Ninth Sunday After Pentecost / Prophet Elijah

(Matthew 14:22-34)

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ… yesterday we held the solemn yet hope-filled funeral service for our dear father and pastor, Archpriest John. Tomorrow we will lay him to rest next to his beloved wife Eileen. I ask all of you to keep Fr John in your prayers… that God will bless all the good works he did during his long life of service to the Church and that he shall hear those words which we all should long to hear: ‘Well done, thou good and faithful servant… enter thou into the joy of thy lord.’

Our Orthodox Church assures us of the life beyond the grave… the Church helps us to understand the proper priorities of life and points us toward seeking the Kingdom of God and union with Christ our Lord.

On this Sunday we have two examples set before us that reinforce this proper focus – seeking first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness.

Our first example is the great and mighty prophet whom we commemorate today: Elijah the Tishbite.

Surely one of God’s greatest Prophets in the Old Testament is the Prophet Elijah. He lived and prophesied, according to the Books of Kings, during the days of Achaab and Ochozia in the first half of the 800’s B.C. His zeal for the true faith in the one and only God of Israel led him to resist against the evil queen Jezabel, who abandoned the true God and ordered the Israelites to worship the false god Baal.

Fleeing fierce persecution, he fled into the desert where God sustained him through a raven who would bring him just enough food to sustain his body.

Elijah appeared to King Achaab and challenged the false prophets to prove who is true God, the God of Israel or Baal. Four hundred and fifty priests of Baal gathered at Mt Carmel. Elijah order that two altars should be built and two bulls should be sacrificed. Whichever god would send flames of fire from heaven and burn the offerings, He is the true God. They all agreed.

The priests of the false god Baal prayed from sunrise to sunset and nothing happened. When Elijah prayed, he ordered that the sacrificial bull be placed on the altar and that water be poured over the altar three times - fire immediately came from heaven and burnt everything.

One of the most beautiful passages from the life of the Prophet Elijah speaks about how he was praying to the Lord, affirming his faith and trust in God, yet confessing that all had abandoned God and that they sought to kill him. God told him to stand on the mountain and that God would pass before him. A mighty wind came up, and God was not in the might wind. Then an earthquake shook the earth, and God was not in the earthquake. Then there was a fire, but God was not in the fire. Finally, there was a gentle breeze, and the Lord was there in the gentle breeze.

Elijah did not die a mortal death… he was taken bodily up to heaven in a fiery chariot. It is a great mystery that Elijah lives in the heavenly realm. He appeared with Moses upon Mt Tabor when our Lord Jesus Christ was transfigured. And he will appear again on earth, along with the Prophet Enoch, during the final days when the AntiChrist will be present. They will preach in the streets of Jerusalem and will be slain before the eyes of the whole world. After three and a half days, they will be resurrected before the eyes of the world and God will take them back up into heaven.

The prophet Elijah stands before us a might zealot of God whose sole focus was on God and whose sole purpose and desire was in striving to do His holy will. The Prophet Elijah shows us a shining example of one who sought the Kingdom of God above all other things.

Our second source of inspiration comes to us in the scene put before us in today’s Holy Gospel. The image of the Apostle Peter stepping out of the boat on to the stormy waters and walking upon the sea toward our Lord Jesus Christ is one of the most indelible pictures for us of that God-centered focus.

When our Lord summoned Apostle Peter to come to Him, Apostle Peter, in his zeal and love for Christ, immediately stepped out of the boat and began walking upon the water toward His Lord and God. Apostle Peter demonstrates in this moment a self-forgetting, Christ-focused faith in God. As long as he kept his eyes on Christ, he walked upon the water as if it were dry land. But what happened?... The moment Apostle Peter took his eyes off of Christ and began to concern himself with himself, with his fears and doubts, this is when he began to sink. Thanks be to God, our Lord was close at hand and when Peter cried out, ‘Lord save me!’ Jesus stretched out His hand and brought him safely back into the boat.

Brothers and sisters in Christ… this Gospel image of the Apostle Peter and Christ upon the waters must be a consistent reminder and lesson for each one of us. It is a vivid portrait of the uplifting and sustaining power of God-focused faith and the perilous dangers of our self-centered, anxious preoccupations that eclipse our focus on God.

This distinction of the target of our focus, between having our heart, our mind, and our affections turned toward God vs. having our heart, our mind, and our affections preoccupied with the preoccupations and troubles of this world is absolutely foundational… it is the key to our spiritual life and our spiritual health.

To live a healthy and fruitful spiritual life does not require us to flee the stormy waves of this life. The waves and concerns of this life will always be with us. But if we focus our gaze and our hope upon Christ, by His grace, He can allow us to walk upon those waves as if they were steady ground.

Make that time in the morning to say your prayers. If you would not walk out of the house without brushing your teeth and hair, take the same uncompromising stance with your prayers! During the day, attend to your work to the best of your ability with the understanding that God is with you, that all you do is done within the presence of God. As challenges and temptations occur, let these be your reminders and calls to prayer… uttering a simple and heartfelt prayer: ‘God be with me!’ or ‘Lord help me!’ or cultivate the soul-profiting habit of saying the Jesus Prayer: ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’ When you come home, do so with gratitude to God in your heart, that He has been with you and has preserved you through another day. If you wish to ‘turn off’ with some entertainment or distraction, do so with a time limit… telling yourself you will watch your show for an hour, and then be done with it so you retain time for evening prayers. God grant you to go to sleep with a prayer on your lips and with peace in your heart.

In such a way, we can keep the focus of our life on Christ. Resist the force of the waves of the sea of life from pulling you under! Do so by focusing your sights on Christ, Whose grace lifts us up, granting us strength and consolation and, should we turn our sights away from Him and begin to drown in the waters, call out as did Peter, ‘Lord save me!’