"Lord, Save Me!" Reaching Out to the God Who is Always Passing By - Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost

A sermon preached by the Reverend Holly Huff at the Cathedral Church of St. Mark on the eleventh Sunday after Pentecost, August 13 2023.

“The Lord is about to pass by.” Thus comes the word of the Lord to Elijah as he hides up on the mountain. Elijah is in a sorry state. Having bested and then questionably killed the prophets of Baal, he’s running for his life. At the beginning of this chapter, he is so discouraged that he’s ready to lay down and die in the desert sand. God gives him the toddler treatment we all need sometimes: you need a nap and a snack and then let’s see how you feel. Elijah is cared for by God’s tender provision: he is fed by the ravens, and he finds refuge from the sun to rest his head under the broomtree. Strengthened, he heads up Mount Horeb. But he’s still afraid, still watching his back, ruled by fear. “They are seeking my life,” goes his story. This is the inner tape on loop, the mastering story he brings with him everywhere: “They are seeking my life, to take it away, I alone am left.” “I am left alone.” Elijah sees this pattern of persecution and isolation everywhere, laid over everything and everyone he meets. He’s hiding in the mountain cave, comforting himself with its familiarity: “I alone am left, I alone am left.”

On Horeb the word comes to Elijah: “The Lord is about to pass by.” And there is great commotion on the mountain, all the signs associated with the presence of the Lord appearing to Moses on Mount Sinai. But this mountaintop theophany, this breathtaking revelation of divine presence comes not in the whirlwind, not in the earthquake, not in the fire. God is revealed in the sound of sheer silence, a sound so sheer that Elijah gets up when he hears it and goes to listen, attentive, from the threshold of the cave where he has found refuge.

God passes by in sheer silence. Divine presence not always or even usually in great drama, ecstatic conversion, or visible consolations. Tender remarkable-unremarkable presence is usually ordinary, coming to us in our moments of greatest fear, abandonment, isolation, and helplessness.

Must note: what does Elijah say after this passing by of sheer silence that has him standing breathless in the thin air? “I alone am left, and they are seeking my life, to take it away.” Same story as before! Poor fellow. Still stuck in the same spin of persecution and isolation and he’s off to inflict the same on others. 

That’s Elijah in his distress on the mountain, and can’t we all relate to that hardheaded quasi-imperviousness to grace, even when we’ve been struck by wonder and awe and love, seen the Lord passing by in the morning light, and then immediately find ourselves wrapped back up in our own patterns of self-enclosure. Meanwhile in our Gospel reading: Peter and the other disciples are afraid, too, battered by night squalls on the Sea of Galilee. They’re far from land, and the wind is against them. Into that terror, too, the Lord is about to pass by, ghostly as he comes walking on the water. He reaches out when they are afraid, saying, “Take heart, it is I, do not be afraid.” 

It is I, he says, echoing the divine name revealed to Moses at the Burning Bush. Take heart, I AM THAT I AM. Take heart, do not be afraid, before this blazing display of Being itself. Jesus here is identifying himself with the God of the Exodus, the liberating God who comes to us in our captivity and terror, makes a way out of no way, to lead us through watery chaos and despair to freedom and life.

This way out of no way, the pathway through the sea that delivers God’s people, is a path that God will show us. Not the result of our own efforts with the map, or our own inept wayfinding but wholeheartedly trusting God to unscroll the right pathways under our feet as we walk. Today’s psalm speaks of the nearness of God’s salvation, the beauty of earth and heaven aligned rightly. “Truth shall spring up from the earth, and righteousness shall look down from heaven.” Then righteousness shall go before us, and peace shall be a pathway for our feet. That pathway to freedom will roll itself out before us in offering, again and again, as the Lord passes by. 

It's Peter, of course, lovely Peter, who steps out of the boat to go to Jesus. “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” Jesus says, “Come.” Peter’s caught a glimpse of the unlikely pathway springing up before him on the choppy seas. He gets out of the boat and finds he can walk on the water as long as he keeps his eyes on Jesus, almost as if he’s being walked out to Jesus rather than doing the walking. Then what? Terror again, the same sinking story, reasserting itself. Peter can’t do it as long as he thinks he’s doing it. As his own fearful self-enclosing story pops back up, he takes his eye off the master and tries to do it himself. But Jesus won’t let him drown. Peter utters perhaps the truest prayer and truest confession, actually, just three words: “Lord, save me!” Help me. I need you. “Lord, save me.” And Jesus reaches to take hold of him, catches him, pulls him up. This is resurrection iconography: Jesus will not let us sink into the abyss of death, not finally. He surrenders himself to the depths of death and hell and rises in victory as Lord over death and hell. He goes ahead of us to make a way where there was no way, and returns to give gifts to his people, to share his victory with us and lend us his righteousness like a borrowed wedding garment to get all his friends prime seats at the banquet feast.

In all our own places of terror, too, the Lord is about to pass by, the Lord is passing by, and we are all drawn along in the current of his righteousness, the path of peace God is preparing for our feet to walk in, not our own plodding effort. Like in waterskiing—probably the closest any of us will get to walking on water—you lean back and let the boat do it. I remember watching some wakesurfers last summer in pure amazement as they got up on the water’s surface, then tossed the tow-rope back inside the boat, and continued surfing, just riding the wake, pulled along by the water’s own momentum.

Jesus has a momentum like that: his yoke is easy and his burden is light. Sit back and let the boat do it. Lean back and let God love you. Trust him, let him call you to him. Jesus walks along the shore and says, “Follow me,” and the first disciples followed him, not in grinding effort but almost magnetically pulled along in the wake of his enlivening presence. He passes by Andrew and John, and they too are caught up in the surf, following after him, spending the whole day with him, drawn on by that question Jesus lobs over his shoulder as he goes by: “What are you looking for?” Desire for God draws them onward, to come and see. “Righteousness shall go before him, peace shall be a pathway for his feet.”

The Lord makes the path, we just walk on it. Peace is unscrolling before our feet, and God will walk us out on the water and walk us back to boat. Keep our gaze on Jesus, to trust him, rather than fear the choppy seas or howling winds. There are inevitable slips back into our old story: I’m all alone here. The wind is against us. Like Elijah, tired and afraid: they are seeking my life and I alone am left, whatever the recurrent story dragging us around may be, sinking us underwater. Jesus passing by is an interruption, intervening, opening up prising open space in that suffocating story, space for freedom and possibility. “The Lord is about to pass by.” The Lord is always passing by. He comes to us in silent dazzling array on the mountaintop and he comes to us down in the storm when the ship is taking on water, when we’re so afraid we think he can only be a ghost. In the heights and at the depths, the Lord is passing by. Our loving liberating God is the God of the Exodus: who wants desperately to lead us into the freedom of love, even through the watery chaos. This freedom is passing by, announcing itself in every moment. 

What does it mean to call Jesus Lord, as Peter does? If Jesus is Lord, Caesar is not. If Jesus is Lord, Pharaoh is not. Confessing Jesus as Lord is reaching out in need and trust to a higher loyalty who comes to free us from the petty tyrants in our society and the petty tyrants banging around in our own soul, the too-small stories we live and die by. Jesus is Lord, Lord of our lives and victor over all those Caesars and Pharoahs we can’t escape under our own steam. “Lord, save me!” It’s truly an excellent prayer, applicable in just about every situation, try it out this week. Lord, save me, save me exactly in the middle of this mess I don’t want but in which you are meeting me anyway. In this argument with a coworker, this toddler meltdown, this leaking toilet, this hospital room, this depression, this illness. Lord, save me. And here you are, meeting me, hand outstretched when I was sinking down, reaching my reaching.

Whatever is most unbearable to you in your life right now, Jesus is Lord of that, too. To confess him as Lord, with your lips and in your heart is no intellectual exertion, no fearful billboard-induced magical incantation against hellfire, it’s the tripping tongue exclamation of distress need dependence and trust. Peter, afraid and sinking into the water in the dark, cries out, “Lord, save me!” That’s accepting Jesus Christ into your heart as your Lord and Savior: accepting the possibility that there might be someone to meet you in your need. Your longing and seeking and desire could be answered, met. That same-old strangleweed story doesn’t have to rule you.

Little faith is enough. Mustard seed faith is enough. Remember the Little Way St. Therese showed us, not a self-made path of spiritual heroism but the narrow way of childlike trust in our littleness and weakness. So even our doubts and fears too are accepted and held in God’s mercy. Our fixations and repetitions, our dog-to-its-vomit return like Elijah is, in God’s accounting, so much wailing of the wind. The liberating God of the Exodus, this Jesus who went to hell and back for us, has already filled us with their life-giving Spirit, love is continually passing by, reaching out to us, and “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”

Amen.