July 26, 2020
Romans 8:26-39
INTRODUCTION
This is the last week we’ll be hearing from Matthew’s parable discourse, and, like the finale of a 4th of July fireworks show, Jesus will give us one parable after another – bam, bam, bam! In this series of short parables, Jesus will use several everyday images to help us understand what the kingdom of God is like. Yet when he asks his disciples if they’ve understood these things, and they say, “Yes” – I call their bluff! Each short parable is so dense and complex to unpack, they couldn’t possibly have understood it all! That said, perhaps they can best be summarized in this way: God’s kingdom shows up even in small, ordinary, and often unexpected ways.
Perhaps that is why this Gospel is paired with Solomon’s prayer for wisdom. King Solomon is best known for his surpassing wisdom, and today’s reading shows us when and why he was given this gift. A prayer for wisdom is one I think we all could stand to offer, during a time when so many unknowns make it near impossible to make wise choices! Thankfully, we will also hear today this beautiful portion of Romans 8, in which we are assured that whatever hardship comes our way, nothing can separate us from the love of God, and that the Spirit is praying with us and for us through it all, with “sighs too deep for words.”
There’s a lot of good news in our texts today. So whatever burden or trouble you may be carrying today, I pray that these texts can bring some relief to it. Let’s listen.
[READ]
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
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.
There are many ways we try to do this, but one way we do, is through prayer – seeking peace in the midst of chaos, wisdom in the midst of confusion, and guidance in the midst of craziness. In my personal prayer life, I have felt a bit like that patrolman these past few months. Watching the virus continue to ravage parts of the country as numbers of cases and deaths shoot ever higher. Racism and white supremacy, and drastic tactics made to try to stifle people’s voices and concerns. The end of some benefits that have been helping people stay fed and keep their homes. The fear and anxiety of parents and educators, as we all anticipate how to hold school this year in a situation with no right answer. Ever-deepening partisanship. Not to mention the personal pains and losses – sick loved ones we cannot visit in the hospital, strained and broken relationships, addiction, mental illness, loss of connection, deaths of people we love.
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 often find I am at a loss. No words are enough. And even if words were enough, I don’t always 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 always 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 I know 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? What better prayer of thanksgiving than uncontrolled laughter? What better prayer of praise than a toddler’s squeal of delight? Mere utterances, with no verbal language behind them, are perhaps the most creaturely prayer of all – even as they are also the most divine.
Prayer is that way, too. When words escape us, our sighs and sounds 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. God doesn’t need those beautiful words – 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: it connects us to one another. With a deadly virus floating around, spreading through our aerosols and breath, we’ve started thinking about sharing air as a bad thing – no singing together, no shouting, no playing wind instruments, nothing that requires sharing too much air with too many people. But in reality, there is no way to avoid sharing breath. 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.
It reminds me of a Martin Luther King, Jr. quote I’ve seen a lot lately: that “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” If any of us suffers injustice, none of us enjoy the peace and justice that God intends for us. If you’ve paid any attention to the protests happening in response to George Floyd’s murder, you’ve seen signs that say, “I can’t breathe.” These, of course, refer to Mr. Floyd’s last words, as the officer kneeled on his neck. I’ve been very moved to see these signs, because it reminds me that breath really does connect us – and if one can’t breathe, we all are with that person, even if it means that we must then use our breath, our prayers in the Spirit, to pray and stand up for those who have no breath. The Spirit’s breath connects us. 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, just as the Spirit will in a moment for Bobby. And so all of us – you, me, Bobby, Jesus – all of us are a part of each other: one Body, one Breath. It is because of that, as Paul so powerfully states at the end of today’s reading, 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.”
That love promised to us through all things… is in every breath – every breath inhaled for life, every breath uttered as prayer for ourselves or another, 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. (And, in the absence of being together in the flesh, I want to be sure you are actively participating at home, so put down your cup of coffee and do this with me!) 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, maybe even yourself, as you inhale and exhale. If you have others in your house with you, consider putting a hand on the back of the person next to you so you can feel their breath, or even breathe together. 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.
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