Lord, Save Me!

This sermon was preached by Pastor Ted Carnahan for the Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost on August 9, 2026.

Grace, mercy and peace be with all of you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

There's an old joke that this story always reminds me of, and I have to share it with you. I hope I haven't told you this story before—but if I have, don't tell me, because it'll ruin it for me.

There was a pastor, a priest, and a rabbi who were out on a fishing trip. They're in a small boat, and they've been out there on the water for quite a while. And as you might expect, eventually nature calls—and it is necessary, because of the nature of the natural emergency, that one go and use the outhouse.

The priest is the first who needs to go. He stands up in the boat, says a prayer to God, gives himself the sign of the cross—all that good stuff—and then he steps out onto the water, on the surface of the lake where they're fishing, and he walks across the water to the land. He goes to the outhouse, comes out, walks back across the water, and gets back in the boat.

Well, that's pretty surprising! But then the pastor has the same kind of natural need. So he, again, stands up in the boat, prays to God, and then he climbs out of the boat, walks across the surface of the water, goes and visits the little boy's room, walks back across the surface of the water, and gets back in the boat.

Well, the rabbi is absolutely shocked at this. He's heard stories about Jesus, but he doesn't know what to do with that. And so he says, "I'm going to try this. I think I can do this, too."

And so, when the time for him to go comes, he stands up in the boat, and he prays, and he steps over the side of the boat—and boom! He goes into the water and sinks like a stone. And the priest turns to the pastor and says, "You think we should have told him about the stepping stones?"

We have two stories today that we're looking at—stories that don't immediately seem like they fit together, but they're dealing with really important people in the Bible, and really important circumstances.

We have the story of Elijah on the mountain, who's been persecuted and harassed, and who's hiding from his enemies—the enemies of God. And we have the story of the disciples on the sea, who at this point are not being persecuted or harried, but are being attacked by natural forces—and they are afraid.

And at first, it's easy to think these are not the same kind of story, right? They're very different sorts of ideas. But I really think they belong together, and they're the reason they are appointed together in our readings for today.

They both are about fighting seemingly insurmountable odds.

Elijah at Horeb

So let's take a moment first to think about Elijah.

Elijah has been very zealous for the Lord—and not just in his words; it is God's own truth. Elijah is considered the greatest of the Old Testament prophets, so much so that when Jesus is revealed to be the Son of God on the top of the mountain of transfiguration—the cloud comes down, and suddenly there are not just Jesus up there, but also two other people who show up. And who are they? Moses and Elijah, right? So Elijah is extremely important—one of the greatest of the prophets.

And Elijah has been very zealous for the Lord, and he's under tremendous pressure. The way he puts it is this: The Israelites have turned away from God wholeheartedly. They have thrown down God's altars—they've literally dismantled places of worship and thrown them down. They have killed the prophets with the sword. When these men come and preach the word of God and say, "This is what God says," and the people hear it and think, "I didn't want to hear that; I don't like that word of God"—what do they do to the one who brings that message? They kill him. They murder him with a sword.

And then he says at the end, "I alone am left, and they are seeking my life, to take it away."

His problems feel insurmountable. He feels as if all of Israel has turned against him—and he's not entirely wrong. Most of the people of Israel, both those in great power and authority—the king and his men, the priests and such—they've all turned against the God of Israel. They've turned against the God whom Elijah preaches, and they have given themselves into the hands of gods whose worship is much more, shall we say, carnal.

And so he believes that he is alone, and he has fled from the area. He has hidden himself in a cave in the mountains at Horeb, and his problems feel like there's nothing that he can do to overcome them. It's not that he's saying these problems are beyond God—but he's asking a question that I think a lot of us have asked at various times in our lives, when we face difficult circumstances: God, where are you? It seems like evil is winning.

God answers him with a command: "Go and stand on the mountain before the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by."

And so Elijah's kind of getting excited. You can imagine him saying, "Ah, here comes the power of God! Here comes God's righteous vengeance to execute wrath on wrongdoers, to set everything right. And finally, God is going to do something—and it's going to be spectacular and awesome."

The Displays of Power

And then the displays of power come.

First, there is a great wind—not just a hurricane, not even a tornado, but a wind that is literally splitting the mountains and breaking rocks. Imagine a wind so powerful that it's picking up boulders and crashing them against the sides of mountains. And in the face of this tremendous display, Elijah realizes the Lord is not in the wind.

And then there's a tremendous earthquake, and the foundations of the earth are shaken, and the mountains are crumbling before this powerful earthquake. But the Lord is not in the earthquake.

And then there's a fire. We don't know what the fire looked like, but if you're thinking about a wind that breaks rocks and an earthquake that shakes mountains, this fire must have been amazing—a catastrophic conflagration! Whether it was falling from the heavens or a forest fire consuming all in its path, whatever it was, Elijah quickly realized the Lord was not in the fire.

Those are the things he imagined to be signs of God's power, God's victory, God's justice. But for him, in that time, God was in none of them.

The Sound of Sheer Silence

And then comes the sound of sheer silence.

Long pause

Silence can be uncomfortable, can't it? What do you hear when you stop talking? What do you hear when silence falls? I don't know about you—some of you will sympathize with this—I hear a ringing in my ears. Maybe you hear people shifting uncomfortably in their seats, because the pastor isn't supposed to stop talking right in the middle of the sermon. Maybe you hear people shuffling papers, or the beautiful sounds of little children talking.

The sound of sheer silence is the weakest thing you can possibly imagine. It's small, it's weak, it's insignificant. It doesn't seem powerful. But God is there.

And then God speaks a command. He says, "Trust me." He says, "Go. It's time for you to return to your ministry. You have work to do." And he gives him some instructions—I won't get into what all those instructions mean today; it's not really the point of where I'm going—but he gives him instructions. He is renewed in his trust that God is with him, and he is given instructions on how he should proceed.

He thought the odds were insurmountable—but God was present.

On the Sea of Galilee

Similarly, we have a story of insurmountable odds on the Sea of Galilee.

Now, the thing to know about the Sea of Galilee is that it's an inland sea. It's a beautiful place—I've actually been on a boat in the Sea of Galilee. It was a nice opportunity that we had there. And many afternoons, Mediterranean storms come up over the hills on the western side of the Sea of Galilee and come rushing down into the depression where the sea sits. And when that happens, you oftentimes get a brief afternoon rainstorm. But sometimes, when the conditions are right, you get a storm—and quite a powerful storm. And not just a storm, but a storm that you don't see coming. The hills kind of block you from being able to see off to the west, and so before you know it, the storm is upon you—and you're already in the boat, and it's already a big windstorm.

This sudden storm comes. Now remember: Jesus is not in the boat with them. And the disciples have among them several very experienced fishermen. They have spent a lot of time on this lake, and they know what to expect. But even they are caught off guard. Because as the evening comes, the winds get worse and worse, and the wind is against them. The storm gets worse, the wind whips up terrible waves, the boat is beginning to swamp—and they are terrified.

And then something even more frightening happens: Jesus appears, walking to them upon the surface of the sea!

Now, I don't know if you took a look at the front of your bulletin yet, but I'd recommend you do. See here on the front—I found this picture; it's from a stained glass window at a Presbyterian church in Oklahoma City. And if you look right down below the little box here where it says "Welcome to Our Savior's," you can see the sandaled toes of Jesus and the stylized water there, as Jesus is walking across the surface of the water.

What that would have looked like would have been amazing. In fact, the disciples are so taken aback by what they see—so shocked by this image, in this terrifying storm that is frightening even these experienced sailors, and then here comes a man walking on the waves—that their first and immediate reaction is almost comical. They say, "It's a ghost!"

And that's the joke. He's not a ghost. In fact, he's not just some disembodied spirit—he is truly a man, and by the end of this episode, they will confess that he is the Son of God.

Take Heart; It Is I

Jesus speaks his promise: "Take heart; it is I; do not be afraid."

And Peter—bold, impetuous, somewhat reckless Peter—believes this promise. "Take heart; it is I; do not be afraid." "Okay, Lord. I see you, and I trust you, and I'm going to do something about it." What does he do? The first thing that comes to mind: "Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water."

And Jesus speaks just one word of command. He says, "Come."

And Peter gets out of the boat and starts walking on the water, in the middle of the storm, just like Jesus did!

And at this point, it's real tempting to wrap up the sermon and be like, "Well, if you only had enough strength of faith—if you were only a good enough person—then you would do what Jesus did, and you would trust him, and all this sort of thing." You see the finger wagging that I'm doing here? But that's not the point of the story. "Be like Peter" is not the point of the story.

Because Peter gets out of the boat, and he begins to walk on the water, and everything is going great—right up until he realizes that he is a human male walking on a stormy sea, and that doesn't work. It's like a Looney Tunes moment, right? You know about Looney Tunes and the law of Looney Tunes physics: gravity doesn't work until the coyote realizes gravity is supposed to work—at which point it kicks in, and suddenly the coyote begins to fall.

The second movement: he looks around, he realizes, "I'm walking on the water in the middle of a terrible storm"—the wind and the waves are still there. His problems haven't gone away. And he begins to sink.

Peter believes God's word, but he doesn't have in himself the strength to hold on to that word unceasingly and unflinchingly. So it would be easy for me to just say, "You just have to have faith like Peter, and you'll be fine." But he wants to—he desperately wants to be that kind of person, and you see that over and over again in the stories of St. Peter. He wants to be the person who trusts, and he puts it on the line, and he stands up for what's right. But then he's human, and he's afraid, and he fails. St. Paul puts it this way: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.

So Peter does the only thing that anyone in that situation could possibly do. He cries out to Jesus: "Lord, save me!"

Lord, Save Me!

And Jesus immediately reaches out his hand and catches him, and hauls him back into the boat. And once they're both in the boat, then the wind stops and the waves lie down. And those in the boat worship Jesus: "Truly you are the Son of God."

People of God, bold faith is not just about being strong enough. It's easy for us to imagine that if we just hold on to our faith by working really, really hard at it, somehow that will be enough—that the perfection of our faith is when we trust God and there's never a doubt in our mind, and we hold on to this until the end of our lives, and then we're done. We go to be with Jesus. Amen.

That's not the faith that you see over and over again in the Bible. Faith is most perfect when it realizes that it is not strong enough to overcome the things of this life by its own force and power—but it trusts in a God who is.

That's what Peter does well in this story. His bold faith is not just, "If it's you, command me to come to you on the water." That was just being impulsive. His bold faith is when things start to fall apart. When his life goes crazy—when he realizes, "I just got out of a boat in the middle of a storm, and I'm walking on water, and that's a little bit unusual"—he cries out, "Lord, save me!" And he trusts that Jesus will save him. And Jesus does.

Close

God calls us to a bold faith. But that faith is a gift from God, which helps us both to acknowledge our own weakness and to trust in the love of God who saves.

Both stories—Elijah and Peter—end with God showing up in the place of human weakness, doing for us what we could not do for ourselves: coming to us in the sheer silence, coming to us in the sinking. The faith God calls us to is not faith that never sinks. It is faith that cries out to Jesus when it does.

May you be filled with this faith—this trust, and the strength of God, when your own strength is failing. And may the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, keep your hearts and minds strong in Christ Jesus our Lord, to life everlasting. Amen.