The Drought and the Drowning

The Drought and the Drowning: A Sermon on Elijah, Peter, and Help

Sermon Texts: 1 Kings 19:9-18; Matthew 14:22-33; Romans 10:5-13

Introduction

You’ve heard me say it several times over the past eighteen months. The Bible is not primarily about what happened. It’s about what happens. Though we did not read the passages this morning, I want to tell you two stories from Scripture that we have all lived before. 

Elijah

The first is Elijah, a prophet. Just to place us in the story. The Israelites are held in slavery in Egypt for approximately 400 years. God uses Moses to deliver them. Eventually they take territory, gain stability, and establish themselves as a nation. They choose a king, the first of whom was Saul. Then King David. And then David’s son, King Solomon. After Solomon’s death, the kingdom experiences a civil war and splits in two. The norther kingdom is called Israel. The southern kingdom is called Judah, and its capital is Jerusalem. Both the northern and southern kingdoms war with one another and they war with other nations around them.

Elijah is a prophet to the northern kingdom. The king of the northern kingdom is the notorious king Ahab, and his wife is Jezebel. Instead of remaining faithful to God, the God of their ancestors, Jezebel has brought in the worship of another God into the palace and is bankrolling the expansion of this foreign religion.

Not only that, prophets who speak against this are being hunted down and killed. Elijah is one of the last prophets in the land, and he is fighting for his life. Through his word, drought has come to the land.

At his high point, he defeated 450 prophets of Baal. In an amazing display, fire fell from heaven and the other prophets fell on their faces and cried out to God. Elijah had never been closer to certain. He has never felt more sure of who is he and whose he is.

If you had asked him that afternoon, on the mountaintop after the victory, with the smoke still rising, whether God was real and whether God was with him, and whether or not he understood his calling in the world, he would not have hesitated for a second. 

That was the top. Then came the bottom. 

A day or so later, exhausted, running for his life, Elijah sits down under a solitary broom tree and simply prays, “God, let me die.”

That’s right. The prophet who called down fire from heaven cannot find the will to take another step. He goes from a mountaintop to a hole so deep and dark that he tells God: I’ve had enough. I’m not better than my ancestors, meaning, I’m a dead man walking. Just let my life stop now.

That is not a contradiction in Elijah’s character. That is the truth about triumph: that it does not save you against hollowness. You can stand in the fire on a morning like this, and by the end of the week, you can no longer remember the tune of the songs that moved you so deeply in the church service.

Elijah ends up walking to a mount and he finds a cave and enters it. God asks him, “Hey, Elijah, what are you doing here?” And Elijah’s answer is the answer of every person who has laid it all out for a cause near and dear to their heart: What am I doing here, you ask? I’m alone. I alone am left. It’s just me.

And God doesn’t argue with him. God doesn’t give him smelling salts and tell him to snap out of it. God doesn’t say to remember the high points. God tells him to go stand at the mouth of the cave.

Here is something you need to know. That mountain, that cave? It was the same place Moses experienced God. Moses was shielded, the story says, and he saw God’s glory and power, and he was struck with awe. 

Elijah may have gone to that mountain because he thought, “Maybe God will show up.”

So God tells Elijah, go to the opening of the cave. And sure enough there is wind and an earthquake and fire. But do you know what? 

God was not in any of it. No experience. No chills. No goosebumps. No lift out of his low point.

And then as he stood there, there is a sound. Some translations call it a still small voice. Others refer to it in its original language: the sound of sheer silence. And in that silence, God finally speaks.

God does not congratulate Elijah for his faith nor does God shame him for his fear. God simply expands his sigh, elevates his perspective. God says, “Elijah, there are seven thousand faithful people. Seven thousand who have not bowed down to the other God. You are alone. You never were.

Elijah’s problem, underneath the despair, was a problem of perspective. He had shrunk his world down to the size of his worry. And that small world, there was only room for one person to exist: himself.

And God’s mercy to him was not just a rescue from the drought and the wilderness; it was expanding Elijah’s understanding: help is all around you. You only need to ask.

Peter

Here’s the second story, and if it sounds familiar, that is because it is almost the same story, centuries later, but instead of coming in hot off the heels of a drought, this story involves water.

Like Elijah, the disciples have experienced one of the greatest moments of their lives. In the passage before this, they witnessed Jesus and his teachings and the miraculous turning of a few fish and a few loaves of bread into a feast that fed thousands upon thousands of people.

And now, they leave that desolate place and travel across the water to the other side, because Jesus has ministry to do there as well. Jesus tells them to go on, “I’ll catch up with you later.”

The disciples set out. They are in a boat, far from land.

The Sea of Galilee is only ten to thirteen miles across, but at night, in a storm, with no shoreline lights to fix on, it might as well be the ocean. The disciples are literally in the middle of it, too far to turn back, and close enough to keep pressing on.

And then, heavy winds assail them. The boat is battered, and they are growing terrified. If the boat sinks or overturns, they’d never be able to swim back, besides, it’s so dark in the night. No direction home.

And then, in their worry and their terror, Jesus comes to them walking on the sea. And Peter, being Peter, does not ask. He says, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.”

And Jesus says one word: Come.

And unlike me, no matter my delusions of sufficiency, Peter gets out of the boat.

And it is almost unbelievable! He takes a step and doesn’t sink. He’s looking at Jesus, and he takes another step and another step. And in that fixed gaze, there is no room for anything else: not the wind, not the waves, not his own limitations. If Jesus can feed 5,000 people with just appetizers, surely he can do this!

Maybe Peter thinks, “This is what faith feels like. To walk through fire or walk on water, without a doubt, that God is present and God is enough.”

This is faith. This is certainty. This is fun. There’s nothing I can’t do. Triumph.

And then Peter does what Elijah did. He looks away. Maybe he looks back at the disciples and he realizes how far away the boat is getting. He looks away from the face of Christ. He feels the wind. He sees the storm. And instead of focusing on the one who got him there, instead of fixing his attention on Christ, he begins to believe the chaos. 

And he begins to sink.

And sinking with him is his hope, certainty, and triumph. Why was I so bold to think something like this could happen to me?

Here is what I want you to notice. Christ could have kept him from sinking at all. Christ could have borne him up on the waves the whole way across, so that Peter never felt his feet slip, never felt the cold water close over his ankles. Never let out that gasp as the cold chilled him to his core.

That’s not what happened. Peter tried. Peter sank. And Christ was there in the daring and in the drowning.

Both things are true. We think faith means we never go under, never (quite literally) get in over our heads. We think if we are close enough to God, sure enough of God, we will simply walk above the storms without incident.

But that is not Peter’s story, and I doubt it’s any of ours either.

The hands that reached out and blessed loaves and fish is the same hand that reached into the water and pulled Peter to safety. As on the land, so in the water. As in the miracles, so in our misery. 

The most important thing Peter did was not being brave and asking, “Hey, I want to do what you are doing Jesus.” It was not even walking on the water. 

The most important thing Peter did, which many of us find so hard to do, is this: He asked for help. He realized he is not alone. Three words: “Lord, save me.”

Just a cry, out of the middle of the sinking, a prayer lifted up to the God of those who are in over their heads.

Romans

Elijah in the cave was convinced he was alone. Peter on the water was convinced he was going under.

And in both stories, God does not scold them for how they got there. God just meets them there.

That is what Paul is getting at in Romans when he writes that the word is near you, on your lips and in your heart, and that whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. Paul is not describing a transaction, like our prayers are quarters we drop into a divine vending machine to get what we want.

Paul is describing the same still small voice that found Elijah at the mouth of the cave, and he is describing the hand that was already reaching for Peter before he finished the three-word prayer.

You don’t have to travel thousands of miles. You don’t have to do daring things or get spiritual highs and lofty feelings. The word is near you. Not because you are the right kind of person with the right kind of intentions. It is near you because God has always been in the business of meeting people exactly where they are and how they are: whether it is in the drought or in the drowning. God is our Helper!

Now, I want to say this as directly and as kindly as possible. If you are Elijah, where you look at your life and you find it completely unlivable, you feel alone in your despair or your pain or your complications, ask for help.

You are not a burden. Ask for help.

 If you are Peter, and there is something in your life that you thought you could overcome, but now you are sinking and the waters are threatening to overcome you, ask for help.

Asking for help is the hardest thing to do sometimes.

If it is medical. Ask for help. Sometimes sharing your ordeal with a trusted person takes the weight off. Bonnie is our Parish Nurse and she is here to listen, not diagnose or treat, but to advocate and sympathize and share the burden. If it is medical, seek medical help and we are here to give you the spiritual and relational support you need.

Like God said to Elijah: there are way more people who are ready to help you. You just need to ask.

If the help you need is related to mental health. Ask for help. I’m here, Pastor Heather is here. Not to diagnose, but to listen, understand, and support you, and to help you find help.

If you have other needs, we are here. If you are listening online, that means you too. Just because you are not physically here, does not mean we are not here for you. This is a generous, kind, and serving congregation. We care for each other.

Listen, this church, we, the congregation- are the boat in a very big ocean, and sometimes waves threaten us all. We are literally in the middle of it, and we are in the middle of it together.

The most important thing you can do is call out for help.

Help. The word is near you. On your lips. In your heart.

And God’s love will show up with human hands and feet and will lift you up.