How do you treat someone you love who makes a mistake?
Three weeks ago, Stephen and I decided to foster a dog from the animal shelter. We came home with a nine-month-old puppy, Juniper, who was found, microchipped but alone, wandering out on the streets. They think she was abandoned.
Now all puppies have to learn how to socialise well, and be safe with people and other creatures. But for Juniper this is sometimes especially difficult. As a stray she probably had to defend herself, and fight for her food. She’s not used to having a safe home, and people who won’t leave her to fend for herself.
Sometimes she makes mistakes. Sometimes she doesn’t do what we expect her to do, or what we need her to do. She reacts to a barking dog who only wants to play, or tries to tug something out of our hands.
And in those moments, we have to decide — how do we respond? Does this kind of behaviour deserve punishment? Or does it deserve compassion? Correction, maybe, but love?
Now, loving a rescue puppy is one thing. There are harder tests out there. And we get an example of that in our reading from the Hebrew Bible this morning, in the prophet Elijah.
When we meet Elijah, he’s overwhelmed and tired. He has a job given to him by God — to take care of the people and help them follow God’s laws. But he’s feeling burnt out. No matter how much he tries, the people of God aren’t doing what they need to do. They’re turning to idols instead of depending only on God. And it sounds like Elijah’s just… done.
So he runs away to this cave, which is where we meet him. At Mount Horeb. And he is ready to make his complaint to God.
Now if Mount Horeb sounds familiar to you — it may not, but if it does — it’s because it’s one name for the place where God speaks to Moses and gives him the Ten Commandments, which the Israelites are now struggling to follow.
Elijah is going back to where it all began with Moses. Or at least, he’s going back to a nearby cave.
And after God asks what he’s doing there, God invites Elijah to step into the place of Moses, on top of the mountain.
And as God does this Elijah has an experience of God that is quite different to the burning bush and the pillar of smoke that Moses encountered.
There is wind, and a great earthquake, and a fire, but God’s presence isn’t in any of those things.
God’s presence is in the silence that follows. Sheer silence.
Or some translations say a “still, small voice”.
Elijah is angry at the Israelites. Perhaps he expects God to be angry too, to send punishment or plagues. And certainly, God in this story decides to take action. But his response isn’t out of fiery, earth-shaking anger. It’s something quite different.
Some context. The first book of Kings, where this story comes from, was written a while*after* these events — when the Israelites had been exiled by the Babylonians, sent out from the land God had gifted to them.
You could say it was written when the Israelites were in a kind of storm.
And we know from the Scriptures that the Israelite people were asking themselves: how could this have happened? How could God have allowed it, when God had promised them through Abraham and Moses to give them this land forever, and take care of them?
And this story of Elijah in the cave — this is a kind of explanation given for the predicament they find themselves in. According to Elijah, this has all happened because the Israelites have messed up, turned away from the promises they made to God.
In the language of the Bible, they’re “not righteous”. Being “righteous” means being right with God, keeping the promises and following the laws. And they’re not doing that.
But here’s the thing. In this story, God announces that he’s doing a new thing.
God may not, right now, be in the earth-shaking forces of nature that will force their enemies to flee, as the Egyptians fled after the parting of the seas. God is not driving the Babylonians out by the sword. Instead, God is with his people in the small voice, in the silence. But out of that, God will make things right.
The Israelites will not, ultimately, be abandoned to the consequences of their actions. Because they are God’s beloved people. He will stay with them.
This is a story we get repeated throughout the Scriptures — a cycle of promise, followed by failure, followed by forgiveness. It happens in big ways and small ways. And if we fast forward to the Gospel reading we find it again, in the middle of another storm with the disciples.
When Jesus comes towards them, walking on the surface of the waves in the middle of the storm, he says to them:
“Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.”
…except actually, he doesn’t say exactly that.
In the Greek he says “Take heart, I AM”. Just the words I AM — ego eimi. This little phrase is used in the Hebrew Bible to allude to the name of God. God is the one “who is”.
So when Jesus says take heart, ego eimi — take heart, I AM — he is announcing the presence of God. Not in the storm, in the power of the wind and the waves, but in him. In Jesus, in the still and small voice in the midst of the storm.
And the disciples are still afraid, but it’s Peter who in that toddler-like way of his bounds to the side of the boat and asks if Jesus will command *him* to walk on water.
He is ready to hear what Jesus wants him to do. And so when Jesus says “come”, he leaps out of the boat and begins to walk.
And then as is often the case with Peter and the other disciples, when the reality of the situation dawns on him, he gets cold feet. Or in this case, wet feet. He starts to get afraid. And he starts to sink.
But even though Peter’s struggling not to be afraid, struggling to follow the command Jesus made, Jesus reaches out to help him. Of course he does.
In Jesus, God has commanded Peter to do a thing. “Come,” he said. But Peter, because he is human and makes mistakes — Peter has utterly *failed* to do the thing. But he is still rescued by Jesus, and kept safe.
*This* is the pattern we see repeated throughout the stories in the Scriptures. Time and time again we see that the love that God has for all of God’s people isn’t only given in return for playing by the rules.
The Israelites, the religious authorities, the early followers of Jesus — they all fear that God’s love is conditional, and transactional, given only to those who do what God wants them to do.
But these stories all reiterate the foundational truth, that in Jesus God’s love is *never* conditional on that. *Never* withdrawn because of our guilt, or our weakness.
As Paul says, quoting the Hebrew prophet Joel: “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”
God does have a high calling for us — to live in love, following the way of Jesus. But we don’t become righteous, or *right with God*, by doing everything that’s expected of us perfectly. We are right with God because we, and the whole world, are beloved by Christ.
We make mistakes, but there is nothing we need to do to absolve our guilt and appease God. It’s all taken care of. We are loved.
Does that feel real to you? I hope it does. Sometimes the reality of the grace of God is hard for us to hold onto, especially if like our puppy Juniper we’ve been conditioned to see the world a different way. We can keep on coming back to the idea that surely — *surely* — there is something we need to do in order for God to accept us. There are rules we need to follow, or else we’re out.
But this is the radical love of God in Jesus. It’s a love that the Scriptures make clear to us that God has for the whole world.
It’s a love that accepts us first, and holds out a hand to catch us in the water, and pulls us back to safety.
It’s the still, small voice of Jesus, quieting the storm.