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.
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