go too.
So
I walked down onto the pontoon,
and, after a brief discussion about
my height-to-weight ratio,
before I knew it I was zipped up
inside the large clear spherical ball,
and it was my turn to
step out onto the water.
Well,
I did it, I really did.
I stepped onto the water.
And then I fell over,
and
then I stood up again,
and then I fell over again,
and
already you’re getting the idea
of how the next exhausting five
minutes went.
Once,
I managed five steps, at a run...
And then I fell over.
Liz,
meanwhile, was stood on the bank videoing the whole thing
and laughing quite a lot
Apparently
I drew something of a crowd,
and when I eventually cried enough,
and was pulled back to dry land
I
got a small round of applause
not for my success at walking on the
water,
but in appreciation of the inherent
comedy value
in seeing someone repeatedly and
determinedly falling over
whilst stuck inside a
giant hamster ball on a mountain-top lake.
See,
I told you I could walk on water,
and yes, the video is on Facebook.
In
today’s gospel reading,
we heard of another Simon
who stepped out onto the
water in the middle of the storm
and found that the reality of
walking on water
wasn’t quite as edifying
as he had perhaps hoped it would be
And
taken together with the story of Eijah in his cave
today’s readings invite us to
consider those times in our lives
when we find ourselves at the centre
of the storm,
or in the eye of the
whirlwind
those times when we find ourselves
in the midst of the earthquake
or caught in the heat of
the fire
They
invite us to think about those times in our lives
when things don’t turn out quite as
we had hoped they would
those
times when we discover that we can’t actually walk on water
despite our best efforts
to do so,
those times when we start to sink,
to scrabble, to go nowhere
those times when we fall over again
and again and again
and the rest of the
world seems to be laughing at us
those times when we seek for God and
hear only the whistling of the wind
or the crashing of the
earthquake
or the rushing of the
fire
Sometimes
these times in our lives are of our own making,
sometimes they are the result of our
own stupidity,
or our own sinfulness
or our own frantic efforts to spend
our lives in a whirlwind of activity
But
sometimes they just come on us out of the blue
like a sudden storm in the mountains
which seems to come out of nowhere
on an otherwise clear day:
The
unplanned illness, the bereavement, the redundancy,
the end of a relationship
All
these and so much more can come upon us
and overwhelm us
And
at such times, God can seem impossibly absent.
Despite
our longing to find God in the midst of our distress,
in the midst of our turmoil,
we
find that every which way we turn
we are deafened, defeated,
tossed about,
overwhelmed
burned and
shaken
In
the midst of our fear and doubt,
sometimes God is not there
At
such times we may seek frantically for God
in those places where we have found
him before:
searching for God in the
familiar places
We
may long to experience the majesty of God, the awesomeness of God,
telling ourselves that surely this
is the God we need in our distress:
The God who is more
powerful, more mighty,
than the
terrifying events of our unfolding lives.
We
may seek the God of security,
into whose eternally strong and
everlasting arms
we can throw ourselves once again.
And
yet the reality for many of us is that
all too often at such times,
in spite of our best
efforts,
we simply cannot
find God
So
where has this great and mighty God gone?
This
was the question facing Elijah the prophet
as he sat in his cave, cold, alone
and afraid
Only
a few weeks earlier,
God had been dramatically present
in the fire that had
rained down from heaven on Mount Carmel
at Elijah’s
command,
to consume the
water-soaked offering
in the famous stand-off with the
prophets of Baal.
Only
a few weeks earlier,
God had been in the miraculous storm
that ended the drought in Israel
as the cloud no bigger
than a person’s hand
had grown to a mighty
deluge of heavy rain.
Elijah
knew from experience where to find God when life was tough:
God was in the fire;
God was in the storm.
But
now the storm had turned on Elijah,
and the fire of King Ahab’s revenge
was threatening to consume him.
He
was on the run, afraid for his life,
and stranded in the inhospitable
wilderness.
And
at this moment of abandonment,
Elijah did what many have done
before and since,
and he wished himself dead.
How
quickly things change!
How
quickly we can make the transition in our lives
from glory and success
to despair and despondency.
But
God had not finished with Elijah,
and in the midst of his doubt and
self-pity,
God gave him bread and water to
strengthen him
for the next stage of
his journey through the wilderness
Which
brings him to where we find him today:
in the cave in Horeb;
alone, abandoned and afraid.
And
in his cave, Elijah heard a voice
telling him to go outside, onto the
mountain,
because the Lord is about to pass
by.
‘At
last!’ we can almost hear him cry...
‘God’s back! And this time he’s
angry!’
And
sure enough, true to form, there’s a whirlwind.
and Elijah knows God will be in the whirlwind,
but God isn’t.
And
then there’s an earthquake,
and Elijah knows God will be in the earthquake,
but God isn’t
And
then there’s a fire,
and Elijah knows God will be in the fire,
but God isn’t.
Where
has Elijah’s God gone?
Why is God not to be found where God
has been found before?
What has changed?
But
then, after the wind, the earthquake, and the fire,
came the sound of sheer silence.
This
was something new for Elijah.
He was used to finding God in the
midst of the tumult and turmoil
of his battles with the
idolatrous God Baal and his false prophets
But the last place Elijah would look
for God would be in the sound of silence.
What noise does silence
make anyway???
What does silence sound
like?
<PAUSE>
We
have a phrase, don’t we:
‘The silence was deafening’?
which
we might use to describe, for example,
a significant lack of response.
So
I might ask for volunteers for the coffee rota,
and comment that the silence of the
response was deafening.
But
the sound of sheer silence heard by Elijah was not a sound of emptiness,
not a sound of inactivity or
indifference.
It
was, rather, a silence pregnant with new possibility.
It was the silence of expectation,
the silence of hope
Because
in the sound of sheer silence,
Elijah encountered God in a new way:
In
the silence that followed the wind, fire and earthquake,
Elijah received a new commission.
No
longer was he to be the prophet of whirlwind activity,
no longer was he to be the prophet
of fiery temper,
no longer was he the prophet who
shook the very ground of people’s being.
The
confrontations with the false prophets of Baal,
the skirmishes with Ahab and Jezebel
and those like them,
were
all conflicts in the great battle against evil,
which, dramatic though they were in
their own right
were not going to win the battle.
The
sound of silence, for Elijah,
led to a call to serve God in a new
way:
His
new commission was to appoint Hazael, Jehu and Elisha
as the new leaders of the people of
God
The
storms of Elijah’s life
that had led him ultimately to the despair
and solitude of the cave
now
gave way to a quiet purposefulness
that led him back to the world,
but in a new way, with a new
commission.
Elijah’s
encounter with God in the silence that followed,
when all the activity and storms and
fire
and earthquake had
brought him to his knees
was
a life-transforming encounter
with the God who meets each of us in
the depths of our despair
offering us renewed hope, renewed
life
The
disciples made this same discovery
late one night in the middle of a storm
in the middle of the lake
Their
boat was far from the land
and the wind was against them.
These
same disciples had, of course, only earlier that day,
witnessed the miracle of the feeding
of the five thousand.
But
the glory of that day in the sun
must have seemed just a distant
memory to them
as they struggled through the long
dark night:
cold, afraid, in danger
and in fear.
The
Jesus who had seemed so real to them a few hours earlier
was now nowhere to be seen
and they were alone and abandoned
on the treacherous
waters of the lake.
And
then, just when they thought it couldn’t get any worse,
a spectral figure emerged from the
storm,
walking towards them on the surface
of the lake.
Is
it any wonder they were convinced
that they were seeking a ghost?
Is
it any wonder that they cried out in fear?
But
then they heard the voice:
not the voice of the storm, not the
voice of a ghost,
but the voice of their friend and
teacher,
coming to them across
the water
encouraging them to take heart,
to not be afraid.
In
the midst of the storm, they heard their master’s voice,
and realised that they were
encountering him here in a new way
as
the voice of calm, the voice of peace,
in the midst of the storm that threatened
to overwhelm them.
And
then Simon Peter jumped in with both feet, quite literally,
out from the boat and onto the
water,
walking across the water - really
doing it!
not some desperate
scrabble to go nowhere
but really walking on
the water
But
then, no sooner had the realisation hit that it was happening,
than the fear set in, and he started
to sink beneath the stormy waters
The
encouragement from Jesus to not be afraid,
received only moments before, was
forgotten
as
the fears of the storm and the waves and the water
came crashing upon him
and
so Simon Peter needed to be rescued
with Jesus catching his hand as he
went down to the depths.
‘You
of little faith, why did you doubt?’
asked Jesus of Peter,
And
he might well ask the same of us too,
might he not?
How
often have we been where Peter was?...
doubting and afraid as the waves
close over our heads;
the
reassurances of the past lost to us in the trials of the present.
How
often have we been where Elijah was?...
wishing ourselves dead and unable to
hear the voice of God
And
yet the testimony of scripture
is that neither Peter nor Elijah
were abandoned.
The
surprising reality for both of them
was that they encountered God in a
new way
from the depths of their distress
Peter,
Elijah and the disciples discovered that their vision of who God was,
their understanding of the way God
is present in this world
was
transformed by their experiences of him
in the midst of the storms that
threatened to overwhelm them
Elijah
had wanted so desperately to see his world changed,
he had wanted to see the evil regime
overthrown, the false idols banished,
and knew he had a
calling from God to play his part in this.
So
he had started as an activist - all thunder and whirlwind,
and God had indeed been with him in his
activism,
But
in time he was brought to a realisation
that the battle was not going to be
won through glorious skirmishes.
Evil
could only finally be defeated
by taking the deeper, longer, harder
path
that was revealed when the storm,
earthquake and fire had passed by.
This
is the lesson of the sound of silence:
Activism can only get you so far
It
was the same with Jesus and the disciples in the boat.
The miracles which they had
witnessed,
miracles of healing
wholeness and feeding and stilling,
were indeed signs of the coming
kingdom of peace,
they were indeed
dramatic battles against the powers of evil and doubt.
But
the disciples had to come to a realisation that ultimate victory over evil
would only be won through the cross.
Not,
as the disciples expected, through a whirlwind assault on Jerusalem
to free the people of God from the
forces of Rome.
They
had to realise that victory over the power of evil
could only be achieved by following
a harder and more dangerous path.
It
was only by following Jesus to the cross,
and by waiting through the long
silence of Easter Saturday,
that ultimate victory over the dark
powers of death could be won.
It
was only through the silencing of all voices at the cross
that God could be heard to speak the
decisive words of new life in Christ.
So
what of us?
Do
we, like Elijah,
long to see evil powers and
principalities banished from our world?
Do
we, like the disciples,
long to see peace and justice and
righteousness?
If
so, then we can rejoice that we are on the side of the angels.
But
the reality of our lives is that we don't have to look very far
to encounter the false idols of
materialism,
the false gods of hatred
and suspicion.
We
don’t have to look very far
to find the seductive lure of power
and wealth,
the creeping suspicion
of the other,
the fear of the different.
In
the face of such evil,
we might well ask ourselves how this
battle
against the principalities and
powers of this world will ever be won?
Sometimes
we may see glimpses of the coming kingdom of Christ
in the midst of our own frantic
lives
Sometimes
we may find ourselves in a whirlwind of godly activity
as we play our part in unmasking the
false prophets for what they are.
Sometimes
we may see the hungry fed
and realise that the kingdom of God
is truly at hand
Sometimes
we may even walk on water
But
sometimes we may begin to sink to the depths,
sometimes we may want to hide in a
cave and wish ourselves dead,
sometimes
we may doubt whether God is with us at all,
and it is at such moments,
when we are with the
disciples in the boat
or with Simon Peter on
the lake
or with Elijah in his
cave
it is at such moments as these
that we catch a tantalising
glimpse
of the way of Christ
So
sometimes we may need to kneel in the silence,
waiting for the voice of God to come
to us in a new way
as the incessant noise and frenetic
activity of our daily lives are stilled
Sometimes
we may need to hear afresh the voice of Christ,
telling us not to fear as the storm
rages around us
Sometimes
we may need to clasp the hand of Christ,
our only hope as the waves threaten
to overwhelm us,
our rescuer from the forces that
would drag us down to the depths
Sometimes
we may need to have faith,
that God is still with us, and has
not left us
even when it feels as if we are
alone and abandoned
The
victory of Christ, you see,
is not only about activism and
activity
it is not solely about power and
politics
because
one day, these too shall pass
Rather,
the ultimate victory of Christ involves the way of the cross.
It involves the solitude and fear of
the cave,
it involves a long night on the lake
when the storm has turned against us,
it involves sinking into the water
that we once walked on.
Which
lead us to a new realisation
that at such times as these
we are walking with our Lord on the
way of the cross
And
we can be assured that when all else
has failed us,
we can still hear the true voice of
our Lord,
calling us to trust him as we go
together to the cross,
as we go to apparent
defeat,
calling us to wait in silence through
Easter Saturday,
for the glorious day of
resurrection and new life.
It
is as we tread the path of the cross
that we hear the voice of God coming
to us afresh
Psalm 85:8-11 Let me hear what God the LORD will speak, for he will speak peace to his people, to his faithful, to those who turn to him in their hearts. 9 Surely his salvation is at hand for those who fear him, that his glory may dwell in our land. 10 Steadfast love and faithfulness will meet; righteousness and peace will kiss each other. 11 Faithfulness will spring up from the ground, and righteousness will look down from the sky.
Thanks be to God.
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