Sermon: "...with sighs too deep for words." (July 27, 2014)

Pentecost 7A/Lectionary 17

Romans 8:26-39

           

            In her book, Souls Raised from the Dead, Christian author Doris Betts tells a story about driving

down the highway in North Carolina. As she drove, she saw a bunch of highway patrol men on the side of the road. She could see that a chicken truck had run off the road and broken apart, and chickens were everywhere. The driver was running around trying to capture what chickens he could, some people were trying to steal the chickens, and there was chicken blood everywhere. You can imagine it was a scene as horrific as it was hilarious, as the patrolman was trying to bring some order to the chaos. Betts observes: That’s us. We are that patrolman. In the middle of life’s chaos and horror and humor, we try to bring order, meaning, and stability.

            Often, we try to do this through prayer. In my personal prayer life, I have felt a bit like that

From ELCA Bishop Mike Rinehart's blog
(Read it here.)

patrolman these past couple weeks. Every time I check the news, there is some new tragedy to be praying about: the violence in the Holy Land, where 80% of the fatalities on the Gaza strip have been civilians; the 57,000 unaccompanied children (so far!) who have crossed our borders seeking refuge from violence and poverty in their home countries, for whom their best option was to leave their families and everything they know for a strange land hundreds of miles away; a plane allegedly brought down by terrorists and nearly 300 innocent people killed; continuing violence in the Ukraine. And that’s just on the world scene! Let’s not forget the brokenness and hurt that we all see on a daily basis among those who are close to us, from illness and injury, to loss and sadness, to whatever other daily struggles we may face.

            As I have tried to pray for all of these things, I have felt like that patrolman, wanting so badly to help, to bring some sense of calm and order to a world that seems to have spun out of control. But even as I try to pray, whether while I’m driving, or in the quiet of the morning or before bed, I find I am at a loss. No words are enough. And even if words were enough, I don’t know what words to pray! Some of these situations are so complicated and have so many different sides, so even if I could be sure that whatever I pray will come to pass, I’m not sure what outcome is the best!

            In times like this, when the words of prayer escape me, I am grateful for Paul’s words this morning in Romans. “The Spirit helps us in our weakness,” he says. “For we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.” I just love this image. I love that although God delights in my prayers, God also doesn’t let me just flounder around helplessly with no direction. I picture putting myself out there, vulnerable and in need, and the Spirit swooping in under me, holding, even cradling me securely, and saying, “Don’t worry, I’ve got this for you.”

            But I also love that even the Spirit doesn’t use real words, but rather “sighs too deep for words.” When you think about it, what better prayer is there than that? What better prayer of lament than someone’s gut-wrenching sob, or a prayer of thanksgiving as uncontrolled laughter, or a prayer of praise as a soprano voice wafting over an orchestra? Mere utterances, with no verbal language behind them, are perhaps the most creaturely prayer of all – even as they are also the most divine.

            I am taking an acting class this summer, called Voice and Movement. We had been working on

movement, but this past week we added the voice. Our instructor gave us actions – such as float, dab, thrust, push, slash – and we were to walk around the room making our bodies do that action. And then lastly we would make our voices do that action as well. [Demonstrate some.] Never did the vocal “movements” use words – we expressed the emotion or character merely with our voice and body. At the end of class we took turns performing these actions for each other in body and voice, and it was always clear which one it was. The sighs and utterances were plenty to get the point across.

Prayer is that way, too. When words escape us, our sighs are enough. That is how the Spirit prays on our behalf, and that is how we can pray in the Spirit. We are released from the demand we may put on ourselves to pray beautifully worded prayers, as if God will somehow hear and understand those better, and respond more readily. Our breath, our deep sighs, are plenty to get the point across.

Something else happens when we so intentionally consider our breath to be our prayer. I heard once that for every drop of water you consume, there’s like a 99% chance that that drop had been through a dinosaur at some point. If that’s true with water, how about air? The air we breathe, the air that makes us produce those sighing prayers, is truly a shared commodity, and in that way it is unifying. It is common to all of us. And just as we say that the Holy Spirit, the Holy Breath, gathers us together and makes us one body, one Church, our deep breaths do this, too. In this way, every breath, every prayer, that we pray for ourselves, is for someone else, and every breath we pray for someone else, we pray for ourselves.

Last Sunday morning, our sister Betty had a fall and was taken to the hospital. Her daughter was on her way to church, unaware of the fall. As she drove to Bethlehem, an ambulance came up behind her, and she pulled over to let it pass. As she always does, she said a prayer for the person in the ambulance, and for that person’s family. Then she continued on to church. Later, she discovered that this had been her mom’s ambulance! She said to me, “I had no idea that I was praying for my mom and for myself!”

Praying in the Spirit, breathing the breath of God, does this: when we pray for one in pain, we pray for all. For we all share the pains and sorrows of this world, though they may take different forms for each of us. With the Holy Spirit, we pray as one body, one breath, sighing deeply for all the earth.

And of course, when we pray in the Spirit, with deep, Spirit sighs, not only are we connected to one another, we are connected to Christ, who is our head and our life. At Jesus’ baptism, the Holy Spirit came down on him like a dove, and that same Spirit came on each of us in our baptism, and hence all of us are a part of each other: one Body, one Breath. And because of that, as Paul so powerfully states at the end of today’s reading, “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.”

That love promised to us through all things… is in every breath – every breath inhaled for life, every breath uttered as prayer, every breath that contains the smell of this beautiful earth, every breath that produces laughter or weeping or song or stillness. Every breath is the breath of the Spirit, interceding on our behalf, sighing prayers for us and for this world that are too deep for words.

As we close in prayer, I invite you simply to breathe deeply. I don’t think we do enough of that.

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I often find that my breathing is shallow, especially when I am anxious or distressed. So we are going to take some time this morning simply to breathe deeply, all the way to our toes, trusting that with each deep breath, each sigh, we are praying with and being filled by the Holy Spirit. While we breathe, think about something or someone in need of prayer, or pray this simple prayer – “Breath of God, breathe in me” – as you inhale and exhale. Our breath, and the Breath of the Spirit, shall be our closing prayer. Let us pray.

Several seconds of silent breathing… In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.