Bazzi Rahib, Ilyas Basim Khuri. Jesus Walks on Water and Saves Peter, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=55906 [retrieved August 13, 2023]. Original source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ilyas_Basim_Khuri_Bazzi_Rahib_-_Jesus_Walks_on_Water_-_Walters_W59241A_-_Full_Page.jpg.

RCL Year A, Proper 14 (Alternate Readings)
I Kings 19:9-18, Psalm 85:8-13, Romans 10:5-15, Saint Matthew 14:22-33

Last Sunday’s change in liturgical color, change in the Gospel, from Matthew to Luke, and concentration upon the revelation of the ineffable beauty and glory of God may have seemed an interruption, a break from the tumult of the disciples’ misunderstanding of Jesus and the Pharisees’ conflict with Jesus. But it was no interruption. Today, we are back where we were before and on last Sunday. We look upon the face of the ineffable beauty and glory of a providential God once again.

Words of today’s First Lesson seem to me to focus on the power and silence of Almighty God just as if we looked upon the face of Jesus in his Transfiguration. “But the Lord was not in the wind…but the Lord was not in the earthquake…but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence.”[1]

I take it almost as an article of faith that the Lord has a message for each of us all the time. Sometimes the message is affirming. Sometimes the message is correcting. Sometimes the message is instructing, commanding, or prophetic, or it is all three or a combination thereof. When the Lord finally gets Elijah’s attention, the message is commanding, and it is prophetic. “You shall anoint Hazael king over Aram…you shall anoint Jehu…king over Israel…you shall anoint Elisha prophet in your place.”[2] As I said, it is also prophetic: “Whoever escapes from the sword of Hazael, Jehu shall kill; and whoever escapes from the sword of Jehu, Elisha shall kill.”[3]

This message is the Lord’s answer to the problem of the day: all but seven thousand people of Israel have apostatized; they have turned their backs on the Lord who saved them, who brought them up, out of Egypt. They have worshipped Baal. Those apostates will be killed, and the seven thousand faithful ones will live. Taken a step further, the message to Elijah and to Israel is a command to remain faithful to the Lord who made them and who saves them, over and over again.

Together, we could go over the Gospel in a similar way, and the message of the Lord would be much the same, for the Lessons are thematically related. When Peter begins to sink, Jesus asks him, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?”[4] At the moment Peter begins to sink, he finds himself in a position similar to the apostates Hazael, Jehu, or Elisha will kill. He has let his faith slip to doubt. And Jesus tells him through that question to remain faithful to the Lord who made him and who saves him, over and over again.

And Jesus’ word to Peter is his word to us. We are to remain faithful to the Lord who made us and who saves us over and over again. The Lord is not to be found in the wind, the earthquake, or the fire. The Lord is not to be found in the disquietude of this world, the tumult of conflict between God and his creatures, or the restlessness in our souls. The Lord is to be found in the sheer silence, the sheer silence of eternity, that which never changes, that which is like the Transfigured Jesus, the Lord in his steadfast loving kindness. It is in the eternal Lord God, who keeps faith forever, who loves infinitely, that we are to put our trust, world without end.

[1] I Kings 19:11-12.

[2] I Kings 19:15-16.

[3] I Kings 19:17.

[4] St Matthew 14:21.