Sermon for the Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 14 (August 9, 2026)
Transcript
This transcript was generated by YouTube AI and further edited for readability.
May only truth be spoken here and only truth be heard. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Please be seated.
Peter cried out, "Lord, save me." And immediately Jesus reached out his hand.
That's the image I want you to carry. Immediately Jesus reached out his hand.
I think you all have heard that we have a Bible study here on Wednesdays at 11. Have I ever mentioned this? Are you aware that I love it? Are you aware that you should come? It would be so nice if you came. It's a wonderful study.
And we usually read the Gospel and pray over the Gospel for the coming Sunday.
And because the study wraps up around noon, probably about 18 months ago, we started a practice of praying the Noonday Prayer at the conclusion of our Bible study. The Noonday Prayer being in our prayer book on page 102. You can take a peek at it if you want.
The first line of the Noonday Prayer: "O God, make speed to save us."
Now, a lot of the services in our prayer book have multiple possible introductions. You know, they—you notice with the Eucharist, the first words we speak will vary from one season to another, you know, and with other services, there's just a variety of options that the officiant might choose from.
But with Noonday Prayer, it is always, "O God, make speed to save us."
The response: "O Lord, make haste to help us."
The fixed-hour prayers in the prayer book are a gift of the monastic tradition that goes all the way back to the first prayer book in the 1550s. And when Thomas Cranmer was creating the prayer book, he made sure to appoint and include Morning and Evening Prayer, not only for the first time for clergy and for monks, but for all of us to participate in daily public prayer together, morning and evening.
And this is one of the great gifts of our tradition to the wider church: the preservation of the monastic tradition of stopping throughout the day to pray, of beginning the day and ending the day with prayer, and to make that available to everybody.
You can do it at home, right? You have the book.
It wasn't until the 1979 revision of the prayer book here in the Episcopal Church that the creators of this revision of the prayer book, looking at that monastic tradition, brought into the prayer book the Noonday Prayer.
But it's a beautiful prayer.
And it especially, I think, whereas the Morning and the Evening Prayer are sort of the beginning and the end of the day, the Noonday Prayer is the prayer that preserves the monastic tradition of hearing the bell, dropping what you're doing, and turning your attention to God.
Okay, that is the gift of Noonday Prayer.
Whatever it is that you are in the middle of—which, you know, if you're like me, is like very, very important and preoccupies me a great deal—at noon, we lay it down and we turn our attention to God.
We turn our attention to God with the words, "Make speed to save us."
So since I came into the Episcopal Church years ago, and even back when I had like an office job, when I had like a jobby job, I endeavored to practice Noonday Prayer and to drop what I was doing and to practice it.
And it was very difficult, first of all, because it was very difficult to stop whatever I was in the middle of—which, again, was very important to me—to stop and to pray for 10 minutes.
But there's a value in the discipline.
And one of the things that I learned from this was the gift of whatever it was that I was doing, stopping to ask God to save me.
Because there were many days, and there still are, where I feel like I'm just like motoring along, having a great day. I'm efficient and things are going my way, you know, and I have been really productive and I'm real proud of myself, and it wouldn't occur to me to say, "Hi, God."
Because, like, I've got it. I've got this. I'm walking on the water.
You know?
It comes—there were other days where things were grinding and difficult, and on those days there was a relief in stopping for a minute and saying, "Lord, save me. I could use a little help here," right?
So there was a gift both in remembering that I need help even when I wasn't feeling like I needed any, and of course there was a deep gift in asking for it when indeed I was all too conscious of the need for help.
It is a discipline to remember that we were never meant to do all of this by ourselves and that we weren't, as we talked about last week, we were not meant to be enough all on our own.
We just weren't designed that way.
We weren't made that way.
We were made to need help.
And this is the prayer of the church and the discipline of the church that has been preserved for centuries and centuries: to lay down, to pause, and to say, "Lord, save me."
And immediately Jesus reached out his hand.
Immediately.
Have that image of the two hands clasping, the one reaching up from the task that has suddenly become far too much.
You pick your task: the task of living, the task of reading the newspaper, the task of caring for the parent, whatever it is.
And immediately Jesus reached out his hand.
Now Jesus says to Peter, "You of little faith, why did you doubt?"
And one of the translations we read in our Bible study this week translates this a little differently, in a way that I find very, very helpful.
Jesus says to Peter, "You of small faith. You of small faith."
And it turned those words of Jesus around for me just a little bit.
Most of the time when I hear these words of Jesus, "You of little faith, why do you doubt?" I have a stream of interpretation in my head that goes something like this.
The gift of Bible study is revisiting the stream of interpretation with fresh eyes.
The stream of interpretation goes, "You of insufficient faith. You of insufficient faith. If only you had believed a little bit harder, you wouldn't need my help. You would just keep walking on the water."
Maybe this has been part of how you have heard these words as well.
You of insufficient faith.
It's too bad you couldn't do this on the power of your own belief.
It's different than that.
Jesus perhaps, just perhaps, I submit to you, is commending Peter for his small faith—a small bit of faith, a small trust perhaps developed by a daily discipline of remembering to say, "God, help me with whatever it is that is at hand."
A small faith in this case was enough.
In this case was enough.
Not, "Why did you doubt that you could walk on the water?"
But, "Why did you doubt your small faith, your small trust in me, was enough?"
Small faith, a little bit of trust, is something that can be built up and built on over time.
A faith that immediately reaches out a hand and says, "O God, make speed to save us."
And the hand of Jesus immediately reaches out to grasp ours.
Me of small faith and you of small faith, but of enough faith to remember and to know that we were never meant to try to walk on the water all on our own, but with our hand in the hand of God, right? With our hands in one another's hand.
We don't need to doubt that our practice of praying, "O God, make speed to save us," is enough.
So you might—you might want to try this.
You might want to look at this prayer on page 102 and practice it yourself.
Or you might just take that very first line and repeat that from time to time during the day:
"O God, make speed to save us."
"O Lord, make haste to help us."
There's a beautiful hymn that many of you know. We're not even going to sing it today, you know, but you know it.
It's the Irish melody, "Lord of all hopefulness, Lord of all joy."
The second verse:
"Be there at our labor and give us, we pray,
Thy strength in our hearts, Lord, at the noon of the day."
In the middle of everything, in the middle of the day, in the middle of life, in the midst of whatever you are doing or called to do, we can ask for the hand and for the strength to do it in the middle of life.
We lay down our own capacity and we say, "O God, make speed to save us. Lord, save me."
And immediately he reaches out his hand.
Amen.