In the name of the Father and of the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Glory to Jesus Christ. Glory forever.

Brothers and sisters, it is very good to be back with you after a long and fruitful week in Phoenix, Arizona for the All-American Council. There I prayed for you all as diligently as I could. We had liturgies for three of the days there, so there were many opportunities for prayer, lifting you up in spirit.

There also were many opportunities to be grateful for water, for rain, for being in a green country. I have to say that even though it was very late at night when I returned, my eyes were gladdened to just see lots of lush greenery around me because you understand what it is to be living in a desert when you are there day after day in close to or over 100-degree heat, wearing interesting dark layers as well.

They're very careful to have lots and lots of wonderful water stations where you could come and fill up a water bottle all over the place to have nice cold water to drink. You'd take a nice sip of it and then it would be empty, and you'd go back and fill it again and empty again. Just all day long filling it up and emptying it.

I remember one particular day when I had my water bottle empty and I went happily to the water station, but there was nothing in it. It had a red light on it. I went to the next and there was nothing in it. This pit in my stomach felt like it was falling away. No water in a desert! Who would ever imagine the absence of water in the desert? To have those moments of just realizing how precious it is, to be reminded. I was going without water there for, you know, 30 seconds until I looked over and actually was guided to another station in the far corner of the room where I could get a drink to my heart's fill. But for those 30 seconds or a minute, there was horror.

How about three and a half years? How does that sound?

We are remembering today one of the greatest among the saints, the holy glorious prophet Elijah. We are reminded in the epistle of James that we heard in his memory this wonderful reading. We hear it many times, and normally we don't hear the parts about Elijah, which gives it an interesting little extra spin. We hear this typically for services of healing, above all the service of Holy Unction, which is exactly what is spoken of in his epistle. James is speaking of those who are desperately ill, who need to be healed: assembling the elders of the church—that is the clergy, the priests, the bishops—to pray over this sick man and anoint him with oil.

Where we typically end is "the fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much." But now, for this day of Elijah, we continue to have what James follows through with: this remembrance of the prayer of the righteous man, one of those who prayed most greatly.

And what is this prayer? As we're talking about healing and showing mercy, he’s praying that the heavens would be shut up for three and a half years and no one would have any water! And then he prayed again, and the heavens opened once more, and rain fell, and the land was fruitful.

When you hear something like this, of course, it's very impressive—the wrath of God at work here. But perhaps you might also be thinking to yourself, "What does that have to do with healing?" That sounds like hurting, right? To be depriving everyone of rain for all this time—a lot of people must have been suffering.

Of course, that's exactly what Jesus reminds everyone in his home country in the gospel that we heard today. He says exactly this: that during this time of terrible famine, when in answer to the prayer of Elijah the heavens were shut up and no rain fell, Jesus says, "There were many in Israel going hungry, but the Lord sent Elijah only to this widow of Zarephath in Sidon."

Sidon, we should note, is a bad place in reputation among the people of Israel. It's like sinful, you know, a "sin city" kind of situation. To speak of someone from there is from the bad side of the tracks. Trouble comes from there.

Jesus is pointing out that Elijah was sent all the way across the land of Israel as it was suffering so greatly during this time, past city after city after city. All these people who doubtless were praying—I'm sure lots of them were saying, "Lord, help us. Lord, send us rain."

Why didn't Elijah stop and feed them miraculously as he does that widow? It's an amazing story. Those of you who were here for the vigil got to hear it last night. So why not? What's this all about? Shutting up the heavens, preventing people from having rain and food. And what's this about sending aid to your enemies up in Sidon, this widow and her family, and not to all the suffering people of Israel? "Hey physician, heal yourself. Take care of your own first."

So why is it that Elijah prayed that they not have rain? Was he just in a bad mood one day and said, "You know what? I feel like just flexing here. I'm going to do a righteous man's prayer and shut up the heavens"? No.

This is a last resort because Israel has shut up its own hearts against the Lord God. It has turned away from true faith in him, and they have put their trust in false gods—in particular, Baal, a pagan rain god, interestingly enough. They're saying, "You know, worshiping the Lord God is difficult. You have to obey all these commandments. You have to do what the Lord says. You have to faithfully follow him every single day and be turning your hearts always to him and his righteousness."

"What if instead we just had a rent-a-god, you know, where you just pay him his due and you put your money in and get your miracles out? Wouldn't that seem like a better approach? Just give your offerings to Baal the rain god and get your rain, and go to other gods and get what you need from them."

That was exactly what Israel was trying, hardening their hearts more and more against the Lord God and killing his prophets, slaying those who spoke against these evil ways, so that only Elijah at this point was willing and able to stand up to those in authority and to speak against them.

So shutting up the heavens—that's not some random whimsical thing. It is a warning, a warning that they have shut themselves up against the God of life, that they are filling themselves up with wrath and destruction, sin and death. If they do not turn soon, they're going to have things much worse than just a desperate famine to deal with.

You can see also why it is that Elijah passes by. What is Jesus talking about in the gospel about Elijah going to this widow in Sidon and Elisha ministering to a Syrian man, not to an Israelite, not to a Jew, but to this foreigner in his time? What he is pointing out is that Israel was feeling like, "Oh yeah, well, God—just like when we remember that we should ask something of him, he should give us the answer to our prayers because we're Israelites. We're his people. He should just take care of us because that's what he does. And then the rest of the time when we're just doing our own thing and want to follow our own ways, we go to the rent-a-god, put in our money at the vending machine, and get out our miracles. It's only when that doesn't work that we remember the Lord God and ask for his help."

Strangely enough, God doesn't listen to those prayers because they're not real prayer at all. They are saying things with their lips while our hearts remain turned away from God, committed to our own ways that are leading us still on the path of ruin and wrath. We are saying that we are following God while what we are doing is proving that we are going exactly the wrong way.

So it was that those in the time of Elijah were not getting what they thought they should in answer to their prayers because their prayers weren't real prayers. What they were getting instead was more and more thirst, until at last there came the day when Elijah came forward to confront the false priests of Baal and line up a little contest.

"Now you're saying that you are worshiping the real god, Baal. Let's see. Let's see who answers with fire." It doesn't seem like it's a big challenge to have fire consume an offering in the midst of a terrible drought, right? Normally, you're trying your best to keep any fire away. But of course, in this challenge, you aren't allowed to bring any fire with you. You're supposed to just wait, and God will provide the fire to consume his offering—the true God.

So, the priests of Baal set it all up with their sacrifice on the altar, and they're frantically and bloodily making offerings as they know how according to their own imagination. To Elijah's grim amusement, it doesn't work. There is no power when it's put to the test. This supposed god, Baal, seems to be on vacation or maybe asleep. He's not showing up to do what he needs to do. They're more and more frantically cutting themselves and shouting and whipping themselves—all these ugly and horrible things. They're frantically shoving more coins into the vending machine, and the miracle isn't popping out of the dispenser.

Then Elijah goes to his turn, and he sets up his own altar, which is an old one that's been cast into ruin. He repairs it and sets the offering on it. Everything seems ready until he says, "No, we're not ready yet. First, before I pray that the Lord call down fire to consume this offering, let's make this a proper fair fight, because this is too easy for the Lord God."

"So first, what we're going to do is take water and pour it in huge gallons over everything." I just want to go back to my little memory of bringing my little water bottle to those dispensers and finding them empty. Just think about what Elijah is asking this thirsty people: that for this offering, let's get big drums of water and pour it over everything. That water is really precious. It's the most precious thing that you can find in Israel in this day. And we're going to just pour it out.

There's the flex. You know, there's where he's making a real point, taking the things they were holding back in reserve. "Now, we're hanging on to this last little bit of water because who knows when we'll get more. Who knows where they went to go find it—some remote mountain spring or something. And now we're going to dump it out onto this offering for this God that we're not even sure we believe in."

After the third time of soaking it, so there's water filling the trench all around the offering, now it's time to ask for this all to be consumed in fire.

This is what the Apostle James is speaking of when he's laying out this picture of the prayer of a righteous man that avails much. Because the answer to this prayer, when he acknowledges the whole messy situation of the faithlessness of Israel—how all have turned away and no one has remembered the Lord God and his ways—"I," he says, "I alone remain to make sacrifice. Now Lord, answer with fire."

And the Lord does answer, first with fire to consume the offering and every drop of water. So all of it is licked up. There's not one bit of it that remains, just to make it very clear that the Lord is God. The Lord is God. And as the people come to their senses and cry this affirmation, this confession of faith, realizing their insanity, coming to their senses, the heavens open and rain falls on a thirsty land.

Brothers and sisters, we should understand this for what was happening with Elijah and what is happening always—what's happening in your life. You know, when you are confronting struggles, when you are wondering, "Why is the Lord acting this way? Why doesn't he answer my prayer? What is he doing going past me to bless someone else? And I'm here saying, 'Hey, how about me?'"

Remember the example of Elijah and understand that this isn't just about rain here. Whether it rains or whether it doesn't, whether you're in Phoenix or whether you're in Connecticut, this is about examining your own hearts and looking hard into them to see how it is that you have shut yourself up against the heavens. You have closed the doors and windows of your life so that his healing mercies cannot enter in.

There are many times when we are praying with our lips, and with our lives we are proving our lips false. We say that we follow after the living God while putting our trust in rent-a-gods, trying to put our money into this idol and that and getting a little dispensation, something to keep us going for another day in this drought of our life. And we're wondering why it is that the rain never comes.

Brothers and sisters, if you want the water of life, then you have to go to the source. You can't be going off chasing after mirages. The source, of course, is the living God himself, and no one else. He accepts no substitutes.

And realize as well that that source is in you, that the answer to what you desperately need and you are frantically looking for is not to be found here, there, everywhere. It's in the heart. It's in your heart. That hard, dry, dried up, very thirsty heart that desperately, all cracked up as it is, needs to be watered too. And the only water that's going to help is the living water that streams from heaven above—and from the heart through real prayer, through repentance, grieving over what is wrong in our life, mourning over our sins, acknowledging our need, recognizing our failures.

Not with idle, pointless regrets, not with frantic beating ourselves up, hoping that somehow we can compel God to do what we want if we somehow find the right trick, but rather in faith, in trust, in humility, turning to him, offering what we have—as painfully inadequate as it is—recognizing and confessing that we've been chasing after the wrong gods, and we've returned to the one true Lord.

We ask him to come, come and abide in us, cleanse us from every impurity, and save our souls. And if we do this in humility and sincerity, we will find that the heavens open, the rain comes down, and  thirsty people will find exactly what they need. And not just for you, for those around you. And the whole thirsty world out there that also is waiting and wondering and needs what we find right here: the goodness and mercy, the healing blessing, that life that comes from God and God alone.

To him be glory and praise forever and ever. Amen. Glory to Jesus Christ. Glory forever.