Getting Out of the Way and Letting Prayer Happen

July 24, 2005
Franktown UMC

Romans 8:26-39
Likewise the Spirit aids us in our incapacity, for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but rather this same Spirit intercedes with inexpressible sighs. And the one who searches hearts deeply knows what is the thought of the Spirit, because she prays for the saints in relationship with God.

For we know that for those desiring God all things work together for good, for those called by his purpose. For those whom he knew beforehand he also determined in advance to conform them to the likeness of his Son, so that he might be the eldest among many siblings. And those whom he predetermined, he also called; and those whom he called he also justified; and those whom he justified, he also glorified.

What then shall we say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us? The one who did not spare even his own son but rather for all of our sakes delivered him over, how shall he not give all things to us with him?

Who shall bring charges against the elected ones of God? God is the one who justifies. Who shall pronounce judgment? Christ Jesus who died, but moreover who was raised, and who is seated at the right hand of God, who also intercedes on our behalf.

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Tribulation or distress or persecution or hunger or nakedness or peril or sword? As it has been written: For your sake we are being killed for the whole of the day; we are being regarded as sheep destined for slaughter. But, no in all these things we completely conquer through the one who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

For the last two weeks we have been talking, in this sermon series, about Romans chapter 8 and about how the “real world” is not the same thing as the world as we know it. Through the working of the Holy Spirit, God is revealing to us another reality that is already present, already at work, already waiting for us to wake up and participate in it.

In some ways we are less attentive to this real, “real world” than we have ever been. We have managed to fill our lives with distractions that anesthetize us to the ways that the Spirit is moving among us. TV, radio, video games, the Internet--all offer us wonders untold and we can get pretty distracted. Our schedules, with work and play and music lessons and ball practice, can become so full that there is no room for listening to the real world breaking in upon us. It’s at times like these that we need some wisdom.

So I want to start this morning with Augustine. Augustine of Hippo lived around 400 A.D. in North Africa. A convert to Christianity, he became one of history’s greatest bishops. But that’s not why he’s remembered. You don’t get remembered for being a bishop. Augustine is still relevant because he knew the human heart and he knew how hard it was, even 1600 years ago when there were no automobiles or television, he knew how hard it was to be aware of God’s real world.

In his autobiographical book entitled Confessions, Augustine offers a prayer to God and he says, “I can’t even grasp all that I am” [10.8]. Living within our human limitations, Augustine knew that there were more wonders to his life as a creature of God then he could ever hope to understand. He knew that God had destined him for something more but he had squandered that potential in other pursuits and it was only as he came to love God that he began to reclaim himself.

“Late have I loved you, O beauty so ancient and so new,” Augustine says. “Late have I loved you! For behold you were within me, and I was outside; and I sought you outside and in my unloveliness fell upon those lovely things that you have made. You were with me and I was not with you [10.27].” There is something so mysterious about ourselves that it takes a revelation to realize we’re not living in our right selves, that we’re not in our right minds, that the lights are on but we’re not home. What it takes to live in God’s real world is prayer.

Now this is where we need some more wisdom from the past. This time from a Scottish poet and a hymn that we’ll be singing in just a few minutes. In 1818 James Montgomery wrote these words: “Prayer is the soul’s sincere desire, unuttered or expressed, the motion of a hidden fire that trembles in the breast.” Today we want to use Montgomery’s hymn as a lens through which to hear what Paul is saying in Romans chapter 8.

Last week we were listening for the sounds of God’s new thing coming. We heard the child’s voice crying “Abba! Father!”, modeling the trust that the children of God have in their new relationship with God. We heard creation groaning, waiting, anticipating our revelation, our recognition of ourselves as God’s children. And we heard the cries of a woman in labor, sounds of real suffering but harbingers of new birth and new hope. Last week we were listening for sounds.

This week there is silence. When we try to conceive of what we might possibly say to God as we offer our lives to God, words are insufficient. Whatever we might say is incomplete, awkward, slightly inappropriate. Like the moment when you look up into the night sky, as we have done this week, and suddenly see a huge, full, orange moon hovering just above the treetops. What more can we add to that sight by our words? We can only call to others, “Look!” and invite them to share in silent wonder. When we celebrate communion here there are words, we tell the story, but ultimately the words are not enough to convey what God is doing in that moment. So our prayer becomes silence as we break the bread and pour the wine into the cup. We participate in what God is doing through silence.

Here are the words from the hymn: “Prayer is the soul’s sincere desire, unuttered or expressed, the motion of a hidden fire that trembles in the breast. Prayer is the burden of a sigh, the falling of a tear, the upward glancing of an eye, when none but God is near.”

I think Paul would like that description of prayer. In this passage that we read for this morning Paul says that the Spirit, which has liberated us from bondage to sin and given us hope and moved us toward God, helps us in our incapacity because we don’t know how to pray. This is the realization from which all true approaches to prayer begin. When we pray we don’t know what we’re doing and we don’t know what to say and we can only offer stumbling attempts as we try to communicate with the God who made the universe. So the Spirit intercedes for us, the Spirit speaks for us with, the New Revised Standard Version says, with “sighs too deep for words.”

What the Spirit says goes beyond words into inexpressible sighs, the barest whisper of a voice sharing the deepest longing and desires of our hearts. The Spirit prays for the saints and lifts them up into the conversation that is always and ever going on in the life of the Trinity. As Paul says, “The one who searches hearts deeply, God, knows what is the thought of the Spirit,” and because the Spirit is not content to leave us on the sidelines, we are involved!

James Montgomery’s hymn says that if we listen to that movement of the Spirit it is going on within us. Like that groaning we talked about last week, which is going on at the deepest levels of our being, prayer is going on deep within us. Prayer is our soul reaching out to its creator. Prayer is the soul’s sincere desire, unuttered or expressed. It is a hidden fire burning like the bones of Jeremiah, seeking to escape from us.

“Prayer is the burden of a sigh, the falling of a tear, the upward glancing of an eye, when none but God is near. Prayer is the simplest form of speech that infant lips can try; prayer the sublimest strains that reach the Majesty on high.”

What can this mean? None of these images that James Montgomery uses refer to intelligible speech. What is meaning of a sigh? What is the significance of a tear? How do we interpret an upward glance? What is a baby trying to say? Why is it that God listens not only to the words to our hymns but to the music itself? What is in the music?

The truth of the matter is that all of these questions are only troubling to us if we have accepted that it takes rational speech to talk to God. Prayer, in the way that Paul talks about it, in the way that this hymn talks about it, is incompatible with American teaching. We have been told that things have to make sense, that in order to be meaningful we have to proceed in a logical way, we have to use words precisely. We have come to believe that it takes professionals to really pray. There is a reluctance, for instance, to pray in front of the preacher because, after all, he or she has been trained to do these sorts of things. We don’t trust our prayers because we think they have to make perfect sense.

But the starting point of prayer is not our self-sufficiency. Paul has already made it clear that we don’t know how to pray that we are ever and always insufficient and not up to the task. What it takes to pray is a recognition, not of our self-sufficiency, the value that is prized above all else by Americans, but of our insufficiency.

We can express our insufficiency in any number of ways. Sighs are as good as a well-expressed theology. Tears are as eloquent as pearls of verbal wisdom. Babies no less than bishops excel at prayer. Music can break open the kingdom of heaven. If we are really believe the Spirit is aiding us then we must believe that the Spirit can use every part of us to pray--not only our brains but our eyes, our bodies, our heartbreaks, and our heartfelt songs.

“Prayer is the simplest form of speech that infant lips can try; prayer the sublimest strains that reach the Majesty on high. Prayer is the contrite sinners’ voice, returning from their way, while angels in their songs rejoice and cry, ‘Behold, they pray!’”

Here in Montgomery’s hymn prayer finally breaks forth into speech, but it is not the eloquent speech of the polished Christian. The first words are those of a sinner returning home. They are the words of a lost person finding their way. But this is the language that the angels recognize. This is the language that says, “Here I am, Lord, with all of my faults and failings.” This is the language that moves us toward understanding who we are before God -- people who have been in bondage to sin for so long that we can no longer recognize our reflection in the mirror. We are people who have forgotten that we were made in God’s image and have forgotten that God spoke those words over us in the creation saying that we, like all the creatures of the earth, were good.

Yet even now, despite this, despite our trials, despite our troubles, despite the scars that have disfigured us, we are even now being restored to God. How do we know this? Paul says so. God decided from the beginning of all time that we would not be left to the degradations that come from being human. The Lord of the Universe decided that for those desiring God all things would work together for good. We become children of God through Jesus Christ in whose image we are being re-formed. Those whom God chose, God called; those whom God called, God justified; and those whom God justified, God glorified. That’s Paul’s sequence that takes us from being lost to sharing in the glory of the angels and the angels recognize our true voice in confession.

“Prayer is the contrite sinners’ voice, returning from their way, while angels in their songs rejoice and cry, ‘Behold, they pray!’ Prayer is the Christians’ vital breath, the Christians’ native air; their watchword at the gates of death; they enter heaven with prayer.”

Prayer is the Christian’s vital breath. Prayer is the inspiration and exhalation of a life that is not bound by death. Prayer is the natural rhythm of our souls that allows the Spirit to flow in and through and out of us in the same way that we breathe.

In another place Paul commands the new Christians to pray without ceasing [1 Thes. 5:17]. It seems to me that we can only fulfill that command if prayer is as natural to us as breathing, as essential as drawing and letting go of breath. It is no accident that the root word for Spirit is the same as the word for breath. We experience our dependence on God and the miracle of our lives when we listen to that steady rhythm of breath that has been moving through us since birth.

Two years ago I accompanied a group of students to the community of Taizé in France. It is a wondrous place because it is built very simply around prayer. Three times a day, for one hour, the brothers of this ecumenical community gather for prayer in a large building along with whoever has joined them. The prayers consist of a series of chants sung several times through in many languages so that you can be sure that you will sing songs in languages that are not your own. There are also brief Scripture readings, sung and spoken prayers, and, at the heart of the service, ten minutes of silence.

At Taizé there are no apologies for this schedule or for the very simple meals that they serve to visitors. When I was there, breakfast was a roll and a small stick of chocolate. Lunch was a bowl of beans and rice. They don’t apologize because they believe that prayer is the most essential need of the human soul. Brother Roger, who began the Taizé community during World War II, says that “right at the depth of the human condition lies the longing for a presence, the silent desire for a communion…It is through the heart, in the depths of themselves that human beings begin to grasp the Mystery of Faith. An inner life is developed step by step. So it becomes clear that faith--trusting in God--is a very simple reality, so simple that everyone could receive it. It is like surging upwards again and again, a thousand times, throughout our life and until our very last breath.” [Taizé : Trust on Earth] There is that image again…like breathing, so is prayer and trust in God.

But the most amazing thing about Taizé is who comes to be there. In the middle of Europe, which many people now call post-Christian because there are so many people leaving the churches, in a remote village, the people coming to spend hours in prayer are young people. If you are over 29, as I was, you have to stay in an outlying area for older folks because the main camping and lodging area is filled with thousands of youth and young adults from all over the world who come to this place because they sense that somehow God may still be trying to speak to them. They come because they are attracted by the silence and the simple, unamplified chants--two things that are all but lost in the media-overload world they live in.

At the train station near Taizé , as we were waiting for the bus to take us there, we met a young woman named Eileen who had traveled there from Berlin. Eileen was lost and did not know where to turn. She was going through all kinds of upheavals in her personal life and at her job. So when everything she knew about the “real world” seemed uncertain to her, she went to the only place that she could think of to help her get in touch with herself again. She came to Taizé on an overnight train. Even in Europe they still suspect that there is a power in prayer.

James Montgomery closes his hymn with a prayer. He says: “O Thou, by whom we come to God, the Life, the Truth, the Way; the path of prayer thyself hast trod; Lord, teach us how to pray!”

In the end we pray because Jesus tells us to. We pray because in his life we see how important and powerful prayer was. We pray because that’s what the disciples sought to do. We pray because we know that in his life and death and resurrection Jesus has opened the way for us to approach God boldly. In Jesus we have nothing to fear. All that we need to do is to release our own inner language, to join our own inner dialogue which has been going on with every breath we have ever taken. God is closer to us than we are to ourselves and wants only for us to get out of the way and to let prayer happen.

Paul concludes this great chapter in Romans with a flurry of affirmations. Having shown how God has opened the way for us to participate in what God is doing in the world, he closes by reminding us that there is no reason for us to continue in a spirit of slavery. The prison cell has been unlocked, are we going to continue to sit inside because we do not trust the freedom that has been given to us? If God is for us, Paul says, then who can be against us?

And then he goes into preacher mode: Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Tribulation? Distress? Persecution? Hunger? Nakedness? Peril? Sword? No, in all of these situations we are more than conquerors through the one who loved us.

In the end it goes back to love. Love that created us and this whole creation. Love that formed a people out of no people. Love that walked among us and died with us and for us. Love that moves the world toward its fulfillment as God’s own creation. Love that adopts us and calls us children of God. Love that is as close to us as our next breath. Breathe in. Breathe out. There are no words in that breath. But there is God. Now you’re praying. Thanks be to God.

What's Next?: Groaning, Waiting and the Life of Hope

Romans 8:12-25 [NRSV]
So then, brothers and sisters, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh—for if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, “Abba! Father!” it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ—if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.

I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.

We Methodists like to eat. We are also known for our singing, but we rank pretty high in the denominational categories when it comes to eating, too. It’s no accident that we decided to mark this welcoming time with a lunch. We’re no strangers to the table. One of my colleagues used to say that Methodists ought to change that old sending forth hymn, “God Be with You ‘Til We Meet Again,” and instead sing “God Be With You ‘Til We Eat Again.”

I’m a pretty good Methodist in this way. I do like to eat. I’ve been watching that lately and I’ve really been trying to cut back, but I have to say, with all the great food that members of this congregation have shared with us…I’ve sampled. There’s been some sampling going on.

Last month, as Suzanne and I were traveling to meet my folks on the Outer Banks of North Carolina for vacation, we stopped in at one of our favorite places to eat—Jimmy’s BBQ in Sunbury, North Carolina. It’s just a small, hole-in-the-wall place—think the Exmore Diner in a cinderblock building—but the food there is straight out of my grandmother’s recipe book and when I go there I am transported back to her kitchen. Eastern North Carolina minced pork BBQ, (which is the only real BBQ), turnip greens cooked with a big ham hock, stewed tomatoes that verge on being tomato pudding, cornbread, slaw. Some of you are salivating, I can tell.

Suzanne and I were sitting there and, you know, I’d been being really careful about what I ate for several months, and this tidewater cooking hits every home-cooking sensor I have inside me, and it tasted so good and I…well, Suzanne says the noises coming out of me were obscene but I just want to state very clearly that they were not (though I think several other diners stared at me)…but yes, I made noises. It was totally involuntary. I wasn’t intending to groan…or drool…but these things happen. That meal, for me, was a foretaste…an appetizer for what is to come at the great banquet, which Jesus often uses as an image for the kingdom of heaven. Those noises, which were not obscene, were me anticipating what the best meal of all was going to taste like.

Now I realize that after starting that way, I’ve got a hard job awaiting me in trying to preach this sermon because all of you are starting to think about that meal waiting back there in the fellowship hall. But I start here because I want us to jump back into Romans, chapter 8, as we started to do last week and to listen for the sounds of God’s coming kingdom. Last week I talked about how this chapter, one of the most beautiful and important in the whole Bible, tells us about the real world, which is God’s world, which is already here through the work of the Holy Spirit. Remember we talked about reality television and the pains and struggles of life that we sometimes call “reality” and I talked about the Wizard of Oz and an old piano and somehow we got to the conclusion that what God intends for us and for the world is much greater than we often assume. The real world is one where God is making all things new.

Well, today we’re going to pick up with verse 12 of that chapter and listen for the sounds of God’s work. Paul begins this section by saying something that sounds unusual after all the liberating images he has given us. After talking about how the Spirit will free us from the failures and sin that we all know to be a part of human existence, Paul says, “So then, we are debtors.” We are debtors. We are still under an obligation. We are still bound. But, Paul says, we are not bound to the flesh – to our old selves that were enslaved to sin. As Christians living on this side of the resurrection…as Christians in the grip of the Spirit, which gives life, we are bound to God. Paul’s emphatic about this: You didn’t receive a spirit of slavery so that you would fall into fear again. You received a spirit of adoption.

This is where the sounds come in. The first sound that we hear in the new world God is bringing about is the cry of a human child. Paul says we bear witness to God’s work of redemption, we give voice to it, whenever we cry, “Abba! Father!” You might recognize that word, “Abba.” It’s an Aramaic word from the language that Jesus spoke. It’s an intimate word, probably one of the first words a child would learn in that culture. It just means “Daddy.” And it would have a particular resonance for the Christians to whom Paul was writing because they would hear in it Jesus’ own prayer in the garden of Gethsemane on the night before his death when he prayed, “Abba, Father, for you all things are possible.” The first sound of the real world is the sound of a child calling on a trusted parent – Abba. Daddy.

If we can just get ourselves to that place, where a child’s voice can remind us of how powerfully God speaks in the love of a parent for a child, then we just might be able to see how we, distraught as we sometimes are by the things we are going through, and despairing as we sometimes are about our inability to change things about ourselves, and as hopeless as we sometimes feel, if we can see God in a child’s trusting cry, the Spirit bears witness with out spirit that we are children of God.

And this is where Paul’s rhetoric really starts building up a head of steam. You know, once Paul gets going it’s hard for him to stop. It goes kind of like this: And then…And then…if we are children of God, then we are heirs of God…we have the inheritance…and if we have are heirs of God, then we are joint heirs with Christ--if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.

That last part sticks a little, doesn’t it? If we suffer with Christ then we may also be glorified with Christ. When did we start to talk about suffering? What does Paul mean by suffering? Well, the people to whom he is writing are suffering as people of a minority faith in the Roman Empire of the day. Paul has already talked about his internal suffering that happens when he tries to fulfill what God’s law requires and finds himself failing at every turn. You remember his lament from chapter 7 when he says, “What I know I should do, I don’t. The thing I don’t want to do is what I do. Wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death?” You remember this is how Paul got on this tear in the first place.

But Paul wants to talk about an entirely different sort of suffering now. Yes, we know suffering in this life. Yes, we know the agony of defeat and the heartbreak of psoriasis. Yes, we know that our bodies betray us and our will fails us. Yes, we know that there is grief and death. We been to the funerals, we’ve stood at the bedsides, we’ve shared tears with the bereaved. Yes, we know that marriages fail, that parents can let you down, that drugs can mess you up, or that boyfriends and girlfriends can break your heart. Yes, we know that there is suffering in this life and we haven’t even mentioned the biggies of war, poverty, and hunger! But you know what Paul says to that: That’s not the real world. Paul says: “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us.” And then Paul hears the sounds of another kind of suffering: The suffering that comes from eagerly awaiting. The “Busch Gardens anticipation suffering” on a massive scale.

The creation is groaning. The creation is crying out. The creation is standing on its tiptoes hoping to get a glimpse of what’s coming down the lane. The creation is jumping up and down because it just can’t stand it. The cosmos is beside itself with anticipation. The world is looking ahead like a 6-year-old on Christmas Eve. The whole earth is on edge because it is waiting…it is waiting…it is waiting on…us.

Wait a minute…did I read that right? Yes, I did. The creation is waiting…its about to burst because its waiting on you and me. Paul has been talking about our suffering, our battles with sin, our need for God. Now he suddenly pulls back the lens so that we can see the whole created order and it is waiting…not on God. But on us. “The creation waits,” Paul says, “with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God.” And the construction here makes it clear that creation is waiting for us to realize our true calling as children of God. How can that be?

This weekend our family went canoeing with a group in a tidal marsh in Raccoon Creek down in the Eastern Shore Wildlife Refuge. We’re mountain folk trying to get used to living on the shore. This marsh was full of all kinds of life. Teeming, I believe, is the appropriate word. As the tidal waters wash in and out of that marsh thousands of periwinkle snails and mussels filter the marsh and clean it up for other life. Crabs and birds and insects go about their work. Spartina grass and millet anchor the muddy soil in place. It is amazingly rich and beautiful and it is such a treasure. Those places on the margins, where the land meets the water, foster the greatest diversity of life. It is a very natural place to acknowledge that, “Yes, all creation is praising God.”

But when Paul talks about the creation here he says something a little different. It’s not some New Age-y notion that the creation is God. No, the creation, us included, is composed of creatures. But what makes us stand out from the crowd in this creation is that we seem to be the only creatures who can be delusional. We have the capacity for self-delusion.

What do I mean by that? Well, a periwinkle snail is not going to suddenly decide, “Hey, why am I sitting here stuck to a blade of spartina grass with a million other Joes? I’m better than them. I’m going to go off and start a garage band.” It just doesn’t have that capacity. A snowy egret is not going to give up wading to try to be the most famous bird it can be. A shrimp, even a jumbo shrimp, is not going to try to take over the world. But human beings have that capacity which other creatures don’t have: They can forget who they are and forget that they are essentially, necessarily, inextricably related to God.

Other creatures know who they are. Blue crabs do not need to be self-actualized. Pufferfish, even though they look pretty ridiculous to you and me, do not have self-esteem issues. Cats know that they rule the world. All of these creatures have their place in the cosmos, are conscious of their relatedness to God and they are waiting for us to get it!

That seems to be what Paul is saying. Creation knows that God has the first word, the last word and all the other words in between. Creation knows that in the end God “Yes!” to the world. Creation knows that God is worthy to be praised. And its doing it. And its waiting. The grass in the field is watching us each morning. “Do you think they’ll get it today?” Tomatoes are talking to rutabagas in the garden, “Do you think they’ll realize it today?” Stars in the heavens, suns are contemplating, “They’re not very bright, are they?”

I know. I know. It sounds ridiculous. And I’ve exaggerated a little. But there is something very powerful about that image. Creation waits with eager longing, it groans until the revealing of the one thing we have the hardest time getting our minds around: that God has known us, as the Psalm for the day, Psalm 139, says so powerfully: “It was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother's womb”, God has known us. God has claimed us. God has accepted us as joint heirs with Christ…children of God. And we don’t know it. Decay and loss are not the end of the story for creation--freedom and redemption are.

Do you know what the greatest sin of the age is? I’ve been thinking about this more and more, especially as I worked with college students at UVA. I’m more and more convinced that the besetting sin of this age is not pride or lust or greed or envy. The besetting sin of this age is despair.

When Thomas Aquinas set out to define despair in the Middle Ages he talked about it as that sense that comes over a person when she or he believes that there is no way to achieve a goal towards which to move. A person can have every capability, every strength, every power at their command, but if they are in the grip of despair they are immobilized-- frozen in place.

I saw that in students. Bright, gifted young adults who should have been launched toward a distant target like an arrow in flight. But they couldn’t see beyond the obstacles in front of them. Some of them, yes. But many who were not able see where God was taking them or what God was making of them. One student I worked with, whom I baptized, said that he had lived most of his life like a child playing in the street who never had anyone to call him home when the other kids went home for dinner. Finding Christ for him was like hearing that voice he had been waiting for…that voice that could lift him out of despair and move him to beyond the walls of the narrow world he was living in.

You’ve seen that despair. Perhaps you’ve known it. We can live very comfortably with despair. It doesn’t expect anything from us or the world. It doesn’t require anything of us. But it also can’t set us free.

What sets us free…is hope. What is reordering the world is hope. What we can’t see when we are in despair is the end God is drawing us toward. What you’ll hear, if you really listen for God’s surprising new thing is the working of hope. Because you see, if you listen you’ll understand that it is not just the cosmos that is groaning and waiting and longing for us to wake up to who we really are as children of God. If you listen you’ll hear that that groaning is going on within us as well. “We ourselves,” Paul says, “who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. For in hope we were saved.” That’s a past tense verb. In hope we were saved. That happened in Christ. We don’t have to wonder when salvation will come. It has come. What we are waiting on, what the creation is waiting on, what God is waiting on, is our acceptance. The invitations have been sent to the wedding banquet. Are you going to accept?

So we hope. We hope. It is the life Christians are made for. And we celebrate now because we know what the end of the story will be. And we work for the transformation of our communities and our lives now because we know that’s what God is doing. And we look for evidence of God’s transforming work because we know it can be found. Hope is transforming the world to the image of God’s kingdom. And if you listen you can hear the birth pangs of the new creation.

That’s Paul’s image. It’s the next sound we hear. Labor pains. The cries that go with them. They’re not easy to hear. When I stood next to Suzanne during the birth of our children, it was painful to watch what she was going through. Maybe not as painful as what she was going through, but not easy. And birth is fraught with so many dangers and so many vulnerabilities. There is suffering involved.

But then there was the baby’s first cry and the absolute impossibility of offering any words that made any sense to describe what was going on. And, of course, there were so many dangers and struggles yet to go. This was only the beginning of a life. Who knows what it will bring, what this child will ask of us? So I was mute, but in my stumbling to find words I was saying was a blessing, a thanks to God for giving us a moment when we could be what God truly meant for us to be--a people receiving life and offering it back to God. It was a moment of hope. And hope can transform the universe.

If you listen you can hear it. A child’s voice crying “Abba”. The world groaning in expectation. And the birth pangs of a new order. When are you going to join the chorus? Thanks be to God.

One Great Chapter: Romans 8 and the Life of the Spirit

Romans 8:1-11 [NRSV]
There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and to deal with sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, so that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.

For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For this reason the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God's law -- indeed it cannot, and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.

But you are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.


I’m not sure what you’re used to in terms of congregational participation in preaching here. I know that this is a thoughtful church, a reflective church, and yet a very warm and expressive church, too. But whatever your inclination I want you to know that for today, you can take part in the sermon.

I don’t want to be preaching alone here. I want you to help me. I want you to feel free to say “Amen” if that feels right to you. I want you to say “Praise God” if that feels right to you. Or if you think I’m in trouble, you can borrow from our sisters and brothers in the black church tradition and say, “Help him, Lord!” and I’ll take that as a sign of support.

You know, there’s the story about the very staid Methodist church--very proper and orderly, high church as they call it--that was holding a Sunday morning worship service. A visitor came and was so moved by the sermon that she shouted out, “Amen!” The first time she did it, all the people in the pew in front of her shifted kind of uncomfortably. Then it happened again. She was moved to shout out, “Hallelujah!”. The folks in front of her turned around and glared, but they couldn’t repress the Spirit and a third time the visitor shout out, “Praise the Lord!”

So now an usher appears and goes down to the woman and says, “I’m sorry, but you’ll have to stop shouting.”

The woman says, “I can’t help it. I’ve got religion!”

To which the usher replies, “Well, you didn’t get it here!”

So whether you’re normally the quiet type of the vocal type, I hope you’ll feel comfortable if you feel the Spirit move you. And that’s important because the topic for this morning, if the title of the sermon can be trusted, is “One Great Chapter: Romans 8 and the Life of the Spirit.”

This chapter is, to me, one of the most beautiful and important in the whole Bible. I didn’t always feel that way. I used to think the Apostle Paul, who wrote this, was hard to understand, very convoluted, and not very liberating to read. But over time, I’ve come to love Paul with all of his quirks and tics. Paul was someone who had a firm grip on reality. He knew what the human experience was like but he also knew what God was like, how significant Christ was, and what a wonder life in the Holy Spirit was.

In chapter 7 of Romans Paul spends a lot of time reflecting on what it’s like to be a human being. He says what a lot of us say when we’re trying to face our own faults. He says, “I know what I need to do. I know what God wants me to do. But even though I know what I should do, my body betrays me. My will betrays me. The very thing I don’t want to do is the thing that I do.” And he ends that chapter in seeming despair. He feels captive to sin, which is distorting his life and he says, “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?”

In chapter 8 he begins to answer his own question and the answer is so deep and so wonderful that I want to take three Sundays to work through the message of this chapter. And the message is simple. It really comes down to one thing. And this is it: The real world, which is God’s world, is already here through the Holy Spirit. That’s it. So if you fall asleep or your mind wanders over the next two hours, just remember that: The real world, which is God’s world, is already here through the Holy Spirit.

You know, I have come to you after having been a college campus minister. I loved doing that. I loved spending my days and whole lot of nights with college students talking about life, the universe and everything. They were way ahead of me in lots of ways. I really believe that this is the brightest generation of college students we have ever produced. But one of the things I learned about in my seven years on campus was pop culture, which I had become disconnected from.

Now some aspects of that were good. There’s a lot of soul searching and God-searching going on in pop culture, whether the people searching know it or not. But there were also some strange things. You’ve seen it, too, I’m sure. Reality TV is one of those strange things.

American Idol is one version of that. Survivor is another where they take complete strangers and send them off to a South Pacific Island where they compete in games and eat rats and complain about one another. I’ve been in some churches that are like Survivor, but that’s another story. There’s Fear Factor and The Apprentice and all sorts of “reality-based programming.” And I can see how it can be addicting.

The oldest of these “reality” shows is on MTV. For years now they have been taking a group of young adults and putting them together in some cool city to live in a house together for a semester. There were a lot of students at UVA who treat this like a weekly soap opera. They know the people, discuss their problems, wonder how relationships will turn out. That show is called The Real World.

Well, as entertaining as those shows are, I have news for you, in case you needed to hear it from me: The Real World is not the real world. Most of us don’t have cameras running all the time in our lives. The settings are artificial. The people are chosen because they have some outrageous tendencies. It’s interesting, but it’s not the real world.

But these shows are popular, and not just for college student, because we have grown tired of all of our media coming to us prepackaged and slick. We feel like there must be something more to the world than well-rehearsed plays and beautiful images. Behind all of that there must be something real, something earthier--some place where people still struggle with one another and where the things that happen have some consequence. So we like to see these artificial worlds because there it seems like something is at stake--even if it’s only the money or the fame at the end of it.

There was a movie a few years back that gave us a glimpse of what was coming. In “The Truman Show” Jim Carrey played a man who has spent his whole life in a gigantic bubble filled with actors and special effects. His every move is filmed for the cameras but he doesn’t realize that his world is not real. Everyone is always smiling. Everything runs on time. People are well dressed and successful in their jobs. There are no crises. It’s like a never-ending Leave it to Beaver episode. Until finally Jim Carrey’s character begins to suspect that there is something wrong and he sails across an artificial lake to the far side of the bubble where he bumps into a concrete wall. That’s when he discovers that his world is not the real world.

Like the character in that movie, we’re very suspicious of utopias, artificial worlds where we can escape from it all. And we should be. When we try to make a world that doesn’t have problems or uncomfortable moment, we always fail. That’s not the real world either.

So what is the real world? It must be the lives we live, right? The life Paul talks about in chapter 7 of Romans? The world where the mortgage or the rent is due first of the month, whether our checkbooks are ready or not. The world where children face pressures and dangers that no child should have to face. The world where terrorist bombs wreak havoc in subways and buses without any warning. A world where abuse and injustice linger. A world where the elderly know the pain and devastation of loneliness and despair. A world where loved ones die and where grief tugs at our souls. A world where our schedules are full and hearts are empty. A world where oil prices are up and our moral standards are down. Anybody want to say, “Amen” yet?

This is what we call real life, isn’t it? This is the place where the rubber hit’s the road and there are no cameras around to record it for entertainment value. This is where there is no million-dollar prize for the survivor. This is where people leave the scene of a difficult relationship and there is real hurt. But I’ve got news for you. Paul’s got news for you: This is not the real world either!

Oh, we think it’s the real world, but what kind of reality is it that can only offer despair and ultimately death? Are you going to settle for a reality like that? Where is the hope and the promise that give meaning and purpose to life? Certainly not it that world. If that’s what it means when people tell us to “Get real” I’m not having it.

So where is the real world? Where is the world that we all sense and know there ought to be, but which we can never really find or create for ourselves? Where is the real world?

It’s in the Bible. Now, yes, there is some gritty, painful human stuff in here. There’s violence, lying, greed, adultery, broken relationships…all that stuff is in there. But even though all of those very “realistic” things about human beings are in this book, that’s not all that’s here.

What this book is really about is a God who sees us at our worst but who does not leave us alone and thanks be to God for that. This is a book about a God who knows the weaknesses and distortions we are prone to, the sin we are in slavery to. This is a God who knows what sin can do to us.

But God doesn’t tune us in on ABC at 8 o’clock on Thursday nights to see who’s left after this week’s tragedies. God came down to meddle in our affairs…to open our eyes. This is a book about a God who came down in Jesus Christ to say to us, “You think you have to live like this? Get real! Let me show you what the real world is all about!”

Jesus hints at what the real world is all about when he gives the so-called Great Commandment. Remember the question of that lawyer who came to Jesus? “Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

And Jesus responds by saying, “What does the law say?”

The lawyer says, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind; and love your neighbor as yourself [Luke 10:25-27].” Sounds like a pretty good answer.

But it might leave us with the wrong impression. When we are commanded to love, it leaves the impression that it is something we can do on our own. After all, if it were really that easy to reform our lives and our society by our own willpower, surely someone would have figured it out by now. But you know and I know that we have an incredible tendency to mess things up. We can’t do it on our own. We inevitably fall and fail and find a way to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. We’re pretty human creatures after all.

The disciples realized how difficult this commandment business was. Jesus was teaching about the dangers of wealth. He had just told a rich young man to give up all of his possessions. Jesus said, “Truly, I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”

So the disciples say, “Well, then, who can be saved?” They recognize the dangers of trying to determine what it means to be rich and what it means to give up our possessions to follow Jesus.

So Jesus gives them the straight scoop: “For mortals, it is impossible to be saved.” There you have it. Jesus says it is impossible for us to be saved by our own efforts. But he doesn’t stop there. He goes on to say, “But for God all things are possible.” Want to say “Amen” again? That makes all the difference in the world. This is where that thing called grace enters in. It is not by our own powers and achievements that we find salvation…it is by grace.

So how does God do this? How does God bring about this salvation in us that moves us to love God with all of our heart, soul, strength and mind? Well, first of all, God created us to do that. Remember that first line from our mission statement for Franktown Church: “The mission of this church is to glorify God.” That’s the mission of every one of us. We were created to glorify God. That’s reality. We get sidetracked from that end. We are really, really good at finding other things to glorify, from power to sex to wealth to our own abilities…even our own weaknesses, but “Get real!” The things we were meant to do, from the moment we were created in God’s image, is to love and glorify God.

How does God bring us to salvation? Well, first God gives us the capacity to love God, but more importantly, God gives us God’s very own self. Salvation is effected because God sent the Son, Jesus Christ, to be born, to suffer, to die and to be resurrected from the dead. It is in Jesus Christ that we meet God and it is through Jesus Christ that we are enabled to be people of true character and it is through the power of the Holy Spirit that we are invited to see the real world and to live in it.

Remember the Holy Spirit? I was going to preach a sermon about the Holy Spirit. Well, here it is. The Holy Spirit is the one who makes the power of the resurrected life available to us as a community and to each of us individually. Paul answers his own question of “Who will save me from this body of death?” by saying, in chapter 8, that God deals with the sin that has us in a stranglehold by coming in Christ and conquering sin through death on a cross. Paul does not say that God demanded blood to pay for the damage sin had done and so God takes the life of an innocent victim. Paul says God came in the Son and suffered as we do and made us realize what a lie sin is. And now we can find “real life” in Christ Jesus because there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Now we can look forward to a new life because the Spirit, which raised Jesus from the dead, dwells in us and gives us the promise that the Spirit will also “give life to our mortal bodies.”

Why do we need the Holy Spirit? It’s such a difficult thing to get our minds around. But the Holy Spirit is important for us as Christians because this is the name by which we know God. Who is God? God is the Trinity: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Who is the Holy Spirit? The Spirit is God.

But the particular work of the Holy Spirit, the office of the Spirit, as we might call it, is to witness to the mutual love of the Father and the Son and to make us witness to that love. I realize this is pretty cosmic stuff, but think about what the means--through the Holy Spirit we are invited to be a part of the most important love in the universe--a love so strong that it overflows and creates and welcomes all creation to celebrate. It’s like a huge wedding with the biggest invitation list you ever saw, and like every wedding it needs witnesses. Get real? This is real. We’re invited!

But how? We weren’t there at Calvary. We weren’t there to witness Jesus’ ministry in Palestine. We weren’t there to see his death on the cross. We weren’t there to see him laid in the tomb. We weren’t there to see it empty on that first Easter morning. The only way we can sing that Good Friday hymn, “Were You There?” with any conviction at all is because the Holy Spirit makes that long-ago event something eternally real. The Easter victory is never allowed to become a thing of the remote past. The Holy Spirit ensures that it is as real for us as it was for Mary Magdalene and Joanna and Peter and all of those astonished disciples. The Holy Spirit makes us real.

How does the Holy Spirit make it real? By reminding us of who we are and how we were made and who we were meant to be. By restoring to us the image of ourselves that we have lost. The Spirit allows Christ to live in us and to remake us in the image of God.

You know in The Wizard of Oz when Dorothy and her friends are going through the dark forest on their way to confront the Wicked Witch of the West? The flying monkeys come and attack and kidnap Dorothy and Toto. Then there’s that sad sight of the scarecrow lying all over the ground. That scene used to scare me as a kid. And the scarecrow explains what happened, “Well, first they took my legs and they threw them over there. Then they took my chest and they threw it over there.” And the tin man says, “That’s you all over.”

Well, that’s us too! We were created with this great potential and this great destiny--to be children of God--and because of sin, we live scattered, broken lives. Our potential for love is squandered on material things and hurtful relationships and it lies somewhere over there. Our potential for giving ourselves to others is wasted in failed quests to be the greatest or most powerful and it lies somewhere over there. Our potential for living a life for God is confused into living a life for monetary gain and it lies somewhere over there. That’s what it’s like to be scattered. And what holds us together…what has the potential for holding us together…is Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit remakes us in the likeness of Christ. Or to put it another way, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit is Christ in us, restoring the disfigured image of God.

This week was moving week for us. One of the big pieces of furniture that came with us was a piano that has been in Suzanne’s family for many years. It used to sit in the basement of her folks’ place and it was just an old, black, hulking piece of furniture. But as a gift to us, her parents had it redone and it turns out to be made of beautiful wood and to have an incredible sound. It was a treasure covered up by years of abuse and neglect.

Well, so are you. You are God’s treasure, meant for one thing, to love God and in loving God to love the world and the people God made. You are a child of God. But I’ll bet you don’t even realize what, by God’s grace you are. Too many years of dust and neglect and abuse have made you the great, hulking thing in the corner, rather than the instrument of God’s divine harmony.

“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” So says Paul at the beginning of this great chapter. That’s our promise through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. And there’s more. Next week we’ll do some groaning and aspiring with the Spirit. But for now…know that God did not come to condemn the world, but to save it and you and me. Thanks be to God.