August 11, 2002

Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

The first reading and the Gospel today are about trust. Is God worth trusting? When your life is threatened, where do you look?

Elijah came to the mountain because he was running for his life. He’d been threatened by a queen who meant to kill him, a queen who was perfectly capable of doing that. He goes out into the desert and he is commanded to go to this mountain to meet God. So he goes to the mountain and God tells him He will be passing by. But before God arrives, He sends some special effects to show what He is capable of. Can you imagine a wind that is strong enough to crush rock? That’s a lot of wind, an earthquake, a blazing fire. (Earth, wind and a fire, hmmm—shades of the 70’s??) But God is not to be confused with His special effects. It was only when he heard the sound of a gentle, whispering breeze that Elijah then covers his face and goes out on the mountain. And he covers his face because as a good Jewish prophet he knew you’re not supposed to look God in the face.

So he takes his cloak, covers his face and goes out and God says to him, “Elijah, why are you here?” And Elijah says, “I am zealously zealous for the Lord God of Hosts.” He then goes on to mention that his life is in danger. God gives him a series of commands, different things that he will do. One of the things that must have particularly struck Elijah was that he was commanded to appoint Elisha as his successor. Usually prophets, kings, the great leaders of Israel get successors when they die. So, how did Elijah take this? Elijah must have wondered, “What exactly does that mean? Does this mean I’m going to die?” But no matter what it meant, he couldn’t possibly have imagined the exit that as the great prophet he was, that he was going to be given. That unlike most mortals who have to die, he was greatly blessed by the arrival of the horses and chariots of fire that pick him up and take him skyward in this wonderful display of God’s power, a display that Elisha is blessed to be able to see. But it’s so typical: Elijah’s told go appoint your successor, probably simply assumes that he’s about to die, but what God has for him is always better than he could possibly imagine. And Elisha is there to see this wonderful miracle – the horses and chariots of fire taking Elijah skyward – because he trusted. He knew he was at risk; God called him to forget the risk. Leave the mountain, go back, do these different things I’ve called to do, and then wait and see what I will do.

Elijah knew God well enough to trust Him with all his heart, but he was not shy about saying, “By the way, I’m in danger, by the way, they’re trying to kill me.” In other words, I trust you, now do something. Help me.

Peter gets out of the boat. This is an incredible thing. The Sea of Galilee is known for its deadly storms. It’s narrow but it’s very long and it gets really wavy in a bad storm. If you were a fisherman and you lived your life fishing on that lake, you probably had friends die when those sudden storms come up. They’re out there on the lake, by themselves, and they see Jesus, or a figure, walking on the water and the first thing they think is it’s a ghost. You wonder why. Had they ever seen a ghost before? No. But for some reason they don’t know who this is, they think there is a ghost walking on the water. Jesus makes it clear that it’s Him.

And Peter says, “If it is You, then ask me to come to You across the water.”—a very, very trusting thing to do. But it shows something about Peter’s heart. Peter loved to go wherever Jesus was. Later when Jesus is seen on the shore, Peter simply jumps out of the boat and swims to the shore. Not willing to wait until the boat makes it to the shore because his heart is to see Jesus. He wants Jesus. He wants to be where Jesus is. He wants everything that Jesus has to offer.

So he gets out of the boat. The first step was the hard one. Imagine, your foot’s going over the edge and you’re about to stand on water. This isn’t a typical event. Especially the first time. This is one of those miracles that was particularly hard because there was no precedent for this. There was precedent for splitting seas and splitting rivers, but walking along watching the water on both sides of you. But standing on the water – this was a first. And he takes that first step. After that it was easy. He kept taking second steps, third step, fourth step. The first step would be the hard one. Do you think he turned around and said, “Andrew, have a rope ready.”

And then he makes the mistake that’s easy for all of us to make, he suddenly realizes what an amazing thing this is: he is standing on the Sea of Galilee in the middle of a storm! He then makes the classic mistake, which is all so easy to make: he takes his eyes off of Jesus and he looks at the circumstances. “Here I am, violating gravity. Here I am in a storm. What am I doing out here?” He takes his eyes off of Jesus, he looks at the storm and his immediate response is he starts to fall. Jesus is immediately at his side, and pulls him up. He doesn’t let him go down the first time and the second time to teach him a good lesson, doesn’t wave bye-bye to the disciple that doubted. Jesus pulls him up. But then reminds him, when you’re in the middle of a storm and you’re walking on the water, don’t take your eyes off of Me.

That’s always the temptation. We’re surrounded by the storms all the time. Sometimes the calm in our life is only the eye of the hurricane. And the bottom line is if we take our eyes off of Jesus we will get blown away, we will go down. The only security, the only safety we have is to keep our gaze constantly fixed on Jesus Himself.

Peter loved Him. Peter wanted Him. Peter risked everything and ultimately gave everything for Jesus. Peter after Pentecost is a great spirit-filled evangelist who finally in Rome was willing to lay down his life for the One Who loved him first because Peter learned the lesson: never ever, ever take your eyes off of Jesus. No matter what situation or circumstance is clamoring for attention, look to Jesus. No matter how much the storm is raging, look to Jesus. Because only there can we be safe. When Jesus says “without Me you can do nothing” that is exactly what He meant.

But the life that Jesus calls us to is not simply a good human life. The life Jesus calls us to is to be a Saint, living a life which by its nature is supernatural. We can’t do any of it without more of Him, which is why we constantly come here to receive Him. We come here to receive Him; we go to chapel to adore Him; we constantly spend time before Him, fixing our gaze on Him. If we want our lives to be what He has called us to be, to do that without Him is a flat out impossibility.

But if you look at the life of Elijah and you see what he was able to accomplish to build the kingdom—the miracles he did, the way he boldly proclaimed the truth in the face of great opposition, he didn’t have access to a fraction of the grace that we have. He had no Eucharist. He had no baptism, no confirmation, none of the sacramental grace that we live in. He had part of the Scriptures. He had almost no fellowship. You look at the gifts that we’ve been given, we should make Elijah look like he was standing still. If we don’t, maybe we need to consider just how much do we keep our gaze fixed on Jesus Himself and how much do we look to the world, the flesh and the devil instead? If we keep looking at Jesus, pleading with Him for His grace, He will give us the courage to stand and the courage to do the hardest thing, which is to take that first step out of the boat. Let us plead with Jesus today that we would open our hearts more deeply to the wonder of His presence and that we would commit ourselves even more to disregarding the storm and keeping our gaze fixed on Jesus.